The Tennessee Senate just passed SB 893, a bill that would allow the debate of “some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” in the science curricula of their schoolchildren.
As portrayed in the local press, the flashpoint of this bill is the subject of evolution. And the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Center for Science Education, and the American Civil Liberties Union are probably correct when they characterize the main thrust of the legislation as giving teachers the ability to promulgate creationism and intelligent design in their classrooms.
I’m unsurprised that the largely fundamentalist Protestant populace of the Volunteer State still has a problem with their children learning about evolution, a subject that has flitted in and out of Tennessee’s educational history ever since the Scopes trial in 1925. I’m just ever so slightly surprised that the bill includes global warming as one of the scientific subjects for which some wiggle room is given to teachers and their lesson plans. Although I haven’t read anything about the legislative process for this bill, I’m suspicious that energy companies or their allies, such as the Heartland Institute, made a few phone calls and visited a few legislative offices to ensure that global warming was included in the bill. After all, the Heartland Institute has announced that they are advancing K-12 curricula that deny global warming. Certainly folks like these would be pleased to have a law like this on the books in Tennessee, not to mention the other 49 states.
A good number of states continually try to, and sometimes succeed in, passing legislation that allows for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in science classes. It seems unlikely that a bill that would target the science behind our understanding of global warming would, by itself, make its way through a state legislature and receive the signature of a governor. But along with the guess I made above, I’m willing to speculate that as states try to open the doors of the science classroom to biblical beliefs, they will include global warming as a subject to receive a dubious treatment in the classroom.
What is particularly telling is the wording of the bill. The law says that its intention is to have school administrators create an environment that encourages students to respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion on controversial issues. Respecting differences of opinion is to be encouraged, but by placing opinion in the same realm as science, the legislators reveal the bill’s intent, to advance what I like to call the Pailinification of thought.
If anything was apparent during her run for the vice presidency, Sarah Palin embraced a disregard for expertise, studious learning, and experience. She dismissed credentialed and learned professionals as “elites.” The ability to see the easternmost shores of Russia made her qualified to interact with their diplomatic corps. In Palin’s worldview facts and opinion commingle, and she allows herself to choose the fact or opinion that gives an advantage, is easier to achieve, or is more pleasant to consider. Anointing herself knowledgeable about Russia because she can see it makes diplomacy pretty easy. Denouncing the learned elites gives a good feeling to someone living in a self-satisfied world.
Allowing children the same intellectual freedom to pick and choose what they want to believe is a disastrous approach to teaching any subject, particularly a difficult subject like science. That the children of Tennessee may not have a full grasp of global warming and what we might have to do to address it can seriously impede the progress we need to make in this area as these individuals graduate, choose careers, and become voters.
Just think, when it comes to your children and their education, do you want them to have Sarah Palin as a role model?
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