Testimony before the Texas State Board of Education on March 25th, 2009 Clare Wuellner, 1502 Palo Duro Rd., Austin TX 78757.

I am the mother of two who is so dismayed at the failed process of forming a curriculum here in Texas that I have decided to put my children in private school.

Please listen to the scientists and experts who comprise the MAJORITY opinion: anything less than a 21st-century science education is not legitimate science.

Please accept no amendments to the original expert-recommended curriculum.

Please vote to accept only the original expert-recommended curriculum.

Please remember:

• Science has brought us good things.
• Those good things done in science were done by scientists using the scientific method.
• The scientific method is the best means we have for answering questions. Using it, society has jumped further forward in its understanding of everything in the past 200 years than society moved forward in all previous time.
• Evolution and other Theories hail from the scientific method.
• Scientists are not the plotting, conniving, god-hating lot that opponents to good science have made them out to be.
• Scientists want to find out the truth, just like the rest of us.

Evolution went through the ringer in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it only came out stronger. Texas is arguing over whether to teach established science in public schools

Regardless of whether Mr. McLeroy says this is about religion, people are saying it is. That means that it if the curriculum is passed with the Board’s amendments, Texas will likely head down a very bumpy legal road.

Please remember that the Constitution calls for separation of church and state.

• There are enough people who are saying that the language of the amendments is religious that someone somewhere sometime will bring a lawsuit.
• The lawsuit will cost the taxpayers a lot of money.
• Do we really want that?

Thank you for your time.