Extraordinarily Bad Law

This past Friday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) signed into law more than 70 pieces of legislation. None raised more eyebrows than one innocuously entitled the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill was approved by the legislature by near unanimous consent. The House passed the final version 94-3. The Senate passed this bill 35-0.

With that kind of background, you would think that this law wouldn't be all that controversial. Yet, it opens the door to all manner of chicanery and may actually result in students being misinformed about various concepts than enlighten them.

Jindal signed it into law, despite people having serious concerns about the real purpose of the law. For starters, here's what the law, SB 733, says:

A. The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

B. Such assistance shall include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied, including those enumerated in Paragraph (1) of this Subsection.

C. A teacher shall teach the material presented in the standard textbook supplied by the school system and thereafter may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, as permitted by the city, parish, or other local public school board unless otherwise prohibited by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

D. This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.

E. The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and each city, parish, or other local public school board shall adopt and promulgate the rules and regulations necessary to implement the provisions of this Section prior to the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year.

The way it is worded does open up a whole can of worms, but not only on the issue of evolution, but on global warming, or any other issue for that matter. Whether you choose to believe in intelligent design, creationism, or evolution, is entirely up to you, but this law opens up the door to allow any and all materials to be used to supplement existing approved school materials.

It allows junk science to enter the classroom in the name of supplemental materials. Heck, a teacher could argue that The Inconvenient Truth is a useful educational tool to teach about ecology, the environment, and global warming. A geography teacher could bring in a Flat Earther to teach geology. A chemistry or physics teacher could bring in Rosie O'Donnell to talk about how steel can't be melted by fire.

Those may be extreme examples, but this law, as written, opens the door to those kinds of activities.

And it can work on any subject - in any direction. It could bring in supplemental materials you agree with or oppose, but therein lies the problem. How exactly are these materials vetted and what is considered acceptable. The law doesn't exactly spell it out, leaving it up to the school districts to decide.

For example, you might find that intelligent design is perfectly acceptable and should be taught alongside evolution in a biology class, but what about when the same school teacher uses An Inconvenient Truth to teach earth science, a concept that you oppose and consider junk science.

This law means that unless the state is going to entertain a whole new bureaucracy to determine acceptable materials, you're going to end up with a whole bunch of junk in the trunk. And each jurisdiction may come up to completely different results.

This bill opens the door for chicanery from all sides, not just on intelligent design. It opens up the teaching of various subjects to junk science - in the name of providing supplemental materials.

While I understand the general desire by Jindal and the legislature to do something to help Louisiana students learn, this law obfuscates the matter by allowing just about anything to enter the classroom in the name of supplemental materials. Of course, one has to wonder how is that any different than the current mess that Louisiana (or anywhere else) is in as this law may be little more than a codification of already existing practices, in which case the state of education is in worse shape than we can imagine.