Guest Post by Morbo
Here’s how much officials at the Texas Education Agency (TEA) hate evolution: They hate it so much that TEA staff members can now be forced out of their jobs merely for telling people about a speech by a noted opponent of “intelligent design” (ID).
Chris Comer, for example, the state director of science curriculum, has been fired. Her offense is that she forwarded an e-mail to several individuals and community groups announcing a speech being given by Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, a book critical of the ID movement.
Comer sent the announcement as an FYI, a courtesy in case anyone wanted to hear Forrest speak. That was enough to set off the kook right. As the Austin American-Statesman reports:
The call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, who previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education. She also served as deputy legislative director for Gov. George W. Bush. She joined the Texas Education Agency as the senior adviser on statewide initiatives in January.
Reynolds, who was out sick the day Comer forwarded the e-mail, received a copy from an unnamed source and forwarded it to Comer’s bosses less than two hours after Comer sent it.
“This is highly inappropriate,” Reynolds said in an e-mail to Comer’s supervisors. “I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor’s Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.”
No, we certainly wouldn’t want anyone in Texas getting the idea that the state agency responsible for overseeing the public school curriculum would do anything as reckless as support good science education.
Comer was placed on leave, then pressured to resign and did so. In an effort to cover the agency’s butt, TEA officials drummed up some other reasons that Comer had to be let go. But they all sound picayune — because they are picayune. Let’s be clear about what happened: It is 2007, and the woman was fired because she dared suggest that some people might want to hear a speech backing the teaching of evolution.
I have some advice for Comer: Get out of Texas. Get out now. There are 49 other states, and my guess is at least some of them are interested in hiring someone who truly understands the need for real science in the classroom. Texas seems determined to wallow in ignorance. Let it.
Sooner or later, Texas will pay a price for valuing ignorance and blind loyalty to dogma over real science. Do you really want to be living there when that day of reckoning comes?
