Last week, the Tennessee legislature signed a bill into law allowing school teachers to bring in supplemental theories and textbooks to address controversies in existing science and to entertain unscientific debate in the classroom, all under the guise of "encouraging critical thinking" among schoolchildren. This deplorable bill was scripted by the state’s Republican lawmakers with help from the Discovery Institute, an organization known for its championing ‘Intelligent Design’ as an alternative to Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
The new law has been dubbed as the monkey bill in reference to the infamous The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes trial of 1925 when a high school teacher was found guilty of violating an act that made unlawful the teaching of evolution in any state- funded school. The new law specifically lists out evolution, anthropogenic global warming, human cloning and the chemical origins of life as topics that cause debate and dispute. It allows teachers to address scientific issues from any viewpoint without let or hindrance as long as it is shrouded in the notion as being necessary to help better "understand, analyze, critique and review" the strengths and weaknesses. The backers of the bill, and obvious references to scientific issues that have always caused the ultra-religious queasy should hint at the nefarious intent of the new law.
Faced with setback in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Board case in 2005, organizations like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute have resorted to a new tactic: instead of forcing the teaching the ridiculous concept of Intelligent Design, this new law protects an unscrupulous teacher, should he or she want to spout more of such unscientific claptrap in their science class. These groups have been vociferously, and quite falsely, proclaiming that Darwinian evolution and global warming are only theories with gaps that need to be filled, and that there is no consensus among scientists in these highly "controversial and debatable" issues. Under the seemingly benign effort of opening up the critical faculties of children, and presenting them with all of the theories out there so they can make up their own minds, an agenda that seeks to undermine the core of science education in schools is vigorously being peddled. Five such anti-evolution bills have been introduced so far in 2012, and a new one is being readied in Oklahoma.
If efforts are not taken to keep this unscientific and religiously-motivated agenda in check, in a few generations, the term ‘scientist’ could very well comprise of alchemists, astrologers, faith healers and creationists, leading mankind back into the Dark Ages, where these anti-science groups intend to deliver us to.
Anurag Mandalika is a graduate student in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering.
