High school student Mathew LaClair of New Jersey had the education and common knowledge enough to tell that some of his text book was politically charged and just plain wrong. He brought it to the attention of The Center For Inquiry and they proceeded to critique the textbook and provide a press release to the Associated Press.
There have been many news articles on this story since then, but I’m not sure if very many readers have taken the time to actually read the CFI critique. It is quite lengthy, but covers errors and omissions in the text book to include topics such as global warming, prayer in schools, same sex marriage, and other astonishingly inaccurate and misleading viewpoints. All of which offer no citations or outside references to uphold the conservative bias of the text book.
CFI To The RESCUE – fortunately we have the non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote logic and reasoning over political slants or religious agendas. They used to be called CSICOP, ‘The Center for Scientific Inquiry of Claims Of the Paranormal’, and are the publisher of ‘The Skeptical Inquiry’ magazine which has monthly periodicals debunking myths and hoaxes on a continual basis. It is very fortunate that there are people willing to take intelligent action to battle the misconceptions that so deviously get into the mainstream. The publishers of the textbook have defended their 10th edition stating that it is not intended to be a science textbook, as quoted in this article.
My personal wish is that everyone be more like this young Mathew LaClair, and boldly question anything that seems, ‘just plain wrong.’
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1 comment:
Well spotted! Hope shines eternal. The sad thing is that for every story like this, you find ten more of something like this:
This is an audio file from an advert placed by http://www.kieffeandsons.com/
a used auto lot
(http://www.mediafire.com/?g1f492lbruy)
just click download (no really! i promise nuthin bad'll happen!) and open with media player, it isn't long
As P.Z. over at Pharyngula points out "What if they wouldn't sell cars to uppity blacks, Jews, and women?"
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