John T. Scopes thought it was set­tled sci­ence in 1925.

On Tues­day, April 10, Ten­nessee HB368/​SB893 became law with­out the sig­na­ture of Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Bill Haslam. The bill passed eas­ily, 72–23 in the Ten­nessee State House and 25–8 in the Senate.

The bill pur­port­edly pro­tects teach­ers who might some­how face dis­ci­pli­nary action for teach­ing (for exam­ple) intel­li­gent design or denial of anthro­pogenic cli­mate change. The fact that no teacher has ever been dis­ci­plined for teach­ing these con­cepts trou­bles the spon­sors of the leg­is­la­tion not a whit. Just as some ele­ments fight a voter fraud prob­lem that doesn’t exist, this bill cre­ates the impres­sion of a “prob­lem” where none exists.

Accord­ing to the bill,

The gen­eral assem­bly finds that:
(1) An impor­tant pur­pose of sci­ence edu­ca­tion is to inform stu­dents about sci­en­tific evi­dence and to help stu­dents develop crit­i­cal think­ing skills nec­es­sary to becom­ing intel­li­gent, pro­duc­tive, and sci­en­tif­i­cally informed cit­i­zens;
(2) 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
(3) Some teach­ers may be unsure of the expec­ta­tions con­cern­ing how they should present infor­ma­tion on such subjects.

In point of fact, only about 28 per­cent of high school biol­ogy teach­ers sur­veyed by the National Sur­vey of High School Biol­ogy Teach­ers teach evi­dence for evo­lu­tion at all. Another 13 per­cent teach cre­ation­ism or intel­li­gent design in a favor­able way.

Some intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents claim that teach­ers have been dis­ci­plined for teach­ing intel­li­gent design, but a quick read of cases here, here and here makes it clear that it wasn’t the teach­ing of intel­li­gent design, but some other crazy behav­ior or sim­ple mis­un­der­stand­ings, that were the root prob­lems in each case.

Not sur­pris­ingly, 60 per­cent of high school teach­ers totally avoid this key­stone sub­ject entirely, which is exactly what bills like this intend. While wrap­ping them­selves in the flag and wav­ing a cross, these leg­is­la­tors pur­port to pro­tect the rights of teach­ers while in real­ity quash­ing dis­cus­sion of sci­en­tific topics.

Not sur­pris­ingly, the bill was not authored by Ten­nessee leg­is­la­tors or their assis­tants. Rather, the bill was crafted by the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC), a group that crafts “model” leg­is­la­tion that uni­formly advances an anti-​​science, con­ser­v­a­tive, know-​​nothing agenda. (more…)