Plus, is it truly fair for there to be a requirement to teach one THEORY, but not acceptable to inform about another?

A good question, to which I might, in the classroom, answer this:

“Many people who are religious believe that the entire universe was created by god or some ‘intelligent designer’ who developed everything on a time span ranging anywhere from six days to several billion years. SEE YOUR CHURCH FOR DETAILS.”

For discussion: would even saying THIS be going too far for a teacher in a science classroom?

Plus, is it truly fair for there to be a requirement to teach one THEORY, but not acceptable to inform about another?

It is fair to teach theories of science in a science class, and theories of religion in a religion class. The difference is that the science is backed up by physical evidence that can be verified by many people. Arguments over the interpretation of the evidence leads to gathering of more physical evidence, until one theory has so much evidence supporting it that it becomes unreasonable to dismiss it. In the case of evolution there are literally mountains of evidence.

Religious based explanations about Earth and life offer no physical evidence of their own, use circular logic and absurd interpretations of someone else’s evidence and concentrate mainly on casting doubt on the competing theories rather than properly supporting their own. If you think it would be fair to teach such theories in a science class, then to be truly fair you would have to include the many hundreds of religious theories from many hundreds of religions, those both still extant and now dead. This would take about four years of full time study. You’d come out knowing a whole lot about mythology but you might not remember much about science.

If you think that the school board acted hasitly or unfairly, then do an investigation of their investigation. Be scientific about it. From what I have read they had a 90 minute meeting with Mr. Helphinstine followed by a public hearing which he chose not to attend. There is physical evidence, including the test which you acknowledge you did not take, supplemental study materials with several Biblical references and the PowerPoint presentation trying to infer a causal link between evolutionary theory and Nazi Germany. Look at this evidence and look for other evidence, such as the notes taken during the private meeting. Those may be restricted by rules of confidentiality, but ask about them anyway. Remember that a person’s mouth going up and down is not evidence. It has to exist in physical space, like documents, digital materials, fossils, rocks…

Whether or not you liked Mr. Helphinstine is beside the point and you must set that aside if you want to practice the critical thinking that he claims he was promoting. He either honored his agreement with the school board to teach the criteria for the science class or he violated it. The evidence will tell you.

Here’s the powerpoint, if you haven’t seen it already.

The information presented is clearly propaganda and in no way relevant to a science class. Helphinstine clearly had an agenda and that agenda was NOT freshman biology.

Ya got that right!

The argument that this material was to encourage critical thinking is pure crap, especially as it relates to science. What does a picture of dozens of bodies, piled in an open pit “grave”, at a Nazi concentration camp have to do with critical thinking in science. Taken in isolation or as presented in the deck this just isn’t about science. There isn’t a single attempt to discuss science or scientific study anywhere in the deck.

The material would be a stretch as appropriate in a social studies, history, or political science class. But as it was presented in a freshman biology class it was WAY off base. That in itself justifies the termination of a part-time probationary teacher.

It’s extremely common. Note too the tactics: first he brings up a false claim, and to buttress it he offers a book put out by a radical religious institute which literally has never put out a true bit of info about evolution ever. He makes — or at least very strongly implies — the nonsensical claim that the idea of a superior race (one of the oldest ideas in human history) staretd in the mid-1800s with Charles Darwin> Then, when this is pointed out, he disses the source of a valid critique with the claim that ” they are hardly paragons of objectivity over there” just before decrying their claimed use of ad hominems instead of valid argument (ie. claiming they do what actually he, Rob, is doing). Then he does a backtrack with a backup, so to speak, as he attempts to place his discredited claim yet again (”Darwin’s theory could have influenced Hitler and his followers…”) again without proof, and also implying that someone’s later use of that person’s ideas is something that should properly be laid at the feet of the person who came up with the idea, not the people using it. This is made worse because in fact this would be a tenous line by what even Rob admits were people with “twisted minds”, but he leaves alone the obvious question of what twisted those minds, the minds of most of a nation, in a direct fashion for many centuries. He does this because the answer to that, rather more apropos and certainly much more direct cause, is the church.

Maybe I’m being naive. Have you encountered him or the argument you think he’s implying before?

I don’t know Rob at all. But this very topic — relating Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust to Darwin — has a very long history of being deliberate flame bait on usenet, particularly on alt.atheism and talk.origins. For “long history” I’m just using my own experience since the late 80s.

Having seen the same comments maybe a few thousand times too often on other forums may make me overly sensitive to these types of “insights.”

Do you really think he’s saying if it wasn’t for Darwin we wouldn’t have had the Nazis?

I think that is not an unreasonable inference, based on his continued argument/assertion, which fits the criteria for Godwin’s Law fairly well. But again, I may be biased by having too many prior experiences with such on-line arguments.