It seems that one of the very popular movements around the nation at the moment is the use of "academic freedom" legislation to allow the teaching of unscientific beliefs in science classes at public schools. Apparently the fact that America is already lagging behind other industrialized countries in science doesn't phase these people who want to undermine scientific education even further.

Antievolution legislation in Louisiana

Senate Bill 561, styled the "Louisiana Academic Freedom Act," was prefiled in the Louisiana Senate by state senator Ben Nevers (Democrat-District 12) on March 21, 2008, and provisionally assigned to the Senate Education Committee, of which Nevers is the chair. In name, the bill is similar to the so-called academic freedom bills in Florida, House Bill 1483 and Senate Bill 2692, which are evidently based on a string of similar bills in Alabama as well as on a model bill that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to promote. But in its content, Louisiana's SB 561 seems to be modeled instead on a controversial policy adopted by a local school board in 2006.

Adopted in 2006 with the backing of the Louisiana Family Forum, a religious right group with a long history of promoting creationism and attacking evolution education in the state, the Ouachita Parish School Board's policy permits teachers to help students to understand "the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught"; "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning" are the only topics specifically mentioned. A local paper editorially described it as "a policy that is so clear that one School Board member voted affirmatively while adding, 'but I don't know what I'm voting on'" (Monroe News-Star, December 3, 2006).

The wording of these "academic freedom" bills is becoming increasingly sophisticated, using increasingly "scientific" language and terminology, but they are all intent on undercutting science. Effectively what this bill seeks to do is protect any "scientific claims" in regard to evolution, the development of life, etc. "Scientific" in this sense is inferred to mean non-supernatural claims, thus teaching things like "evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics" would be protected under the bill.

Text of the bill itself: Senate Bill 561