Thoughts in a Haystack

The Louisiana House of Representatives advanced that state's version of the Discoveryless Institute's Trojan Horse "academic freedom" bill. You can find the bill and the House's amendment here.

Without minimizing the potential mischief this bill could do if it becomes law, it is, of the legislation considered by various states so far, the one that affords the best chance for advocates of good science education to counter any bad effects. As it stands now (and remembering that there may be further changes made during whatever "reconciliation" procedures the Louisiana legislature has), the bill reads, in relevant part, as follows:

First of all, unlike the Florida bill, there is no blanket protection for teachers who stray from the state curriculum. In fact, the local school board must request to implement the program (presumably by open vote and an official request to the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education), giving notice to science supporters beforehand and a first opportunity to oppose any attempt to inject creationism.

The State Board must also implement (presumably written) support and guidance for such a plan which, when read with the State Board's power to prohibit any material other than already approved textbooks, gives a second opportunity to oppose the insertion of creationism ... if need be, by court action, should creationist materials be approved for use. (It should just be noted that the law gives an extremely short date, the fall 2008 opening of school, to have this all in place, which might signal that the legislators aren't serious about getting it passed in both houses before the session ends on June 23, 2008.)

Even if, as Barbara Forrest states, the State Board would not have the ability to review and block all nonscientific materials, any supplementary materials used must be approved by the local boards, again in open session, giving another opportunity to oppose the materials or bring suit if creationist materials are approved.

Finally, the actions of individual teachers may actually be easier to control under this scheme. Under the law, local teachers are required to teach the material in the approved textbooks. As the recent survey of high school biology teachers showed, the biggest problem in science education today may be that teachers are simply avoiding teaching evolution. If teachers in the local school fail to teach evolution or try to introduce materials not approved ahead of time by the local board or fail to follow the State Board's guidelines, a simple demand to the school authorities that the teachers stop violating the law might be enough to curtail the practice and, if not, then the school district and local board can be more easily sued for failing to enforce the requirements of law.

This law could turn out to have a very sharp double edge for the creationists.
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