By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
August 26, 2003

(AgapePress) - A Texas group is fighting to get outdated material removed from biology textbooks in the state's public high schools.

Last week, Texans for Better Science Education kicked off a petition drive in response to testimony brought before the State Board of Education in July. Group spokesman Dr. Ide Trotter says groups like the Texas Freedom Network and Texas Citizens for Science were advocating textbooks containing propaganda devices to support an evolutionary model which is coming under considerable question among evolutionary scientists themselves.

"Evolution has been the dominant thing that's been taught in public schools for decades [and] generations -- and yet for some reason, it has not been convincing to those who've had the teaching," Trotter says. "If you conduct a poll, 60% of the population is skeptical that evolution explains all that it purports to explain."

The group's nemesis, Texas Citizens for Science, responds to that criticism on its website, claiming "there are no weaknesses, controversies, problems, and mysteries with the factual occurrence of evolution by common descent through time."

Texas Citizens for Science also levels its own criticism at Trotter's group, calling it a "thinly-veiled creationist organization that is attempting to damage science education in Texas by promoting the inclusion of invalid and unwarranted weaknesses and criticisms of evolution in biology textbooks."

But Trotter says his group is only trying to bring common sense and science together at a critical juncture to get textbooks "fixed." Toward that end, TBSE is sponsoring an online petition that encourages the board to amend public school biology textbooks that contain material based on flawed science. TBSE, Trotter explains, is simply asking members of the board to discharge their statutory responsibility.

"Our laws require the State Board of Education to certify that the texts that they approve are free from factual error -- and when they present theories, that the strengths and the weaknesses of those theories are both presented," he explains. "That's what science is all about: today's theory is in tomorrow's dustbin because we've got a better theory."

On September 11, representatives of Trotter's organization will be testifying before the state board of education in support of textbooks that teach evolution accurately.

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