One year ago this month, about 75 Alaskans gathered at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage to puzzle over a draft of proposed science standards that would ultimately affect the life of every public school student in the state.
Âs most of the provisions were clear-cut, setting forth what educators call "content standards" for the major fields of scientific inquiry, from physical science (physics and chemistry) to life science (biology) to earth science (geology) to space science (astronomy).
Some needed to be tweaked a little, but none was especially controversial -- with the possible exception of the proposed content standards for biology.
Notably absent from one of its key provisions was the word "evolution," as in the theory of evolution by natural selection first championed by Charles Darwin 145 years ago. In its place was the phrase "changes in life forms over time."
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