John Connell: The Blog

Just a year ago, the State of Louisiana’s gov­er­nor, Bobby Jin­dahl, signed the Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Act, which basi­cally enabled cre­ation­ist and ID dri­vel to be taught along­side the the­ory of evo­lu­tion in sci­ence classes. To quote the Act itself:

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.

In a follow-up, Louisiana’s Board of Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion has adopted a pol­icy that forces its schools to take another step into the dis­mal mire of cre­ation­ist ignorance.

It was good, there­fore, to read a great com­ment on the Dis­cov­ery Magazine’s crit­i­cal piece on the new pol­icy — Louisiana: even more doomed — in which Richard, the anony­mous com­menter, imag­ines a con­ver­sa­tion between an ID-loving teacher and a stu­dent who under­stands what crit­i­cal think­ing really is:

[by the way, if you do not under­stand the ref­er­ence to the ‘fla­gel­lum’ below, an arti­cle by Pro­fes­sor Ken Miller of Brown Uni­ver­sity will bring you up to speed on the ID movement’s favourite non-argument of ‘irre­ducible complexity’]

Teacher: “Okay, stu­dents, I have brought you some lit­er­a­ture to show you the con­tro­versy over the so-called ‘the­ory’ of evo­lu­tion. Uh, yes Timmy?”
Timmy: “Teacher, I looked this over and I just gotta ask,”
Teacher: “Yes, dear child.”
Timmy: “How does this Intel­li­gent Design work? I keep look­ing over it but I can’t find any­thing.”
Teacher: “Well, it’s sim­ple. Life is too com­pli­cated to have just hap­pened by chance.”
Timmy: “Yeah, I read that, but what else is there?”
Teacher: ” Well, the fla­gel­lum is like an out-board motor.”
Timmy: “Oh, so there were many badly designed ones, ones that worked bet­ter than oth­ers but weren’t good enough, and some that worked just well enough to go on?”
Teacher: “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘badly designed’ ones.”
Timmy: “But some were dis­con­tin­ued?”
Teacher: “Well, I sup­posed.”
Timmy: “So, then this Intel­l­li­gent Designer did some­thing like that with life?”
Teacher: “I don’t see where you’re going with that.”
Timmy: “So this ‘Intel­li­gent Designer’ puts together these species, but a whole lot of them weren’t put together well enough. This ‘agent’ some­how had enough knowl­edge and resources to put these things together, but not enough to know what would work and what wouldn’t work?”
Teacher: “I think you’re tak­ing this a lit­tle too far, Timmy.”
Timmy: “Hold on. So, this designer makes single-celled ani­mals?”
Teacher: “Yes.”
Timmy: “Bac­te­ria?”
Teacher: “Uh, yeah.”
Timmy: “And viruses?”
Teacher: “I sup­pose.”
Timmy: “So, this designer puts together peo­ple, ani­mals, and plants, but doesn’t make them right. And makes microbes, too, and prob­a­bly not right either. And some of these microbes because of a few mis­takes kill or crip­ple peo­ple, ani­mals and plants, right?”
Teacher: “Well, Timmy, I don’t think the designer makes mis­takes.”
Timmy: “So then you’re say­ing the designer makes those microbes to inten­tion­ally kill or crip­ple?”
Teacher: “Well, that’s, kinda,…”
Timmy: “And this designer kills kids, too.”
Teacher: Um, Timmy, that’s, uh,…”
Timmy: “Two more ques­tions, when do we get a real sci­ence teacher and do we dump these in the recy­cling bin?”

In this year in which we can <a href=http://www.open.ac.uk/darwin/”>celebrate the life and achieve­ments of Charles Darwin, isn’t it ridicu­lous that there are sup­pos­edly intel­li­gent adults, in pol­i­tics, in edu­ca­tion, who can­not engage in sim­ple logic and think like Timmy?

Tech­no­rati Tags: louisiana, cre­ation­ism, intel­li­gent design, crit­i­cal think­ing, sci­ence, evo­lu­tion, dar­win

§ 3 Responses to Louisiana education steps further into the mire"

• Louise Maine says:

  January 18, 2009 at 6:25 pm

  Won­der­ful post! As a sci­ence teacher I am very con­cerned over those who are mak­ing these deci­sions and how it will affect sci­ence edu­ca­tion in the future. It smacks of Dark Ages type phi­los­o­phy of no need to ques­tion any further.

  Reply
• John Connell says:

  January 18, 2009 at 7:15 pm

  Thank you, Louise, both for your com­ment above and for intro­duc­ing me to your blog — I can’t think how I haven’t come across your writ­ing before now!

  Reply
• News Affecting Louisiana High Schools for 01/20/2009 « Louisiana High Schools says:

  January 20, 2009 at 2:26 pm

  […] Title: Louisiana edu­ca­tion steps fur­ther into the mire : John Connell … […]

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