News Releases 2009
Dr. Amiel Jarsfter To Testify Before The State Board Of Education
Tue, Jan 20 2009
Dr. Amiel Jarstfer, dean for LeTourneau
University’s School of Arts and Sciences, will testify before the Texas State Board of Education
(SBOE) in Austin, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 21, to encourage that critical thinking continues to be
encouraged in Texas high schools.
The debate before the SBOE is over a proposal
to remove “weaknesses language” from the science process standard in the Texas Essential Knowledge
and Skills standards. Jarstfer will argue against changing the current TEKS standard that
encourages students to skeptically evaluate strengths and weaknesses of all ideas, including the
theory of evolution and concepts of global warming.
“One key element of college readiness
is critical thinking,” Jarstfer said. “We measure critical thinking as an outcome of secondary
and higher education. I teach my students to evaluate scientific ideas and to become focused
skeptics, to question and justify claims made by other scientists.”
Jarstfer, who holds two patents, has been
teaching for 24 years with dozens of his students in graduate and professional schools across the
nation. He coordinates mathematics and English placement and general education analysis at
LeTourneau University.
“Teaching students to evaluate strengths and
weaknesses of all ideas serves us all by better preparing critically thinking scientists and
citizens which improves our competition in the global marketplace,” Jarstfer said. “
The great advances in science and technology have been made by
non-conforming thinkers. They all had ideas that strongly challenged prevailing thinking of
their time and place.”
