Over the past four years, two states have passed laws that protect teachers if they present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in applicable curricula or in a course of learning. Protecting teachers? Have these legislators heard of VAM? No protection of teachers here.
What is really going on?
Behind these two laws is the Discovery Institute, a non-science propagada organization whose chief purpose is to attack Darwinian evolution, and wedge intelligent design into the science curriculum. Foiled by the courts to pull a fast one and claim that I.D. is science, the Discovery Institute now hides behind its new campaign of preserving the ”academic freedom” of teachers.
The academic freedom bills that have been passed in Louisiana (2008), and Tennessee (2012) disguise their intent of teaching creationism and intelligent design using clever and slick language that they are coming to the rescue of science teachers by passing a law that protects teachers’ academic freedom to present lessons questioning and critiquing scientific theories being studied including but not limited to evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning. Kind of a poor “Trojan horse” scenario, don’t you think? Where is the theory of gravity, plate tectonics, and atomic theory on their to do list?
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science refers to the Louisiana Science Education Act as a “stealth creationism bill, that actually evolved from another bill, “The LA Academic Freedom Act,” which descended from the original bill that was created by the Discovery Institute. The Tennessee Act also descended from the Discovery Institute’s bill.
Discovery Institute Dispersal Tree: Academic Freedom for Science Teachers!
The Discovery Institute disperses its ideas by making them public on its website . If you are a state legislator, all you have to do is go here to copy or download the Discovery Institute’s Free Speech Campaign bill. Now you are all set to fill in the blanks with the name of you state, and bingo, you can present your academic freedom bill in your state house. This has actually been done in five states, with Louisiana and Tennessee getting the job done. One more thing. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana signed their bill, the Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee wimped out!
It’s An Assault on Science Teaching, Not a Rescue Mission
This latest ploy of suggesting that some scientific theories need to be analyzed and discussed critically is simply another way for creationists, and intelligent design advocates to enter the realm of science education. The National Center for Science Education keeps a watchful eye on these kinds of events, and has made recent posts regarding the goings on in Florida and Missouri. What is most important in these cases to examine who is proposing these bills.
In the Missouri case, the legislators in question were sponsors of filed anti-evolution bill in the past. They keep proposing the bills, and if they don’t get enacted, they come back a year later, and try again. So far, the bills have not been passed in these states. In the Louisiana case, the Governor did sign anti-evolution legislation, and it is known as the Louisiana Science Education Act. However, the National Center for Science Education dubbed this Act as a creationist bill, stated that the bill will enable educators to pull religious beliefs into topics such as evolution. The same is true for the Tennessee bill passed by the legislature, but not signed by the Governor.
These ploys are actually assaults on the integrity of science and science education.
Fool Me Twice
In a book written by Shawn Otto entitled Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, the author believes that America has a “science problem” and the problem is how science is discussed (or not discussed) in the media, in the Congress, and in state legislatures. His book is a good primer on science in American society, and I think provides people with a view that ought to be considered.
Otto believes that science is often assaulted when debates on policy making that require scientific knowledge are held. Using a technique that the media loves (the split screen), all issues that are discussed have two sides—the left or the right; the Republican or the Democratic. Although making public policy is not the same as how a theory is developed in science, it’s probably important that scientific knowledge be used in a way that represents science in making important decisions.
Raising Doubts
Years ago, the tobacco industry used the technique of arguing two sides of the smoking issue, but selectively used its own research, or denied what science research had shown about smoking, or simply raised doubt about the “science” of tobacco research in order to “win” the argument, not seek the truth about smoking.
We see similar tactics being used when climate change and global warming are debated. Of course, the issue that has impacted science education is the teaching of evolution. The same tactic that “big tobacco” used continues to be used. Over the years, there have been attempts to show that there is another side of the theory of evolution—creation science or intelligent design. We’ve used the courts to settle scientific and health issues, such as abortion, teaching evolution, and so forth.
In science education, teachers have had to deal with topics in the science curriculum that are viewed as controversial including the teaching of evolution, discussions of birth control, theories of the origins of the universe, such as the Big Bang, global warming and climate change. School boards, parents, and politicians have gotten involved in trying to pass rules restricting what and how “controversial” topics are taught, and have lately used the pedagogy of “critical thinking” to make sure that “all” sides of each controversial topic are discussed. Although the teaching of evolution, or I should say creation science/intelligent design was settled by Federal Judge John Jones in the famous Dover, Pennsylvania case when the judge ruled that intelligent design was not science, and had no place in a science class.
In my own view, cases like the Dover intelligent design issue, the Kansas science standards controversy, attempts by legislators and state school boards in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee to legislate the content of the science curriculum to satisfy their own (often religious beliefs) opinions is an assault on the integrity of the teaching profession to make professional decisions on curriculum and pedagogy.
The Discovery Institute is the organization that is behind this assault. The assault on science and science education has been going on for a long time starting with the Scopes Trial, and then continuing with assault on Rachel Carson’s work on the environment, and the devious and unlawful actions of the tobacco industry’s denial that smoking causes pulmonary damage, heart attack, and cancer.
In the present iteration, emotions are trumping knowledge and understanding in one state house after another.
And one more thing
In a discussion of the so called “academic freedom bills,” we find that the origins of the bills that have cropped up in one state after another can be traced back to Rick Santorum and the Discovery Institute. Here, from this article, we have this discussion:
In 2001 former Republican United States Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania proposed an amendment, to the education funding bill which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act, which promoted the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in U.S. public schools.[1] The language of this amendment was crafted in part by the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, with Phillip E. Johnson, founding advisor of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and “father” of the intelligent design movement, assisting Santorum in phrasing the amendment.[2][3] It portrayed evolution as generating “much continuing controversy” and being not widely accepted, using the Discovery Institute’s Teach The Controversy method.
On June 14, 2001, the amendment was passed as part of the education funding bill by the Senate on a vote of 91-8. This was hailed as a major victory by proponents of intelligent design and other creationists; for instance an email newsletter by the Discovery Institute contained the sentence “Undoubtedly this will change the face of the debate over the theories of evolution and intelligent design in America…It also seems that the Darwinian monopoly on public science education, and perhaps the biological sciences in general, is ending.”[4]
Scientists and educators feared that by singling out biological evolution as very controversial, the amendment could create the impression that a substantial scientific controversy about evolution exists, leading to a lessening of academic rigor in science curricula. A coalition of 96 scientific and educational organizations signed a letter to this effect to the conference committee, urging that the amendment be stricken from the final bill, which it was, but intelligent design supporters on the conference committee preserved it in the bill’s legislative history.[5]
While the amendment did not become law, a version of it appears in the Conference Report as an explanatory text about the legislative history and purposes of the bill. Such a report may be taken into account if courts later need to consider the intent of the bill, but it has no legal force per se.
Do you think that there is an assault on science education, or do the bills passed in Tennessee and Louisiana protect the academic freedom of science teachers?
Notes:
- “Senate” (pdf). Congressional Record: Proceedings of the 107th Congress, first Session (primary source). 82. 147. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress. June 13, 2001.Archived from the original on 27 April 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-07.
- “The Biology Wars: The Religion, Science and Education Controversy”. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. December 5, 2005. Archived from the original on 10 June 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-08. “That language, which was penned by Phil Johnson for Rick Santorum, passed the Senate as an amendment to the No Child Left Behind education bill, and eventually became part of the conference report for that legislation.”
- Santorum, Rick (January 31, 2002). “Santorum Language on Evolution”. Center for Science and Culture. Archived from the original on 27 April 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-08.
- “Conference Report to accompany H.R. 1, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001″ (pdf).primary source. U.S. Government Printing Office. December 12, 2001. Archived from the original on 27 April 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-08.
- Foerstel, Herbert (2009). Toxic MIX?. Westport: Greenwood. p. 163. ISBN 0313362343.
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How bad is it when the term “critical thinking” makes a supposedly pro-science organization cringe in terror?
Lets start with the facts. Life is the intelligent animation of matter. The materialist concept that there is some accidentalist explanation for intelligent beings is a complete failure and a lie that we tell to students.
Darwinists claim that random chaos causes complex functional order, which is disproven mathematical insanity, but we lie to students and pretend it is true. They also falsely claim that the selection death filter causes life, a ridiculous fallacy that teachers are forced to trick students with. As the ultimate laughable lie, we “teach” students that accident causes intelligence itself, with ongoing and constant “lucky” data signals in our brains.
Abiogenesis pseudoscientists claim that a lucky mix of chemicals happened to form a functional cell and then even more luckily started to animate and reproduce by random luck. Yet everything these Frankenstein’s make in the lab sits there lifeless.
Why do laws mandate we teach this garbage that, according to polls, some 70% of HS Biology teachers refuse to teach in full? I see two reasons for this travesty: One, intense propaganda against intelligent cause science, such as this article. Two, there is a wrong-headed belief that any evidence of intelligence is “religious” which leads government to unconstitutionally and unscientifically mandate whatever theory seems the most anti-religious, even if we know it is wrong. (The Lewontin Doctrine)
In other words, stealth atheism has infested our biology classrooms with goveernment enforced lies.
Thank you for your comments.
Naturally we don’t agree with your analysis of recent “critical thinking” bills that have been submitted in various legislatures around the country in the name of coming to the aid of science teachers because they need protection to carry on discussions about evolution, creationism and intelligent design in their classrooms.
Biology teachers are not presenting falsehoods about natural selection, or for that matter any other theory that forms the foundation of a science course. To say so, shows how little one knows about teaching in secondary schools.
Evolution, intelligent design, creationism. Science teachers carry out discussions involving all three ideas and more. Why would they do this? We know that students come to our course with preconceived and legitimate ideas about the theories that will be introduced to them in science courses, including gravity, plate tectonics, climate change, weather, and of course evolution by natural selection.
Many researchers identify these preconceived ideas as “misconceptions,” and indeed there is a vast literature in science teaching about misconceptions in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and so forth. Science teachers know that it is crucial to start with student’s present ideas, and then go forward from there helping them learn and understand the ideas in their courses. Don’t you think that as biology teachers we understand that many students in our class hold strong views about the origin and development of life in the universe. Science teachers know that they must start with preconceived ideas, respect them, and then engage the students in pedagogy that gives the students chances to test their ideas against other ideas, including those held by other students, and by science.
It’s difficult to discuss ideas that are nonsense, but if that is where you are coming from, then its a place to begin.
70% of biology teachers do not refuse to teach the whole story of evolution. Intelligent design is simply creationism in different clothes. I recommend that you read Charles Darwin’s books, The Voyage of Beagle, The Origin of the Species, and the Descent of Man. Most of the questions you raise were anticipated by Sir Charles, and they are nicely presented in his 1859 book, The Origin of the Species.
Mr. Hassard, the poll I refer to was presented by Scientific American in an online article called “Scopes Weeps” that can be googled for reference if you like.
If creationism is taught in schools, isn’t that unconstitutional? If intelligent design is already taught, then why object to the laws in TN and LA? If all three major theories are taught, is there consistency or does Mr. Smith in Room 101 teach Creationism while Ms. Smith preaches materialist ideology down the Hall?
Your incorrect assertion that creationism and intelligent design are the same only underscores the need for standardized definitions in Biology textbooks rather than varied opinions being pushed by teachers. These definitions should be written by adherents and presented without prejudice.
Intelligent evolution is the only theory that fits all evidence and it is the most widely accepted origins theory, but it is against the law to teach it. Bacterial experimentation with known stimulus-response evolution to a changed environment has dispelled all reasonable doubt against intelligent genetics.
Selection? Seriously? Selection has nothing to do with evolution. It is, in fact, the opposite of evolution. Selection is stasis or staying the same while evolution is change. Selection can only select what already exists, so it is nonsensical to claim that it CAUSES new traits or species.
The selection filter, like all filters, is subtractive only, so it can only kill or get out of the way. Thats fine if you are trying to explain absence or death, but Darwin’s fiction wasn’t called “Extinction of Species”. You may as well credit an arsonist for building your condo because he didnt burn it down.
Any student confused enough to credit selection for evolution would need clarification and further instruction from a competent teacher.
Mr. IntelligentDesign,
I’ve included your recent comment here in full, and have integrated my comments with yours. Mine are in red, yours in black. Regards, Jack Hassard
Mr. Hassard, the poll I refer to was presented by Scientific American in an online article called “Scopes Weeps” that can be googled for reference if you like.
I did, but it was published in American Scientist not Scientific American.
If creationism is taught in schools, isn’t that unconstitutional? If intelligent design is already taught, then why object to the laws in TN and LA? If all three major theories are taught, is there consistency or does Mr. Smith in Room 101 teach Creationism while Ms. Smith preaches materialist ideology down the Hall?
Creationism, per se, is not taught in the schools, nor is intelligent design. The laws passed in TN & LA do not tell teachers to teach ID or Creationism. These two ideas are not science, and are therefore not part of the science curriculum. If you don’t believe me, then check out the National Science Standards. Neither creationism nor intelligent design are part of the National Science Education Standards of 1996, nor are part of the Next Generation of Science Standards. You can go to the NSES and use the search tool on your computer and you will not find a hit for either creationism or intelligent design. Evolution gets 51 hits in the chapter on the science content standards.
Here are the Science Standards for teaching evolution, grades 9 – 12:
BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
• Species evolve over time. Evolution is the consequence of the interactions of (1) the potential for a species to increase its numbers, (2) the genetic variability of offspring due to mutation and recombination of genes, (3) a finite supply of the resources required for life, and (4) the ensuring selection by the environment of those offspring better able to survive and leave offspring.
• The great diversity of organisms is the result of more than 3.5 billion years of evolution that has filled every available niche with life forms.
• Natural selection and its evolutionary consequences provide a scientific explanation for the fossil record of ancient life forms, as well as for the striking molecular similarities observed among the diverse species of living organisms.
• The millions of different species of plants, animals, and microorganisms that live on earth today are related by descent from common ancestors.
• Biological classifications are based on how organisms are related. Organisms are classified into a hierarchy of groups and subgroups based on similarities which reflect their evolutionary relationships. Species is the most fundamental unit of classification.
You should read the National Science Teachers Association position statement on The Creation Controversy & Science Teaching.
Your incorrect assertion that creationism and intelligent design are the same only underscores the need for standardized definitions in Biology textbooks rather than varied opinions being pushed by teachers. These definitions should be written by adherents and presented without prejudice.
See comments above. Defining creationism or intelligent design should be left to religious leaders, as neither is a scientific theory and should not be part of science curriculum.
Intelligent evolution is the only theory that fits all evidence and it is the most widely accepted origins theory, but it is against the law to teach it.
You’ve got to be kidding!
Bacterial experimentation with known stimulus-response evolution to a changed environment has dispelled all reasonable doubt against intelligent genetics.
Please provide readers research supporting this in scientific journals. What are you talking about?
Selection? Seriously? Selection has nothing to do with evolution. It is, in fact, the opposite of evolution. Selection is stasis or staying the same while evolution is change. Selection can only select what already exists, so it is nonsensical to claim that it CAUSES new traits or species.
The selection filter, like all filters, is subtractive only, so it can only kill or get out of the way. Thats fine if you are trying to explain absence or death, but Darwin’s fiction wasn’t called “Extinction of Species”. You may as well credit an arsonist for building your condo because he didnt burn it down.
Any student confused enough to credit selection for evolution would need clarification and further instruction from a competent teacher.
The above is pure nonsense. I don’t know how anyone can debate or discuss important ideas in science education when you hold such non-sense ideas. Most high school students who have taken a biology course would take you to task.
All I can add here is the last paragraph of Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of the Species:
Mr, Hassard, when you claimed the following: “Evolution, intelligent design, creationism. Science teachers carry out discussions involving all three ideas and more.” it doesnt match with your later statement “Creationism, per se, is not taught in the schools, nor is intelligent design.” I believe your later statement is the correct one.
Intelligent evolution is based entirely on the scientific method, observational data and mathematics. It would be ridiculous for a religion teacher to discuss genetic experiments and why the results show intelligent cause. To call it “not science” sounds like you have pre-conceived ideations of your own. Let me guess: You believe that the only possible intelligent cause is a deity and you believe we must avoid all evidence showing such a thing – and you call your beliefs “science”.
Large purple font is pretty but a poor substitute for a scientific argument, which you have thus far dodged. In 2012 scientists are now causing evolution in bacterial experiments of all kinds on a daily basis. We don’t have to guess how evolution happens anymore. We can predict precise nucleotide changes based on a known stimulus-response to a changed environment.
Simply calling something “nonsense” is also a poor replacement for scientific debate. Is this what you encourage your students to do? I say selection can’t select anything that doesn’t already exist. Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree, please explain.
The “sciemce” standards that you noted need work, badly, or at least an open forum for discussion. Only number (2) of the “Evolution is a consequence of” elements could logically cause evolution, and it leaves most of the most intriguing questions unexplained.
Of course the big question is what causes functional upgrades and new species? The closest to an answer given in your standards is the word “variability”, If you can dumb down students by reversing cause and effect, I suppose you could hope that they don’t ask this question, but variability does not cause function by random luck. If you are claiming luck, then please provide numbers, not bumbling musings from the pseudoscientist Darwin.
Darwinism is the ridiculous assertion that chaos causes functional order and that death (the selecxtion filter) causes life. Chaos and death are the most destructive forces imaginable, not lucky creators. If this is what we are teaching students, then I can only hope that more states follow the example of LA and TN.
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