An act designed to allow the teaching of creationism in schools passed a major hurdle in Florida yesterday.
The ‘Evolution Academic Freedom Act.’ was approved by seven votes to three by the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee, and should now progress to the state’s full Senate.
The bill promotes what it calls “a right to present scientific information relevant to the full range of views on biological and chemical evolution”. It further states that it does not promote any religious doctrine.
But many of its opponents think it’s another stealth attempt to allow creationist ideas into science classes. If it’s really about academic freedom, the argument runs, why is it just limited to evolution? And the people behind it have something of a history of religiously motivated politicking.
As the Tampa Tribune puts it nicely: “Not free, just dumb.”
One of the ‘no’ votes came from Senate Democratic leader Steve Geller. “I believe the purpose of this bill is to let people bring their religious beliefs into school,” he says (Florida Sun Sentinel). “We need to keep the wall.”
Earlier this year Florida voted to make teaching of evolution required course work in public schools (see this Great Beyond post). Last month many of those behind the pro-evolution standards railed against the supposed academic freedom bill, according to the Orlando Sentinel, saying is was “a subterfuge for injecting the religious beliefs held by some into the science classroom”.
For a sense of where the act is coming from, take a look at where it, well, came from: a creationist website.
Compare the text of the bill to the text of this model act, helpfully supplied by the Academic Freedom Petition website, a joint project of the creationist Discovery Institute and Motive Marketing, which is running PR for anti-evolution film Expelled. If you were a teacher marking these as essays the plagiarism bells would be ringing.
(Meanwhile, for those not utterly tired of Expelled, the National Center for Science Education has launched an Expelled Exposed website.)
Similar bills are under consideration in Missouri and Louisiana
More coverage
Blogger Dorid Albuquerque has some t-shirts ready for the bill’s supporters
Tampa Tribune: “Not free, just dumb.”
Image: Florida, slightly less friendly towards science this morning / NASA Visible Earth