NAGT Advocacy
As President, I get to serve on occasion as the Public Face of NAGT, and
recently I have been able to fill that function in particularly
satisfying ways. NAGT is a sponsor of the National Center for Science
Education, which many of you know for its activism and resources around
the teaching of evolution (http://ncse.com/). NCSE has recently added
climate change to its portfolio of "threatened" sciences, and through
our affiliation with NCSE, NAGT has recently been asked to weigh in on
bills in the Tennessee and Oklahoma state legislatures that would weaken
evolution and climate education in K-12 science classes. In each case I
wrote letters to the Governor and/or state legislators expressing
NAGT's position that science classes should teach science, and science
content consists of "peer-reviewed, tested and confirmed results, not
debates based on political or religious convictions."
From NCSE's website: ... in her March 27, 2012, letter, Elizabeth
Wright, the president of the NAGT, expressed her organization's concerns
with the bill, writing (PDF) that "the scientific theory of evolution
should be taught to students of all grade levels as a unifying concept
without distraction of non-scientific or anti-scientific influence" and
reiterating NAGT's acceptance of the conclusions of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its commitment to
"intensive public education, increased awareness, and action" on the
issue of climate change.
http://ncse.com/news/2012/03/opposition-to-oklahomas-antiscience-bill-007279
Opportunities like this come up for all of us, and I urge you to
consider making your voice heard as a professional geoscientist and
educator. We have several tools that can help you.
In writing my letters I was greatly aided (i.e. I cut and pasted a lot
from) NAGT's official position statements on the teaching of evolution
and climate change, which can be found at
http://nagt.org/nagt/policy/position.html. I commend these to your
attention, especially should you be moved to write this kind of lobbying
letter.
We also have an NAGT Public Policy Email List, which can inform you of
policy debates and decisions as they occur, usually in time for you to
respond. This can be found at http://nagt.org/nagt/policy/lists.html.
Finally, if any of you are ready for a quick petition signing opportunity, try this one:
http://www.change.org/petitions/apple-inc-classify-creation-science-ibooks-ebooks-under-religion-not-life-science.
This is a demand that Apple reconsider its policy of listing
creationist books under the category of "Science" based only on an
author's self-categorization. For example, I found the following book
description by Hezekiah Clark under the category "Life Sciences":
This writing is called: Scientific Creation, Our Life - Beginning To
End. As stated, all facts are not pragmatic or seen by human eye. Where
did all nature and life start? What is the beginning? Was it by The Big
Bang Theory, or Beginning by God? or some Intelligent Designer? The
miraculous human body is investigated in time. In Catastrophic
development of life and all nature, there was an Earth Canopy of
translucent, crystalline, ice and a Great Global Flood, a deluge,
scientifically verified. Then, all life and nature is discussed as
always coming in a trinity, which is the characteristic of and mode of
the great I.D.
Please join me in signing this one. Thanks.
Beth Wright
President, NAGT