WASHINGTON — The Department of Education announced Tuesday that all public school science classes will now include a mandatory 15-minute daily “apology segment” where students acknowledge the harm caused by the scientific method to indigenous ways of knowing.
The new curriculum, set to roll out this fall, requires students in grades 6-12 to begin each science class by reading from a prepared script admitting that Western science has “marginalized equally valid knowledge systems” and that the demand for empirical evidence represents “a colonialist framework of oppression.”
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona defended the policy at a press conference, explaining that traditional science education has created “dangerous hierarchies of truth” by privileging observable, repeatable phenomena over ancestral wisdom and lived experience.
“For too long, we’ve told students that something is only ‘true’ if you can measure it, test it, or prove it,” Cardona said. “That’s incredibly harmful to students whose cultures have other ways of understanding reality.”
Under the new guidelines, teachers must present gravity, photosynthesis, and cellular biology as “one perspective among many” and avoid language suggesting these concepts are more valid than alternative frameworks. The curriculum specifically prohibits teachers from saying things like “actually” or “but the evidence shows” when students offer competing explanations for natural phenomena.
Several school districts have already begun pilot programs. At Madison West High School in Wisconsin, chemistry teacher David Reynolds reported that his lab time has been reduced to accommodate the apology segment and mandatory class discussions about “whose truth” the periodic table represents.
“Yesterday we spent 20 minutes discussing whether oxygen is a social construct,” Reynolds said. “I’ve been teaching for 19 years. I don’t know anymore.”
The Department has made $50 million in grants available for schools that develop “culturally responsive” alternatives to standardized science tests, which officials say unfairly privilege students who believe in objective reality.
— SATIRE —
Key Points
- New federal curriculum requires 15-minute daily apology for Western science’s “colonialism of truth”
- Teachers prohibited from suggesting observable phenomena are more valid than cultural alternatives
- Chemistry teacher reports spending 20 minutes discussing whether oxygen is a social construct
Aporia News – July 14, 2026
