Texas Bible Class

In 2007, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 1287 into law. The law, which goes into effect this fall, requires all public schools in the state of Texas to offer elective courses on the Bible. While most of us will easily recognize this as thinly disguised religious indoctrination, there are those who will undoubtedly feel that this law is purely secular, especially when the following language from the bill is considered:

[The course] must be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner that does not attempt to indoctrinate students as to either the truth or falsity of the Judeo-Christian biblical materials or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition...[and] may not include teaching of a religious doctrine or a sectarian interpretation of the Old or New Testament or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition; and...may not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.

Isn't that nice? A school, while teaching a course on the Bible, won't be encouraging "commitment" to a particular religious belief system. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Teach the Bible without promoting a particular set of religious beliefs? You might as well try to teach the Magna Carta without mentioning English history. It can't be done. And to mandate Bible classes alone, without any regard or attention to the sacred texts of other religions, is the establishment, through favor, or a particular religious belief by a state government. And that, my dear readers, is unconstitutional.

But why stop there? Let's dig a little deeper into this little piece of legislation. The stated purposes of this class are to:

(1) accommodate the rights and desires of teachers who wish to teach and students who wish to study, as applicable, the Old or New Testament; and (2) familiarize students with: the contents of the Old or New Testament; the history recorded by the Old or New Testament; the literary style and structure of the Old or New Testament; the customs and cultures of the peoples and societies recorded in the Old or New Testament; and the influence of the Old or New Testament on law, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values, and culture.

Now the authors of the bill have done a couple of things here. First, they try to pass off this gross violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by stating they are simply trying to accommodate the "rights" of students and teachers. Then they give a nicely detailed hierarchy of what students should learn from the class. By the time you read through that list, you're left with the impression that the courses purpose is purely secular: a chance to study the historical, sociological, and literary impact of the most popular book in history. As one teacher puts it:

"By the end of the year, what they begin to realize is that it is pervasive. You can't get away from it. The kids came back and were like 'It's everywhere,'" said John Keeling, the social studies chair at Whitehouse High School. Whitehouse already offers a Bible elective. "The purpose of a course like this isn't even really to get kids to believe it, per se, it is just to appreciate the profound impact that it has had on our history and on our government."

But if you look back at the list of what sorts of things a student would "familiarize" themselves with, you see the true intent:
1. The content of the Old or New Testament: Students will learn the content of the Bible. There's not much secular about that.
2. The history recorded by the Old or New Testament: Notice that they don't say the history OF the Old or New Testament, but the history RECORDED BY the Old or New Testament.

The other objectives are, admittedly, more secular. But it's hard to ignore the religious implications of the first two. And even harder to ignore that the law goes on to mandate that the Bible itself will be the primary textbook used in the course. Never mind the wealth of good, scholarly literature that speaks directly to the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written, or the sociological and cultural impacts of the Old and New Testaments over the past two millenia (in all fairness the law does allow for other "supplemental" readings to be used), this mandate simply takes for granted that a student will learn everything that they need to know about the Bible by simply...reading the Bible.

This is fundamentalism. And this is state sponsored religious indoctrination. And to disguise it as something else is even worse...its brainwashing. It blatantly flies in the face of one of the freedoms that we hold dearest. It makes a mockery of public education. And in trying to fit religion through a secular loophole, it comes dangerously close to being sacrilegious.

Texas BoE Chairman

I don't know where to begin with this one...it's like a school lunch, you've just got to digest it for awhile:

I do like the part about "somebody needs to stand up to these experts." I agree. Who do they think they are being all..."experty" and stuff. That's the last thing we need in education is experts.

It's good of him to bring up Stephen Jay Gould, and he's right that Gould had issues with both the stasis of species and the Cambrian Explosion...so you know what Gould did about that? He proposed a new theory...a new model...a new idea of how evolution works. It's call punctuated equilibrium, and you can read all about it in almost any biology textbooks. Gould's work strengthened the theory of evolution, because it's an example of GOOD, SOLID SCIENCE.

Oh, and the Cambrian explosion took place over about 30 million years. And while that's still a relatively short period of time in the Earth's 4.6 billion year history, it's not really as sudden as creationists would lead you to believe.

Natural selection is not an unguided process. Beneficial traits are passed on in greater frequency than harmful ones because organisms with beneficial traits in a particular environment are more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. That is a guided, selective process...there's nothing random about it.

Stasis (groups of organisms that stay the same for long periods of time) absolutely supports the theory of evolution by natural selection. If we understand that organisms that are better adapted to their environment are more likely to pass on their traits, then it follows that a type of organism that is well adapted to its environment probably isn't going to change much unless there is a significant change to the environmental niche that they occupy.

Texas, Continued

Last week, I wrote a post here about the fight over science standards that was happening within the Texas state board of education. The news, at that time, was good. Creationists had failed to get the needed votes to re-insert a clause into the standards requiring the teaching of "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, I jumped the gun a little, as Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy points out:

After that, the news sinks rapidly. The far-right Republicans on the Board were not finished. They put in language to weaken the Big Bang theory, saying that there are different estimates for the age of the Universe. You can try to be coy and say this is also strictly true, but again that’s a cheat and a lie. The woman who proposed this is obviously a young-Earth creationist, and when she says "different ages", she means 6000 years. This belief in a young Earth, is, simply, dead wrong. We know the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the Earth, while younger than that, is still 4.55 or so billion years old itself. This is not some random guess, this is rock-solid (literally) science, confirmed independently from such diverse scientific fields as astronomy, physics, chemistry, anthropology, archaeology… and even the study of how languages change over time shows the humanity is older than 6000 years.

These same people on the Board added language to the standards to weaken teaching about global warming. Don McLeroy, who is a creationist and also the Chairman of the BoE, said that climate change is "hooey". They also attack the science on the complexity of the cell, and the initial genesis of life (called abiogeneisis; life from non-life). These are all standard creationist tactics.

I guess the bright side of this is that maybe Texas will replace Kansas as the international laughingstock when science standards are discussed. But the damage that this could potentially do to science education in one of our largest states, especially in a time when society is so worried about our children falling behind the rest of the world in science, is extremely scary. You can believe what you want...that's your right. But to force those beliefs on the rest of society by manipulating the political system is not only illegal, but is a gross bastardization of religion.

Evolution in Texas

In January, the Texas State Board of Education took a preliminary vote on a new set of science standards that will govern how science is taught for the next 10 years in the Lone Star State. I wrote about it here. As with most science-standards debates, most of the discussion centered around evolution. For the past 20 years, the Texas standards have included this language:

The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

The new standards will take out this "strengths and weaknesses" language and replace it with:

The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing.

The revised standards eliminate the "back door" approach to creationism that is the intent of "strengths and weaknesses" language, and have been endorsed by dozens of scientific and professional organizations. On January 23, the Texas board of education gave preliminary approval to the revised standards after an amendment to re-insert the "strengths and weaknesses" language failed on a split 7-7 vote.

Final action on these standards was scheduled for today and tomorrow, following a public hearing date on Wednesday. Earlier today, evolution opponents again failed to pass an amendment restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" language on a split 7-7 vote.

A last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that Texas teachers cover the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution in science classes was rejected by the State Board of Education Thursday in a split vote.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a long-time curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be taught in science classes and covered in textbooks for those subjects.
[...]
The tie vote upheld a tentative decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade.

Those standards spell out not only how evolution is to be covered, but also what is supposed to be taught in all science classes in elementary and secondary schools, as well as providing the material for state tests and textbooks.

A final vote is scheduled for tomorrow, but the results are expected to be the same. Proponents of science education claim this as a major victory in their struggle to keep creationism out of science classes, since the Texas standards typically have a large influence on what textbook publishers include in their books.

Evolution in Texas

Kansas has a bad reputation when it comes to science education. At one point, Popular Science magazine even listed "Kansas Biology Teacher" as the third worst job in science. The bad press comes from our state's ongoing political controversy as to how evolution should be treated in the state science standards.

But it should be pointed out that we're not the only state that's having this discussion. In fact, Texas is currently discussing proposed revisions to their science standards. At issue is whether the following language:

The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

Should be replaced with:

The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing.

"Strengths and weaknesses" language is a tactic commonly used by opponents to evolution as a way to weaken the credibility of certain theories (like evolution) that are perceived to be in conflict with their religious beliefs.

As always, the National Center for Science Education has a great summary of these proceedings on their website.