School Board in Arizona Redacts Parts of a Biology Texbook
The war of defending science in the public school systems around the United States never ends. Battles are fought in perpetuity in all 50 states. Here is one battle in Arizona which involves the censorship of science, and it is thanks to the efforts of a few fervent activists fighting on the side of anti-science. A high school honors biology textbook titled Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections (7th edition) presents information about morning after pills that, as the book mentions, can induce abortion. A state law was passed (Arizona Revised Statute 15-115) after the biology textbook was written, and the interpretation of the law by some on the Gilbert Public Schools Governing Board is resulting in the redacting of pages from the book. As reported by The East Valley Tribune:
“The decision to redact the content was offered by ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) as an option and recommended by Board Clerk Daryl Colvin, who described it as the cheapest, simplest, least disruptive and most efficient way to deal with the issue.”
Mr. Colvin’s words came back to bite him when Rachel Maddow ran with the story and devoted about 6 minutes to the subject, which is not just a passing news crawl on the bottom of your television screen. Not to mention that CBS News has also picked up on the controversy. So much for Mr. Colvin’s ‘least disruptive’ descriptor. As the battle continues, the board of education will likely find this will not be “cheap”, “simple”, or “efficient” at all.
Oh goody. My state makes the news AGAIN.
this statement needs corrected: “A high school honors biology textbook titled Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections (7th edition) presents information about morning after pills that, as the book mentions, can induce abortion.”
the “morning after pill” does NOT induce abortions. the abortion pill method discussed in the textbook is correctly identified as RU-486.
to state the morning after pill induces abortions is extremely confusing, causing people educated on contraception to think the redaction is a good thing, and worse, spreads dangerous misinformation to those uninformed about contraception.
If your child’s chemistry textbook taught how to make explosives, would you object? Can’t be censoring science.
You are aware that if one reads enough chemistry, they could quite realistically learn how to make a bomb rather easily? Surely what makes a potential terrorist is the willingness and desire to create one, not the knowledge how to. In America you guys have access to guns and everybody knows how to use them – doesn’t make you all murderers does it.
Besides – what a poorly thought out point – learning about contraception is hardly the same as making a bomb is it?
Way to compare apples to oranges. You should probably go back to school and learn about reading comprehension.
Or at least read about what was censored in the biology book and understand why it’s not equivalent to making bombs.
Yeah, because explosives and birth control are exactly the same.
They’re both science. Are you in favor of censoring science or not?
Actually. Max, my chemistry textbooks were perfectly clear about explosives and my chem teacher spent a week teaching us how to do it safely on the grounds that he didn’t want his lab blown up.
What if your chem teacher taught how to make meth?
Max,
Morning-after pills are generally legal, and so is abortion within limits, and the pill would have less effect on a well-embedded placenta.
Possession/synthesis of explosives with intent is generally illegal, and so is blowing most things up, and it’s generally not covered in any chemistry class.
The difference is akin to teaching how to cut vegetables and do so properly and safely in a cookery book, and how to knife someone. It’s not legal, and (I hope) it’s not cookery.
So you’re in favor of censoring the science of explosives, which makes you anti-science by Evan’s standards.
The text book is not teaching children how to make contraceptives, it is explaining their chemical make up and how they work.
Similarly you will likely find a section in any chemistry textbooks on the details surrounding TNT, etc.
I appreciate the point Max is trying to make, but there should be no limits what so ever on the limits to what is taught in science as long as it is scientific.
As a seperare point, I remember a generation ago few people would have batted an eyelid at children trying to make gunpowder out of bird poo and charcoal. Or unwrapping a firework. It was stupid and dangerous and parents would skin you alive if they found out, but only in the last 15 years has this kind of thing become insidious.
I think that it deserves pointing out that the school board did not write the law. They were simply charged with following it. The people who deserve scorn are the boneheads who wrote the law and their fellow dimwits who voted and signed it into law. It is the fate of bureaucrats and public servants everywhere to be forced to implement or enforce laws and regulations they would never vote for themselves. I used to be a police officer, and can I tell you most of the shell-shocked and overworked cops I served with would eliminate at least 80% of existing narcotics prohibition laws as a useful first step, with more to follow later.