If you won­der why I haven’t been blog­ging late­ly, it’s because I’ve been try­ing to keep sci­ence safe in the Vol­un­teer State; for instance, here’s a great piece Huff­in­g­ton Post sci­ence edi­tor Cara San­ta Maria put togeth­er, includ­ing an inter­view with yours tru­ly.

If you watch the NCSE front page (and you should), you’ll see that it’s almost all-Ten­nessee, all the time. Ten­nessee is get­ting ready to repeat an unfor­tu­nate part of its state’s his­to­ry, the But­ler Act and Scopes tri­al of the 1920s.
Of course, cre­ation­ism evolves, so the 21st cen­tu­ry ver­sion won’t take the same tack. In 1925, Scopes was con­vict­ed of vio­lat­ing a state law ban­ning the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion, claim­ing that evo­lu­tion denies the Bib­li­cal account of human ori­gins. The judge in that case denied tes­ti­mo­ny from the­olo­gians and sci­en­tists who would have argued that evo­lu­tion does no such thing, leav­ing pros­e­cu­tor, anti-evo­lu­tion ora­tor, Sec­re­tary of State, and 5‑time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date William Jen­nings Bryan as the sole expert wit­ness. It was not until the 1960s that such laws were struck down by the US Supreme Court.

The bil­l’s advo­cates have had plen­ty of time to try to jus­ti­fy this bill. It was first con­sid­ered a full year ago: it passed the state House hand­i­ly, but was put on hold in the Sen­ate. Many hoped that hold was per­ma­nent, but Sen­ate pres­i­dent pro tem­pore Bo Wat­son sped it out of com­mit­tee and into a floor vote ear­li­er this week.

Rather than ban­ning evo­lu­tion, the “mon­key bill” of 2011 and 2012 takes a sub­tler approach. Declar­ing that evo­lu­tion, cli­mate change, and human cloning (wingnut code for stem cell research) are sub­ject to “con­tro­ver­sy” or even “debate and dis­pu­ta­tion,” the law cre­ates spe­cial rules for sci­ence teach­ers. No one has ever explained why sci­ence teach­ers are the only ones who ought to be pro­mot­ing crit­i­cal think­ing and the oth­er noble goals the leg­is­la­ture lists, nor has any­one jus­ti­fied the prac­ti­cal effects of the bill, which would be far less laudable.
After feel­go­od hand­wav­ing about encour­ag­ing crit­i­cal think­ing and under­stand­ing of sci­en­tif­ic ideas (which sci­ence teach­ers already do, and hard­ly need the leg­is­la­ture to instruct them about), the bill announces that school admin­is­tra­tors – from the state board of edu­ca­tion down to local­ly elect­ed school boards and school prin­ci­pals – are for­bid­den to “pro­hib­it any teacher in a pub­lic school…from help­ing stu­dents under­stand, ana­lyze, cri­tique, and review in an objec­tive man­ner the sci­en­tif­ic strengths and sci­en­tif­ic weak­ness­es of exist­ing sci­en­tif­ic theories.” 

Of course, no one has shown that any teacher has ever been pro­hib­it­ed from doing any such thing, at least since the end of the last gen­er­a­tion of mon­key bills. But because so many key terms are unde­fined, it’s easy to see how a teacher could offer a cre­ation­ist les­son, or one deny­ing the real­i­ty or human cau­sa­tion of cli­mate change, and refuse to drop that les­son by cit­ing this law. A par­en­t’s objec­tions, or clear instruc­tions from a super­vi­sor, could be waved away with the claim that any such inter­fer­ence would vio­late this pro­vi­sion of the law.

Some­times the bil­l’s advo­cates say that’s not what they intend, but some­times they let the cat out of the bag. The bil­l’s spon­sor explained to reporters that “the idea behind this bill is that stu­dents should be encour­aged to chal­lenge cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic thought and the­o­ry.” Anoth­er sen­a­tor sug­gest­ed that the bill was need­ed to let teach­ers answer stu­dents when they ask “How does this fit with what we learned in Sun­day school?” Dur­ing floor debate on Mon­day night, Sen­a­tor Andy Berke replied: “I’m a per­son of faith…If my chil­dren ask, ‘How does that mesh with my faith?’ I don’t want their teacher answer­ing that ques­tion,” explain­ing that he’d want to answer that him­self, or bring it up with their own reli­gious leader. Berke added that the bill was unnec­es­sary, and not­ed, “We are sim­ply dredg­ing up the prob­lems of the past with this bill and that will affect our teach­ers in the future.” 

Despite objec­tions from Berke and 7 oth­er Sen­a­tors (of 32 vot­ing), the bill passed the Sen­ate that night, the 152 birth­day of Scopes’ pros­e­cu­tor, William Jen­nings Bryan.

The bill is now await­ing action in the Ten­nessee House (where it pre­vi­ous­ly passed 70–23 with only minor dif­fer­ences), and then will pro­ceed to Gov­er­nor Haslam. Haslam has declined to com­ment on the bil­l’s mer­its, but not­ed that it might well over­step the leg­is­la­ture’s role. “It is a fair ques­tion what the Gen­er­al Assem­bly’s role is,” he told reporters dur­ing an appear­ance at a local school. “That’s why we have a state board of education.”

While the board itself has yet to weigh in, Ten­nessee’s teach­ers have been vocal in their oppo­si­tion. Ten­nessee Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Becky Ashe wrote to the leg­is­la­ture to oppose the bill, call­ing it “unnec­es­sary, anti-sci­en­tif­ic, and very like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.” The state’s lead­ing sci­en­tists – includ­ing the only Nobel lau­re­ate in sci­ence liv­ing in Ten­nessee – all signed a let­ter to the leg­is­la­ture, observ­ing that the bill “would mise­d­u­cate stu­dents, harm the state’s nation­al rep­u­ta­tion, and weak­en its efforts to com­pete in a sci­ence-dri­ven glob­al econ­o­my.” They are joined in their con­cerns by nation­al sci­ence soci­eties – includ­ing AAAS and AIBS – and sci­ence edu­ca­tion groups like NABT, NAGT, and NESTA.

If the bil­l’s spon­sors think they’re help­ing teach­ers, per­haps they should lis­ten to those teach­ers’ concerns.

It’s rather more like­ly that the spon­sors are lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent par­ties, like the cre­ation­ist Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute whose mod­el leg­is­la­tion served as inspi­ra­tion for this bill. Dis­co. ‘tute spin­ner Casey Luskin cel­e­brat­ed the bil­l’s Sen­ate pas­sage, but could­n’t help act­ing put upon in the process. He writes:

The Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion (NCSE) is already mock­ing SB 893 as the “Ten­nessee mon­key bill”– rem­i­nis­cent of the law passed in the 1920s that crim­i­nal­ized the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion in Ten­nessee, lead­ing to the Scopes tri­al. How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is the reverse of what it was in the 1920s.

Sad­ly, no! The “mon­key bill” coinage orig­i­nat­ed with for­mer Ten­nessee House Speak­er Jim­my Naifeh, on March 29, 2011:

“The mon­key bill is back before us,” Rep. Jim­my Naifeh, D‑Covington, said, warn­ing it could embar­rass Ten­nessee and hurt the state’s econ­o­my. “I’m just say­ing these things can be said and will be said about us. It may have some far-reach­ing effects that we don’t see at this time.”

The Dis­co. ‘tute is no less wrong in claim­ing that the bill is just about sci­ence. Look at the reli­gious con­text the bil­l’s own spon­sors place it in, and the com­plete sci­en­tif­ic and edu­ca­tion­al oppo­si­tion to it. 

As Casey him­self acknowl­edges, “When crit­ics have to resort to false­hood­s…, you know that some­thing else is going on.” That some­thing else is an ide­o­log­i­cal attack on sci­ence, and thus the eco­nom­ic future of Tennessee.

At this point, it looks like it’s up to Gov­er­nor Haslam to pro­tect the state’s stu­dents, par­ents, and teach­ers from their own legislature.