UPDATE – The actual email has now surfaced (pdf, via Dallas Morning Herald).
Attitudes to education differ round the world, but things are looking pretty odd in Texas right now. The director of the state’s science curriculum is claiming she was forced out for forwarding an email. Its content was not a risqué joke or a sleazy photo: it was a note about a forthcoming lecture by a philosopher who has been heavily involved in debates over creationism.
The Statesman reports that the Texas Education Agency had recommended firing Chris Comer for repeated misconduct and insubordination (the details of which are unclear) before she resigned. But Comer and others are saying she was forced out for seeming to endorse criticism of intelligent design. An agency memo, according to the Statesman, said: “Ms Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”
In other news, a new international ranking of the science ability of 15 year olds has been conducted by the OECD. The US is below average, a little under Latvia. Finland tops the chart. Those with spare time might find it interesting to compare this chart of the new OECD ranking, with this chart of belief in evolution.
More on Comer below the fold…
A copy of the email Comer forwarded has appeared on Pharyngula (though missing whatever Comer might have added in her own note before sending it on). Needless to say the blogosphere is in something of a feeding frenzy.
Larry Fafarman, on the I’m from Missouri blog, reckons this is ‘Darwinist hypocrites’ protesting a ‘proper ouster’. He points out that there was apparently a directive in place “not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review”.
Over at the Panda’s Thumb Wesley R. Elsberry reckons that, “Apparently, not being a team player in the The Republican War on Science is a firing offense at the TEA.”
Pro-evolution group the National Center for Science Education notes that the resignation comes just months before the board is expected to review the science portion of state standards that determine what science is taught in schools. “In 2003, there were concerted if ultimately unsuccessful attempts to wield the [standards] to compromise the treatment of evolution in the textbooks then under consideration, and it is expected that such attempts will recur – especially since the new president of the board is himself a vocal creationist,” it says.
UPDATE – 6/12/07
Philosopher Barbara Forrest, the speaker Comer sent her email about, has issued a statement.
If anyone had any doubts about how mean-spirited ID politics is, this episode should erase them. Texas school children depend on the adults at the TEA to protect the quality of their education. For the last nine years at the TEA, after twenty-seven years as a science teacher, Ms. Comer was doing her part, and she got fired for doing it. The children are ultimately the losers.