Texas is starting its once-a-decade adoption of new science textbooks, reigniting a battle over whether to include information on creationism, evolution and global warming.
According to Ryan Valentine, the Deputy Director of the Texas Freedom Network, the panel tasked with choosing the high school textbooks includes members who don’t believe in climate change and evolution.
Now they are seizing the moment to get discredited scientific ideas into public schools.
“There’s a number of members on that board who have, for a long time, made it their number one goal to get information in those textbooks that question the validity and the science of climate change and evolution,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing.
The key problem, he said, was having politicians in charge of major educational decisions, despite having no qualifications.
“We hand over decisions about what goes in textbooks to partisan elected politicians, not to scientists or folks who understand the science,” Valentine said. “When you have a system that allows politicians those decisions, you’re just going to end up re-litigating these things, over and over again.”
Watch the full interview with Jansing & Co. above.
Emily DeCiccio