Day: September 17, 2011

Originally reported by Discovery News in their blog on 16 September 2011. That’s right, this one is actually current. But I saw this and felt that it deserved to be covered quickly and not wait around while I worked through a backlog of less pressing issues.

If ever you wonder why US children score so much lower on science related tests, you just have to look at the situation surrounding Mr. Loxton’s book. Normally books about evolution can find publishers pretty easily. A good example is Biologist Richard Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” which was published by Free Press of New York, NY. But American publishers, the same publishers who also published Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” decided that a book on evolution targeted at ages 8-13 was “too hot a topic”. It wasn’t until Canada’s Kids Can Press stepped up and hit the go button on the publication that the book received a Lane Anderson Award nomination and was a finalist for the Silver Birch Award.

How could American publishers decline to publish such a well received work? Since when are book publishers supposed to decide what is and isn’t a controversy? Arn’t they supposed to be selecting books worthy of publication rather than books worthy of publication without causing the lunatic religious left to make a big stink?

Heaven forbid science and pre-teens go together and we start teaching your children to think and examine what they read. Heaven forbid we start to teach them to examine theories and controversies for themselves and expand their brains instead of only teaching them what’s “safe” and “not too hot”.