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Santorum Amendment
The Santorum Amendment was a failed proposed amendment to the 2001 education funding bill (which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act) that promoted the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in US public schools. (It was proposed by Republican Rick Santorum, then a United States Senator for Pennsylvania.) In response, a coalition of 96 scientific and educational organizations wrote a letter to the conference committee, urging that the amendment be stricken from the final bill and arguing that evolution is regarded as fact in the scientific fields and that the amendment creates the misperception of evolution not being fully accepted in the scientific community and thus weakening science education. The words of the amendment survive in modified form in the bill's conference committee report but do not carry the weight of law. As one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns it became a cornerstone in the intellig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a 2002 United States Act of Congress promoted by the presidential administration of George W. Bush. It reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It mandated standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in education. To receive school funding from the federal government, U.S. states had to create and give assessments to all students at select grade levels. The act did not set national achievement standards. Instead, each state developed its own standards. NCLB expanded the federal role in public education through further emphasis on annual testing, annual academic progress, report cards, and teacher qualifications, as well as significant changes in funding. While the bill faced challenges from both Democratic Party and Republican Party ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teach The Controversy
The "Teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (a variant of traditional creationism) as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses..Does Seattle group "teach controversy" or contribute to it? Linda Shaw. The Seattle Times, March 31, 2005. Scientific organizations (including the ) point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bemidji State University
Bemidji State University (BSU) is a public university in Bemidji, Minnesota, United States. Founded as a preparatory institution for teachers in 1919, it provides higher education to north-central Minnesota. It is part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. History BSU was founded in 1919 and opened under the name "Bemidji State Normal School". The first president, Manfred Deputy, was appointed to run the new institution, and the first class consisted of 38 students. The name was changed to "Bemidji State Teachers College" in 1921, then shortened to "Bemidji State College" in 1957. In 1975, it took its current name, Bemidji State University. During the 1998–99 academic year, the Board of Trustees recommended changing the name of the university to Minnesota State University–Bemidji, to reflect a change toward unification within the newly formed Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System after other larger institutions had done so. Prominent vocal and wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic Freedom
Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism. Academic freedom is often premised on the conviction that freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without the fear of being repressed, losing their job or being imprisoned. While the core of academic freedom covers scholars acting in an academic capacity (as teachers or researchers expressing strictly scholarly viewpoints), an expansive interpretation extends these occupational safeguards to scholars' speech on matters outside their professional expertise. Academic tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic Bill Of Rights
The Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) is a document created and distributed by a branch of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a think tank founded by the conservative writer David Horowitz. A wide range of critics, representing a diverse range of academic viewpoints, have criticized it for infringing on academic freedom and described it as promoting an ideological agenda. Criticism A number of organizations representing a variety of political viewpoints have criticized the ABOR's aims and content. One of the first organizations to come out in opposition to the bill was the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). While agreeing with the underlying principles of freedom, equality, and pluralism in the university community, the association said that the bill "infringes academic freedom in the very act of purporting to protect it." Some individual academics regard the ABOR, along with the Santorum Amendment, as a threat to academic freedom. Others have suggested that th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wedge Strategy
The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social agenda authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was presented in a Discovery Institute internal memorandum known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log. Intelligent design is the pseudoscientific religious belief that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as evolution by natural selection. Implicit in the intelligent design doctrine is a redefining of science and how it is conducted (see theistic science). Wedge strategy proponents are opposed to materialism,"If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Community
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many "working group, sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are also significant. Objectivity (philosophy), Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results. History of scientific communities The eighteenth century had some societies made up of men who studied nature, also known as natural philosophy, natural philosophers and natural history, natural historians, which included even amateurs. As such these societies were more like local clubs and groups with diverse interests than actual scientific communities, which usually had interests on specialized disciplines. Though there were a few olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution As Theory And Fact
Many scientists and philosophers of science have described evolution as fact and theory, a phrase which was used as the title of an article by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 1981. He describes fact in science as meaning data, not known with absolute certainty but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent". A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of such facts. The facts of evolution come from observational evidence of current processes, from imperfections in organisms recording historical common descent, and from transitions in the fossil record. Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for these facts.Gould, Stephen Jay (1981) "Evolution as Fact and Theory" ''Discover'' 2 (May): 34-37; Reprinted in '' Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes'' New York: W. W. Norton, 1994pp. 253–262./ref> Each of the words ''evolution'', ''fact'' and ''theory'' has several meanings in different contexts. In biology, evolution ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judd Gregg
Judd Alan Gregg (born February 14, 1947) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 76th governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993 and a United States senator from New Hampshire from 1993 to 2011 where he was Chairman of the Health Committee and the Budget Committee. A member of the Republican Party, he was a businessman and attorney in Nashua before entering politics. Gregg currently serves as the Chair of the Public Advisory Board at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. Gregg was nominated for Secretary of Commerce in the Cabinet by President Barack Obama, but withdrew his name on February 12, 2009. He chose not to run for reelection to the Senate in 2010; former State Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, also a Republican, was elected to succeed him. On May 27, 2011, Goldman Sachs announced that Gregg had been named an international advisor to the firm. In May 2013, Gregg was named the CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Boehner
John Andrew Boehner ( ; born , 1949) is an American politician who served as the 53rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served 13 terms as the U.S. representative for from 1991 to 2015. The district included several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton. Boehner previously served as the House minority leader from 2007 until 2011, and House majority leader from 2006 until 2007. In January 2011, he was first elected Speaker and then re-elected twice. Boehner resigned from the House of Representatives in October 2015 due to opposition from within the Republican conference. In September 2016, Squire Patton Boggs, the third-largest lobbying firm in the U.S., announced that Boehner would join their firm. It was also announced that he would become a board member of Reynolds American. Early life and education Boehner was born in Reading, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne (; 1926–1998) an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kansas
Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, in turn named after the Kaw people, Kansa people. Its List of capitals in the United States, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its List of cities in Kansas, most populous city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita; however, the largest urban area is the bi-state Kansas City metropolitan area split between Kansas and Missouri. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Plains Indians, Indigenous tribes. The first settlement of non-indigenous people in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the Slavery in the United States, slavery debate. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. governm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Brownback
Samuel Dale Brownback (born September 12, 1956) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as a United States Senate, United States senator from Kansas from 1996 to 2011 and as the List of governors of Kansas, 46th governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, Brownback also served as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom during the First presidency of Donald Trump, administration of President Donald Trump and was a candidate for the 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries, Republican nomination for President in 2008 United States presidential election, 2008. Born in Garnett, Kansas, Brownback grew up on a family farm in Parker, Kansas. He graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in agricultural economics in 1978 and received a Juris Doctor, J.D. from the University of Kansas in 1982. He worked as an attorney in Manhattan, Kansas, before being appointe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
