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Sorry to distract you from the exciting leadership succession at the BA.... (When do members get to vote?) Today's Guardian devotes a full page to one of the government's 'beacon' schools. Emmanuel College is city technology college sponsored by car magnate, Peter Vardy. Sir Peter is an evalengelical christian and the school (which receives most of its funds from the state) is taking a fundamentalist approach to science. The result is that the head of science see himself as "engaged in the struggle to show the superiority of a creationist world-view against the prevailing orthodoxy of atheistic materialism and evolutionism in science." In a recent lecture, he advised his teachers to: "Note every occasion when an evolutionary/old-earth paradigm (millions or billions of years) is explicitly mentioned or implied by a textbook, examination question or visitor and courteously point out the fallibility of the statement. Wherever possible, we must give the alternative (always better) biblical same explanation." This is something we are more familiar with in Kansas than in England. Is it happening elsewhere in the UK? Should we care? After all, the origins of the world matter little in our day-to-day lives. The articles are at: http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,664608,00.html http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,664606,00.html http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,664595,00.html === Andy Boddington Evaluation Director, Evaluation Associates Elms Court, Botley, Oxford OX2 9LP [log in to unmask] www.evaluation.co.uk +44 1865 727070 ********************************************************************** 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail 2. To resume email from the list, send the following message: set psci-com mail 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com 4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html 5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.org.uk **********************************************************************