“False ideas are the greatest obstacle to progress. Evolution, the idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor, is a false idea.”
— Don McLeroy (@DonMcLeroy) November 26, 2014
“False ideas are the greatest obstacle to progress. Evolution, the idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor, is a false idea.”
That’s a tweet today from the creationist former chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy. McLeroy helped lead the right’s campaign from 2008 to 2010 to dumb down teaching on both evolution and climate change in new public school textbooks. He and his fellow anti-science fanatics failed completely. Thanks to the hard and costly work of the Texas Freedom Network, fantastic coalition partners like the National Center for Science Education and Climate Parents, and tens of thousands of supporters, new science and social studies textbooks in Texas teach the truth about both evolution and climate change without the “false ideas” that McLeroy wanted in them.
That’s something we can all be thankful for. As 2014 draws to a close, please consider helping TFN replenish our resources for the battles ahead both at the State Board of Education and, especially in 2015, the Texas Legislature. Click here to donate.
And thank you for all you have done to support TFN and our work in 2014. It is absolutely true that we could not have accomplished what we have without that support.
Facts enter a witness protection program when he walks into a room.
The phrase “willful ignorance” changed its name to his.
He summarized all human knowledge to a single sheet of paper – on one side – with room at the bottom.
He bathes in the tears of laughter from rational people.
He is Don McLeroy, the most ridiculous man in Texas.
I really don’t understand why you use the phrase “dumb down” when talking about what they attempted to do. To dumb something down is to simplify it to the point that you aren’t really teaching anything. That’s bad because students don’t learn enough. What they learn is true as far as it goes, but it’s too simplified to be useful.
McLeroy never tried to dumb anything down. What he and those like him tried to do was to take the truth out of the textbooks and replace it with mythology.