Jindal Signs Bill

Bobby Jindal signed the Academic Freedom Act in Louisiana yesterday. The blog at nola.com reports this:

Jindal ignored those calling for a veto and this week signed the law that will allow local school boards to approve supplemental materials for public school science classes as they discuss evolution, cloning and global warming.

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will have the power to prohibit materials, though the bill does not spell out how state officials should go about policing local instructional practices.

Much evil lies in that last phrase. If they do not spell it out, than the local school teachers will teach whatever they want to, with little oversight. Parents will have to monitor very closely what is being taught and act accordingly.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

At the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design and backed the new education act, senior fellow John West said he and his colleagues did not directly lobby Jindal. The group did notify its supporters that groups such as the ACLU and the science organizations were pushing for a veto.

West said critics misunderstand the bill, which he said is not about creationism or intelligent design. Rather, he said, it's about clarifying that teachers are free to expose their students to the debates that Darwinian scientists have among themselves.

Instead, too many public school students get a "watered-down" discussion of evolutionary theory or nothing at all from teachers, and administrators are too concerned with not angering parents.

"This bill is not a license to propagandize against something they don't like in science," West said. "Someone who uses materials to inject religion into the classroom is not only violating the Constitution, they are violating the bill."

The bill enjoyed support from the Louisiana Family Forum, a group that is upfront in its push for more religious expressions in the public sphere.

That's the thing. If you read the Wedge Document, so is the Discovery Institute. The DI states publically that they don't want religion injected into the classroom, and yet, the Wedge Document calls for spiritual renewal in all areas of public life. As far as teaching evolution is concerned, Philip Johnson wrote a particularly bad book a few years back called Defeating Darwin by Opening Minds. As with all of Johnson's books, this one betrays a complete lack of knowledge of the fossil record.

They are not interested in promoting alternate ideas to evolution, they seek to remove it from education. It is not the spiritual renewal that bothers me. I think that this country could use a good revival. It is the naked deception that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.