As if Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern’s anti-gay rant wasn’t bad enough:
Kern is one of the authors of House Bill 2211, which requires public schools “to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized.” The bill was just approved by the Oklahoma House Education Committee, and is expected to pass the full House. If passed, says Dave McNeely of the Edmond Sun, it could mean that:
If a student’s religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student’s incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory. . . . Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student’s belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct. Science education becomes absurd under such a situation.
Sigh. We’ve been thrashing this one out in education ever since the thirteenth century, more or less. (Don’t get me started; I did most of my graduate work on medieval science.)
Students could also take the opportunity to use school-sanctioned assemblies to speak about their religious beliefs, no matter how proselytizing they wanted to be, according to McNeely. This, to me, is a very different matter than allowing them to do so in private conversation, and conflicts with the separation of religion from public education as required by both the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions.
The Texas Legislature passed a similar bill several months ago. Some schools in the state are now forbidding students from speaking at any school assemblies, for fear that religious speeches could embroil the schools in lawsuits. Both Texas and Oklahoma’s bills were promoted by the ultra-conservative Liberty Legal Institute of Plano, Texas.
I know there are fair-minded Oklahomans petitioning to remove Rep. Kern from office. I’m confident there are those in the state who will also work to defeat this absurd legislation.
(Thanks to Roger of Blogging Baby for the tip.)
It was also once *believed* that if you put grain and a piece of sweater, you can make mice.
I *believe* I’ve had enough of their faux science.
I can imagine that if you’re from Oklahoma it might be easier to believe that the earth is flat too.