As Goes Texas's Biology Texbooks...

...so goes the nation's.

The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation.

The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a huge textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards, then market those books nationwide.

"This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science," said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution.

Texas school board chairman Don McLeroy also sees the curriculum as a landmark -- but a positive one.

Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago. If the new curriculum passes, he says he will insist that high-school biology textbooks point out specific aspects of the fossil record that, in his view, undermine the theory that all life on Earth is descended from primitive scraps of genetic material that first emerged in the primordial muck about 3.9 billion years ago.

He also wants the texts to make the case that individual cells are far too complex to have evolved by chance mutation and natural selection, an argument popular with those who believe an intelligent designer created the universe.

To religious conservatives, this is called "education reform." Imagine that this passes, and textbooks in your state are changed to raise doubt on that silly evolution theory because the textbook company can't afford two editions.

It's stupid by proxy. The article goes on to explain that supposedly educated Texas state officials, the people in charge of educating the children of a huge state like Texas, will almost certainly end up voting 8-7 one way or another.

The fact that this is even up for debate is staggering. Other countries are laughing at us over this, and we wonder why America's place in the world is that of "dangerously stupid titan with a child's mind".