• Activists cry foul as Tenn. science education bill hits governor's desk

    Erik Schelzig / AP

    Rep. Bill Dunn, left, and Rep. Harry Brooks, both Republicans from Knoxville, during a House session in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday. Dunn is the main sponsor of a bill seeking to allow teachers to question evolution.

    By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

    Activists were waging a last-minute battle Thursday to scuttle a bill that they say would gut science education in Tennessee by allowing public schools to cast doubt on widely-accepted scientific principles, including biological evolution and climate change.

    "What it does is bring the political controversy into the classroom, where there is no scientific controversy," said Larisa DeSantis, who teaches in the Department of Earth and Environment at Vanderbilt University. "It’s scary, as a parent and as an educator."


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    DeSantis spoke to msnbc.com from the office building of Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam just before delivering a petition signed by more than 4,000 citizens calling on him to veto HB368. The bill easily passed the state Legislature and now awaits the governor’s signature to become law. Haslam has indicated he would probaby sign the legislation.

    The bill says the goal of science education is to help students "develop critical thinking skills." It says the General Assembly has found "the teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy" and says instructors should feel free to explore the "scientific weaknesses" in these theories.

    The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Bill Dunn of Knoxville, a self-described conservative and Catholic, has said the bill is about "objective scientific facts."  

    Secularists and scientists argue HB368 is an attempt to introduce religious beliefs such as creationism or "intelligent design" as science, thereby undermining broadly accepted scientific principles and hurting students' education.

    "As a science teacher I would say there is no controversy over evolution or climate change in the scientific literature," said DeSantis.
    "Sure, we argue about the details. But these are core ideas … that are not controversial."

    Critics have dubbed the legislation the "Monkey Bill," a reference to the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925 -- a landmark legal case in which the state of Tennessee charged high school science teacher John Scopes of violating a law barring the teaching evolution in public schools. Scopes was a test case for the American Civil Liberties Union, which wanted to challenge the law which had been spearheaded by a Christian fundamentalist in the Tennesee legislature. Scopes was found guilty and the law remained on the books until 1967.

    National organizations urged the state and the governor to jettison the bill.

    Among the groups that have announced opposition are The National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association. The bill has also been lambasted by secularists and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, as a violation of the church-state divide.

    "This legislation, which perpetuates the teaching of non-science with a seemingly neutral approach, allows creationists to continue to make unfounded attacks against evolution," states a letter sent Thursday to Haslam from the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State .

    The letter also criticizes two other Tennessee bills that are on the governor’s desk — one that would allow the 10 Commandments to be displayed in public buildings, including schools, and another that would allow teachers to take part in prayer and religious activisties before and after school.

    Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said believes all three bills will face constitutional challenges if they become law. He said he hopes the governor will veto the legislation, if only for practical reasons.

    "I think a lot of governors do understand that there are consequences about passing legislation that so clearly violates the constitution,” Lynn said. “It’s up to him now and I hope he balances (that). They shouldn’t be paying for lawsuits when there are plenty of other things to pay for in Tennessee."

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  • Creationism controversy again slips into Texas textbook debate

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Update 7:35 p.m. ET: The Texas State Board of Education has preliminarily approved Education Commissioner Robert Scott's slate of supplemental biology materials, which do not include creationism or intelligent design. A final vote is scheduled for Friday.

    While the public testimony was passionate at times, the board's debate was uneventful before members voted to reject proposed additional materials that discuss intelligent design. Republican board member David Bradley, who supports introducing intelligent design into the curriculum, joked that the audience might want its tickets refunded.

    _____

    Texas schools were back at the center of the argument over whether students should be taught creationism alongside evolution Thursday, even if they weren't supposed to be.

    Curriculum standards adopted in 2009 say Texas' science textbooks must "explore all sides" of the theory of evolution, a specification that conservative religious members then on the board said was intended to require textbooks to discuss creationism and "intelligent design," the hypothesis that a supreme being engineered the creation and development of humanity. 

    Texas schools are due to update their textbooks this year. Normally, the state board would review and approve all new textbooks. But the state says it can't afford to pay local school boards to buy any of them.

    So the state Board of Education met Thursday to hear four hours of public testimony on whether to recommend a slate of electronic books and other online materials to "supplement" the old textbooks as a stopgap. A final vote is scheduled Friday. 

    Activists were eager to use Thursday's hearing to continue their argument over evolution, targeting materials under discussion for high school biology classes. But the actual matter before the board was much narrower — Friday's vote is just on a recommendation for this year's supplements, not a binding vote on Texas' official textbooks.

    None of the nine temporary solutions that state Education Commissioner Robert Scott signed off on includes creationism or intelligent design. (Conservatives on the board would like to consider a 10th supplement — rejected by Scott — that does examine intelligent design, The Dallas Morning News reported. But unlike two years ago, they no longer control a majority of the board.)

    In any event, school districts don't have to follow the board's recommendation, under a new law that gives them the sole authority to spend their state education funds.

    Still, almost 100 people asked to testify Thursday, hoping once again for the chance to argue over Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. 

    • Poll: 4 in 10 Americans hold creationist views

    Jonathan Saenz, legislative director of the Liberty Institute, a nonprofit activist group that helped shape the 2009 standards, argued that the supplemental materials "need to match up."

    "We shouldn't stray from what happened in 2009," he said. 

    But Clare Wuellner, a biologist and executive director of the Center for Inquiry in Austin, which advocates for "appreciation of science and reason," used the opportunity to stand behind "mainstream evolutionary science." 

    "My children are fortunate to have an in-home Ph.D — me — to address" the teaching of anything other than evolution, but most Texas students aren't, Wuellner said. 

    Board members indicated that the most pressing concern was to offer acceptable temporary materials in place in time so for the new school year so Texas pupils can take their achievement tests. The supplemental option could save the state more than $280 million over immediately buying millions of all-new textbooks, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

    Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, a prominent supporter of creationism in texts, tried to keep the testimony focused on the emergency supplements that were actually on the table, and board members on both sides expressed exasperation with people who wanted to debate the origins of life instead of the selection of temporary electronic materials for one school year. 

    "We're talking about the supplemental materials," Cargill reminded a speaker who wanted Texas to teach creationism. And she asked another, who opposed the idea, to "please stick to the question at hand."

    "I just don't know if that is being proposed by anyone," Terri Leo, the board's vice chairwoman for instruction, said after one speaker complained about mixing religion and science. "... I don't recognize anything he said in the supplemental materials."

    Republican board members went so far as offer $500 to anyone who could find any mention of creationism or intelligent design in the materials.