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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Break Out the Floppy Shoes

By John Pieret

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Apparently the creationists in Texas aren't confident that their representatives on the State Board of Education can carry the day. As reported by the NCSE, the appropriately named Wayne Christian (guess which party!) of the Texas House of Representatives has introduced H.B. No. 4224 which reads, in relevant part:

SECTION 1. Subchapter A, Chapter 28, Education Code, is amended by adding Section 28.0027 to read as follows:
Sec. 28.0027. STUDY OF SCIENCE. (a) As part of the essential knowledge and skills of the science curriculum under Section 28.002(a)(1)(C), the State Board of Education by rule shall establish elements relating to instruction on the scientific hypotheses and theories for grades 6-12.
(b) Instructional elements for scientific processes: the student uses critical thinking and scientific problem solving to make informed decisions. The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information;
(c) Students may be evaluated based upon their understanding of course materials, but no student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because he or she subscribes to a particular position on scientific theories or hypotheses;
(d) No governmental entity shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students to understand, analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

Besides mandating the "strengths and weaknesses" ploy, the law repeats the protection given by the late, unlamented, "academic freedom" bill from Florida to the use by teachers of "scientific information" to critique evolution. It was that provision of the Florida bill that Casey Luskin so memorably tied himself into such tight knots over, trying to answer the seemingly easy question of whether ID arguments count as "scientific information," that the rest of the Discovery-bereft Institute couldn't free him from the tangle.

I suppose the one upside to this bill is that it may result in Luskin giving another performance his unintended comedy routine for our amusement.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on March 15, 2009 (boomark / email).