An editorial from the Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — School curriculum disputes have a long and fraught history in West Virginia, which makes the current uproar over changes by the Board of Education to K-12 standards on climate change somewhat understandable.
There may indeed be legitimate questions about the timing and process that led to changes, prompted by Board member Wade Linger, to the state’s science curriculum standards. But to hear the hyperventilating from some quarters, you’d think the very idea of science education was under assault.
The reality is that only three sentences of the curriculum were altered. The most controversial of those was turning “the rise of global temperatures” into “the rise and fall of global temperatures.”
So this hardly reaches the level of evolution versus creationism, even if some would like to paint it that way.
Both sides of this dispute accuse the other of trying to politicize the curriculum. They’re both right. Global warming proponents would like the science curriculum to turn kids into environmentalists. Skeptics would like students to remain … well, skeptical…