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During last year's legislative session, I highlighted SB 651, which was written by the Louisiana Family Forum, and offered by Democratic State Senator Ben Nevers. It later morphed into SB 733, which passed the Legislature overwhelmingly, garnering only 3 "no" votes in the House, and passing unanimously in the Senate.
The language of the bill (pdf alert) allows for religious ideas of the earth's creation to be taught by public school teachers, specifically, creationism, all behind the guise that everything in science is a "theory."
The issue that many scientists have with this bill is that the meaning of theory in science is vastly different than that of the common, every day meaning we ascribe to theory. In science, a theory is a "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena." In the field of biology, scientists have tested the "theory" of evolution in experiments, and it has not yet been disproven.
The religious right is twisting the common, every day meaning of theory - an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances - to bolster their argument that creationism - the idea that God created the world in seven days or that the Earth is thousands of years old - is also a logical interpretation of the facts we have before us.
Anyhow, all this will come to a head here in Louisiana over the next few days. Today, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Student/School Performance and Support (SPSS) Committee meets. One of the items on their agenda is Science Education (pdf alert), which means that they will take up what to do about SB 733 by considering revising Bulletin 741, which is the school administrator handbook that all school boards in Louisiana must follow.
And on Thursday, at 9 AM in Room 1-100 of the Claiborne Building at 1201 N. Third Street in Baton Rouge, the full Board of Education will meet to review the SSPS Committee Report (pdf alert) on the Louisiana Science Education Act.
Already, some of the earlier wording - "religious thinking shall not be advanced under the guise of critical thinking" - has been removed. And the proposed changes to Bulletin 741 will expose Louisiana's children to religious beliefs during their science class than ever before. For a state trying to diversify its economy by building up its biomedical research sector, such an changes may be the death knell. |
