Science ed meeting turns to chaos

Depopulationism, abortion, political agendas, evolution, climate change and short notice of planned meetings were just a few of the things derailing a public input session in a packed Washington County School District board room Thursday.

The meeting – organized by the Utah State Office of Education – was meant as a forum to discuss a Science and Engineering Education Standards proposal and for submitting input for changes.

Instead, the gathering was at times boisterous as people talked over each other and tried to be heard as they aired complaints – some related, some not.

Richard Scott, science education specialist for the Utah State Office of Education, tried desperately to get the meeting back on track, defending his position as best he could from area parents angered by what they claimed were nothing more than Common Core standards being forced on them.

The standards, also known as SEEd, for grades six through eight, are meant to align students with up-to-date science education integrated with engineering principles, current technology and "crosscutting concepts," Scott said in an interview earlier Thursday.

The biggest changes are in the form of changing the education from memorization and recitation to "performance-based" teaching and learning, Scott said.

"The recall, memorize and spit back out again," mode of learning should take a back seat to more hands-on, thought provoking learning that challenges students to "be scientists," he said.

The proposal also calls for integration of engineering education in science, he said.

"No, it's not bridge-building and I know that's what pops into people's heads," he said.

The concept of engineering is thinking through a problem and then finding the solution or solutions, he said.

Scott said Utah teachers at many levels, including middle and high school as well as higher education educators, came together to try to find a framework for the standards, which are scheduled to be updated by the Utah Legislature.

They used, at the starting point, research that found children learned best with hands-on education and with that in mind researched other standards to try to find one — or a number of standards — they could use to begin the updating process, Scott said.

"They used Next Generation (Common Core) standards and NRC Framework to come up with the guidelines," he noted. "There were many differences, so they thought it best the public (do the majority of the changes)."

He said the basic proposal takes into account the fact that teachers won't have a lot of resources if the standards are written from scratch.

Some of the catch words in the proposal are define, analyze, evaluate, apply, develop and construct. These are indicative of the practices of engineering, or problem-solving, he said.

However, it took an hour of argument before the crowd finally submitted any solid input after being told more than once to calm down and that Scott was there to take comment.

"Take it all out and start over," said one parent.

Another parent pointed out one portion of the eighth-grade proposal in which it said, "Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing human impact on the environment."

The way it was written, he said, would leave it wide open for teachers to teach population reduction and forms of birth control parents aren't OK with.

One woman said her children are learning to hate the human race because of the environmental agenda being pushed through schools and that the standards are emphasizing it even more.

Many voiced their disappointment that the standards seemed to have been copied-and-pasted from the Common Core and accused Scott and the writers of using it to push their own political agendas and to indoctrinate their children.

Other parents agreed and said they would take more action at home to undo the damage of such teaching already in play in the district if it weren't for the fact their children no longer bring home text books and parents are not given a heads up on what is being taught.

Scott had to explain to one parent that the children in those grades would not be shown animals copulating to teach sex education — that sexual and asexual reproduction was merely a differentiation between how some organisms reproduce.

Teachers were also on hand to interject their thoughts, saying they would rather have a starting point with resources than to have to start from zero, again, on lesson plans and resources.

The parents, however, were unwavering in their ideas and wanted nothing to do with the standards as is.

In an interview after the meeting, Scott said everyone had valid concerns, but he wasn't qualified to address the type of concerns they were presenting.

However, he did learn a lot from it, he said, and got some good input, especially from the teachers.

Follow Therresa Worthington on Twitter, @TherresaW , and on Facebook at Facebook.com/Therresa.Worthington .

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