Leonard Spearman's "disappointment" with the Faculty Senate's refusal to grant Jeb a degree, and the Alumni Association's mistaken belief that Jeb deserves the honor, should be contrasted with some facts. Let me tell you what is disappointing -- Jeb's track record on science education in our state. Sure, Jeb presided over Scripps, Burnham and Torrey Pines deciding to come to Florida. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out how tax breaks and revenue generation works, and to realize Jeb is no friend of science in general -- from stem cells to evolutionary biology. His quote on evolution (Miami Herald), "...I don't think it [evolutionary biology] should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.'' So I guess Scripps et al can recruit scientists from outside the state to come work at their new facilities. Also, let's not forget how Jeb announced his opposition to embryonic stem-cell research in June at the Biotechnology Industry Organization conference in Philadelphia. Further, look at the state of science education among Florida's school kids. After Florida received an "F" grade on its science standards from the Fordham Institute's evaluation, after the NAEP found that 49 percent of Florida 8th graders couldn't perform at a basic science proficiency level, and after only one-third of students scored at or above their grade level in science on the 2005 FCAT, how does Jeb fix things? By overseeing the appointment of Cheri Pierson Yecke as the K-12 Chancellor. This young-earth creationist, who will preside over this year's renewal of the science standards for our school kids (purely coincidence, I'm sure), was basically fired from her previous post in Minnesota for trying to inject creationism into the science standards there (barely averted -- through the hard work of the MN Citizens for Science), and is now the head of Florida's state K-12 education! The grassroots Florida Citizens for Science (http://www.flascience.org/) will be working hard to reverse the damage that Jeb thus inflicted on our state's science curriculum for years. Had Jeb made the same effort to improve our school children's chances in science education as he did in generating revenues for the state (by luring research business in with tax incentives), starting with removing incompetent boobs from the education system, instead of presiding over the appointment of a fanatically anti-science, far-religious-right partisan dolt to the highest post in the K-12 system, then perhaps he would've actually earned the esteem of a degree from Florida's flagship university, and deserve alumnus status...on second thought, I doubt he had a GPA of 4.0 and SAT of 1300, like the average UF freshman of 2005, so he doesn't deserve it anyway.________________
Technorati tags: Politics, Evolution, Creationism
