- only four per cent of Queensland Year 4 students reach an "advanced" standard in science compared with 36 per cent in Singapore;

- the interest in science in Australian 15-year-old students was "among the lowest in the world";

- Year 4 teachers reported spending around five per cent of their time teaching science, WITH 78 PER CENT SAYING THEY DID NOT USE A SCIENCE TEXTBOOK.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/damning-education-review-and-the-governments-response-20090701-d541.html

The death of intelligent design is rather amusing, because science is now almost dead, at least in the QLD education system.

Who knows what teachers are teaching the students, when so many do not even use a textbook.

QLD education: - A hopeless, archaic, pathetic, feminist mess.

runner

Can you provide some rational discussion about evolution, or data to support your bald statements such as astronomers support creation?

Vanna... a mess, yes, but a 'feminist' mess?

I have yet to meet many feminists within EQ...especially so many fundie women working there.

There aren't too many feminist inclined men either, more 'old style' blue collar types, decent enough though most seem to be.

EQ is a backwater, a lost snapshot of a frozen-in-aspic era, a peek into a Donald Horne world, still thriving after the inventor of it all has died.

Quaint, if it wasn't dangerous.... and pathetic.

My remaining child, trapped within, learns mostly from reading on the web around the topic that was faintly whiffed at in class, and going on line to exchange views, plus from his after-school workplace where he learns how adults treat each other decently, and how, if he spoke to a customer as he and others get spoken to at school, he'd be out on his ear.

But, in defence of at least some maths and science teachers, they abandon text books because all too frequently the books are inaccurate, wrong, and misleading....but the QSA care not, nor do EQ, and the subject associations seem to tolerate it all without saying boo!

English is a totally lost cause, unless your child gets the very rare good teacher, but even then the material is woeful...and it seems that no one within our community is prepared to regard SOSE as a serious subject, so it gets treated accordingly, by staff and students, not to mention parents, who seem to have no idea what it is.

The root cause, apart from poorly funded schools, is the almost total failure in management to 'manage', and the abandonment of schools by the better off middle class, who would not tolerate the mess, and be far more inclined to speak up about it than most of the parents who attend the meek gatherings of P&C meetings.

The Ministers solution to students who recognise the scam, is to make it easier to expel them, rather than reflect on just what it is that EQ contributes, daily, to the rundown of our school system.

Blue cross,
I would say "feminist mess" because maths and science are considered to be "too male".

It is also routine for a teacher to say that “boys do all right later on”, which means that the teacher has no interest in the education of boys when they are at school, and the education system is a highly feminist system.

As well as primary school students, I also know of grade 10 science students who do not have a text book, and instead are given hand written notes by their teacher. The teacher has not even bothered to type out their notes with a word processor.

I also know of some students in a class who could not understand the teacher because the teacher had a thick Scottish accent, and they couldn't understand the teacher's hand writing either, so the students had no idea of what they had to learn.

Most of science is based on a hypothesis that can become a theory if many tests and experiments prove the hypothesis valid.

I don't think hand written notes instead of a text book have ever been proven to be an effective method of teaching.

Good article. Nice to see most folks here support and appear to understand science.
We will never convince the runners of the world as their world-view is based on child indoctrinated faith. This approach is rather fragile as their personal God of the Gaps dies a slow death as more knowledge and understanding is gained. Those that would hold onto the simple "lies to children" must be constantly confused and grieving for their god so I guess this is why runner constantly accuses all scientists, secularists, etc of being corrupt or deliberately misleading him.
Evolution is more solid than Gravity as a theory, and so many branches of knowledge rest on it's back that it is patently insane to suggest it does not exist. It is similar to trying to tell a sailor that waves don't exist! Creationism, however does not even stack up as theology.

Ozyandy,
"Evolution is more solid than Gravity as a theory"

Says who?

Do a search on "punctuated equilibruim" as a theory that has much more basis than Darwin's origional theory of evolution.

The idea that everyone should embrace science is becoming rather thin when science itself is hardly being taught anymore in education systems.