I’d like to invite you to take a moment to peruse the NCSE staff directory. One thing you’ll notice (after you note what an interesting bunch we are) is that there aren’t very many of us. Fewer than a dozen in fact, tasked with the daunting mission of ensuring that every teacher, in every school,…
Senate Resolution 59, introduced in the United States Senate on February 10, 2017, would, if passed, express the Senate's support of designating February 12, 2017, as Darwin Day, and its recognition of "Charles Darwin as a worthy symbol on which to celebrate the achievements of reason, science,…
NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2017: Edward J. Larson, the Pepperdine University historian and legal scholar who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 book about the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods; Richard E. Lenski, the Michigan State University…
"The House Education Committee voted Thursday [February 9, 2017] to remove references to climate change and human impact on the environment from a new set of science standards," according to Idaho Ed News (February 9, 2017).
The committee was considering a new set of Idaho state science…
When it comes to modern young-earth creationist literature, there is, to coin a phrase, no new thing under the sun. The same old long-ago-debunked claims appear and reappear. I couldn’t be more jaded if I were a greenish metamorphic silicate. So when a colleague in North Carolina offered to send a…
Scientists and science educators of all stripes — students, postdocs, faculty, and full- or part-time science communicators — are invited to enter the Seventh Annual Evolution Video Competition, sponsored by the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,…
Let me tell you a story. There is a little girl named Dora who is a member of my community. She likes me because I am not particularly strict, and because I am a reliable source of snacks. I teach her preschool class in our religious school. We play with letters from the aleph-bet…
Do you remember the map I showed you in my last post, about how many states had volunteers interested in starting Science Booster Clubs? Spoiler alert! I received emails from people in 18 states interested in starting clubs. The first wave of volunteer-led clubs is getting off to a formal…
A draft of a new national curriculum in Turkey omits evolution, according to soL international (January 15, 2017). A unit entitled "The Origin of Life and Evolution" will be replaced with a unit entitled "Living Beings and the Environment." The final decision on the curriculum is expected in…