Wanna Take The Kansas Science Exam?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Religion, Science(Note: I fixed the link…) Biting bit of satire from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Beginning in 2008, public school students in Kansas will be tested under that state’s new science standards, which open the door to criticism of evolution. Here are sample questions — some new, some adapted from current biology exams — to help them get ready.1. Some sources suggest the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old. Others estimate the earth is 6,012 years old. Without favoring one estimate over the other, calculate the likely age of God. Show your work.
2. The presidency of George W. Bush is an example of:
a. Heredity
b. Parasitism
c. Survival of the fittest
d. Predestination
e. Judicial activism
f. Divine intervention3. If male zebra finches are raised by foster parents of another species, the Bengalese finch, they will court female Bengalese finches instead of females of their own kind. Which statement best explains their behavior?
a. Birds are animals!
b. Imprinting
c. Gold-digging
d. What happens in Bengal stays in Bengal
e. Co-habituation
f. If you’d ever had the chance to court a Bengalese finch, you wouldn’t have to ask4. The fossil record contains:
a. Fossils
b. Gaps
c. Skips
d. A couple of hits, but mostly B-sides
e. An elaborately, not to say intelligently, designed hoax consisting of pre-aged rocks arranged in the shapes of bones, teeth, footprints and eggs5. Evolutionists claim that some moths have changed color to blend in with their background. This is an example of:
a. Assimilation
b. Tokenism
c. Natural selection
d. Hate speech
e. Social climbing
f. Mistaken identity6. After a population of laboratory animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations, 49 percent display a recessive trait (bb), the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from the homozygous dominants. Question: Um … if you were writing a really hard test for the Kansas School Board, what might you ask about this? (Extra credit if your question gives a hint about what that “homo” thing means.)
7. Men are to apes as:
a. Gingerbread men are to ginger snaps
b. Cats are to kittens
c. Rock is to rap
d. Schnauzers are to snails
e. “Planet of the Apes,” the original film starring the incomparable Charlton Heston, is to “Planet of the Apes,” the remake, starring nobody8. The bones of a human arm are homologous (another homo word) to structures in all of the following except:
a. A frog’s extra leg
b. A spiral galaxy’s arm
c. A camouflaged moth’s wing
d. A right whale’s flipper
e. A child’s left behind
I got 7 out of 10. How’d you do?
(HT: Pharyngula)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 and is filed under Religion, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:51 am
[...] Via Donklephant, the 2008 Kansas Science Exam: [...]
November 25th, 2005 at 1:04 am
well, umm yeah… sounds like fun. what ever happend to teaching everything and allowing the students to have thier own debate? if they are old enough to know what “heterozygotes” is they can form an intellegent discussion. i was taught both creationism (intelligant design) and evoluion in a private school of course, but that is not the issue.
answer to question 1.
useing the thoery of expansion and contraction (allowing for multiple big bangs, while keeping true to newtonian science) you can say that matter is niether created or distroyed simply strecthed and compressed. this means even modern dating techniques are limited to this side of the last “big bang.” so we can give all matter (includeing God) the inifinty stamp. and who is to say God isnt created of matter? only those who dont believe he exists, but for the purpose of the question you have to assume he exists, therefore has to be made of matter, this does not mean he is neccessarily tangable. giving a numerical assignment to the age of events on this side of the big bang is not that difficult we just cant do it yet.
SO,
X times by the number of explosion retraction events minus the time remaining in this event.
but can i point you to another prominate scientific thoery “back in the day.” the earth is flat and is supported by turtles on top of turtles. sounding familiar?
- take care
March 10th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
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March 11th, 2006 at 1:33 am
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January 15th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Thomas’ education in a private school is evident in that they apparently didn’t teach him to spell, nor did they teach him the ability to tell reality from imagination.
What ever happened to teaching everything and let the students debate? Seriously? So you really want public schools to teach other topics, like say, math; where we can teach everything: 2+2=17, 2+2=83, 2+2=9, 2+2=4 . . .discuss! Sort out the answers for yourselves!
Shall we teach calculus this way? Teach several different things, some right, some wrong, and let students sort it out? How about history: There was no Jewish holocaust during WW2. There was a Jewish holocaust during WW2. Discuss, and decide for yourselves!
Just stay the hell away from my kid’s school, okay?