Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, reviews the recent battle over the state’s new public school science curriculum standards and asks: “Did we win or did we lose?”
The results, he writes, were mixed. We think this paragraph, in particular, hits the nail on the head:
The problem was this: The eight pro-science members (of the Texas State Board of Education), five Democrats and three Republicans, did not vote as a pro-science bloc, while the seven anti-science Biblical Literalist Republicans always voted as an anti-science bloc. Since they did this, all they needed was one additional vote to achieve their aims. Most of the pro-science Board members are friendly, moderate to conservative individuals who believe in collegiality, cooperation, and compromise, so most were willing to accept the weaker but still flawed substitute amendments that the religious right members proposed if their original blatantly anti-science amendment failed on an 8-7 vote, which usually happened. I could detect the emotional compulsion of some Board members to vote with a colleague for a less egregious amendment and to find some compromise on controversial issues. The Religious Right members exploited this characteristic again and again.
