The word freedom gets tossed around a lot. It seems like the mot-du-jour for anyone smart enough to realize that manipulating people is as easy as telling them that such an important value might be taken away.
A few years ago, Creationists wanted people to “tech the controversy”. That was their angle, and they had managed to make a few inroads in schools. After a devastating ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, it was time for them to go on the offensive. That’s why they’ve decided that the best way to push back is by invoking people’s sense of fairness and use the word “academic freedom” like they understand what that means.
The Governor of Louisiana, in his “infinite wisdom”, has helped pass a new bill that allows school to approve supplemental classroom materials to critique scientific theories they disagree with. In other words, religious creationists will bring in their intellectually disingenuous “intelligent design” into classrooms.
That means that if a school board is stupid enough to try and sneak their crap into biology classes, they open the door for possible litigation. Considering that the Dover trial cost over 2 million dollars in legal fees, you might be wondering what these idiots were thinking. It boils down to one thing: If you martyr small, ignorant school districts by feeding them to the courts, only to have them lose and become stifled in debt, you will create the illusion that government is out to take people’s freedom away. It will also look, to the uneducated many, that science is deadly afraid of intelligent design.
Here’s my proposal to the ACLU, or any other group thinking it’s a good idea to sue the schools that will take this opportunity to try and teach their creationist garbage: go after the legislators instead. If you go after these tiny, “we don’t know what we are doing wrong” school districts, you will only garner sympathy for their cause. You’ll also be regarded poorly for sending underfunded schools further into debt, likely decreasing the overall quality of their education. If you want to fight someone, fight the ringleaders, not the pawns.
Ryan Harkness and Jacob Fortin are both writers and comedians, as well full time godless heathens.
No surprise there. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s a religious nut from way back.
When did learning about something in school mean you were forced to believe in it, too? Thinking back to learning evolution in high school, my teachers didn’t give a shit what you believed in as long as you learned the material. And learning something like evolution is a benefit to everyone - the people who believe it get to learn more about it, and those who don’t can just consider is a crash course in counter-apologetics.
From what I’ve read, these academic freedom bills that have been cropping up basically equate to “you can’t make anyone learn anything that might hold their beliefs up in a more critical light, and you can’t give them bad grades just because their beliefs contradict accepted fact and empirical data”. And that’s going to open a Pandora’s Box of ridiculous bullshit in public schools that we have to pretend isn’t ridiculous bullshit. Can’t wait until some Flat Earther family sues because the schools told their kid he was nuts …
I get the vibe those who proposed the Bill are shying away from coming out and saying they want to specifically “critique” Evolution. Perhaps this is the case because they fear being shot down for overtly trying to get Creationism back into public schools.
Therefore, the way around this is to simply demand to see a list of the Theories they want to review– _and_ the science behind their proposals.
They want to analyse scientific theories? Fine. But let’s see which ones they want to ‘fix.’
If this were demanded, the legislators would’ve clearly seen it’s Creationists up to no good. And in that case, they could easily terminate the proposal with justification.
As Jacob pointed out in an earlier podcast, Creationists use all kinds of ridiculous tactics to get their way(remember “Teach the Controversy?”). Now they’ve resorted to using BS semantics, perhaps their most effective approach yet.
All we need to do is call their bluff.
We may be fighting a losing battle. My daughter’s 7 year old friend is a the child of jehovah’s witnesses. I’ve never met the parents, but it is hard to argue science with a 7 year old who is perfectly happy to not celebrate the great pumpkin, xmas or even her own birthday!!