Tennessee’s science law: academic freedom or monkey business?
Depending on whose press release you believe, Tennessee’s new science law either promotes “academic freedom” or “allows creationism to be taught in public schools.”
Enacted on April 10, the legislation instructs school officials not to prohibit teachers from informing students about the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “scientific controversies” such as biological evolution.
Science education groups are outraged, arguing that the law has nothing to do with academic freedom — and everything to do with finding new ways to undermine the teaching of evolution with trumped-up “controversies” and unscientific “weaknesses” disguised as science.
Dubbed the “monkey bill” by opponents, Tennessee’s law is the latest round in the long-running battle over teaching evolution in the science curriculum of public schools.
In 1925, Tennessee teacher John Scopes was famously convicted of violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. But today, the curriculum shoe is on the other foot.
Anti-evolution laws like the one challenged by Scopes have been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. And the theory of evolution – considered settled science by the vast majority of scientists – is a key component of science education.
Now it’s opponents of evolution who are demanding to be heard in the science classroom.
Tennessee’s new law is similar to one enacted in Louisiana in 2008 and to others recently debated in at least four states. Abandoning the failed strategy of pushing for inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in the science curriculum, anti-evolution forces now advocate “teaching the controversy” about evolution (and, to avoid singling out evolution, other purported “controversies” such as global warming).
In an attempt to preempt First Amendment challenges, the Tennessee law states that nothing in the legislation is to be “construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine.”
Anti-evolutionists, of course, can readily support language prohibiting promotion of religion in schools since they maintain that creationism and intelligent design are not religious, but rather “scientific alternatives” to evolution.
And there’s the rub: What’s religious to one side is science to the other. Under the new law, Tennessee teachers apparently get to decide what counts as science (and what counts as “weakness” in scientific theories) — even if most scientists disagree. Critics of the law see this as a green light for teaching creationism or other religiously based ideas as science.
They may be right. What Tennessee lawmakers tout as academic freedom (a freedom, by the way, denied to teachers in every other subject), is very likely to be used as a Trojan horse for inserting religious convictions into the science curriculum.
A far better approach would be to address the religion-science debate up front by preparing teachers to teach students something about the history and philosophy of science, including the interaction between religion and science over time. Helping students understand the context for the culture-war fight over evolution may help them accept what modern science has to say.
Learning about various religious worldviews is an important part of a good education. But it is unconstitutional to present those worldviews as science. Public schools have a legal and educational mandate to teach what is widely accepted in the scientific community as sound science, even when that science tells people what they don’t want to hear.
The Tennessee law uses all the right language about helping students develop “critical thinking skills” necessary to become “scientifically informed citizens.”
But giving teachers carte blanche to attack evolution and promote religion isn’t the way to achieve that goal.
Tags: academic freedom, creationism, evolution, medicine or science, public school, religion in public school
6 Responses to “Tennessee’s science law: academic freedom or monkey business?”
The First Amendment Center is an educational organization and cannot provide legal advice.
Ken Paulson is president and chief executive officer of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and in Washington, D.C. Previously, Paulson served as the editor and senior vice president/news of USA Today.
Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center and president and chief operating officer of the Diversity Institute, is a veteran journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and online.
John Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center in 1991 with the mission of creating national discussion, dialogue and debate about First Amendment rights and values.
Dr. Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum. He writes and speaks extensively on religious liberty and religion in American public life.
David L. Hudson Jr. is an expert in First Amendment issues who writes for firstamendmentcenter.org and for other publications. Hudson teaches law and was a scholar at the First Amendment Center.
Tiffany Villager is director/First Amendment studies at the First Amendment Center, which she joined in 1993. She also served as the center’s research manager and research coordinator, and developed the center’s library.
The argument that “evolution” somehow challenges or diminishes God has long baffled me ~ to me the theory of evolution only enhances God’s omnipotence because of the miraculous attention to detail.
The idea of teaching the history of the conflict between science and religion is excellent and can include the creation stories of many religions.
Thank you.
So teachers should be suppressed in their opinions? and government should have the right to control what people learn? This doesn’t sound consistent with what your website stands for. It more sounds like your complete opinion in this article. There is scientific support for intelligent design, and it sounds like they are just giving teachers the option to talk about it in class without getting fired for it. Every scientist, even the biggest atheists, admit that intelligent design is a possibility, however reluctantly. But creationist, and intelligent design ideas, are discriminated in the academic community (which, p.s. IS ACTUALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, unlike teaching it in school is) The other articles I read on the topic (un-bias ones) made it sounds like this was not a fight for religion in schools, but simply allowing teachers the option to present other scientific theories without fear of loosing their job for it.
So you wouldn’t any objection to teaching any other or all of the creation theories then, right? May we also teach Alchemy instead of chemistry? Astrology instead of astronomy? You see the issue here…? Leave your religious beliefs away from public school, please.
Hope, you’re right. Charles Darwin admitted that if there was a biological structure (like a flagellum) that couldn’t be accounted for by a series of minor mutations his theory couldn’t work. Astrology and alchemy aren’t science. The theory of intellegent design is an alternative scientific theory based essentially on Darwin’s own admissions as above – since it would have been mathematically practically impossible for random, undirected mutations to have accounted for the existence of a flagellum, why don’t we consider another theory that would fit the math a bit better.
This is much less “religious” than what Dr C Haynes was praising in another article where he praised character education in public schools. He said, “thousands of educators are transforming the culture of their schools by teaching and modeling core ethical values such as honesty, integrity, caring, responsibility and respect.” He is basically preaching his own religion when he says that his personal ethical preferences should be part of the core cirriculum in schools. I happen to agree with his list, but what if it included slavery, polygamy, and genocide – all of which have been normal and acceptable in different periods of time in human history.
Dr Haynes brings to his articles what we all bring – our own philisophical presuppositions and personal agenda – in short, our own religion. This is why learning a dissenting scientific, ethical, or personal opinion is a good thing. Dr Haynes certainly seems to have pro-evolution bias in his own personal religion, and he does a disservice to religious freedom in his tacit contempt for these Tennessee lawmakers’ alternative viewpoints.
Teaching creationism in public schools was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1987. The Dover case proved that intelligent design is the same as creationism and is also unconstitutional in public schools. There is no reputable scientific support for intelligent design. There are no controversies among scientists regarding whether or not evolution occurs. This law is just one more attempt to get creationism into public schools.
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