Public school educators in Tennessee can now teach their students
the tenets of creationism, intelligent design, and global warming
skepticism with impunity, according to opponents of a new law in the
state. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam declined to either sign or veto
the state’s so-called “monkey bill,” which prohibits public school
officials from stopping a teacher who aims to teach alternatives to
well-established scientific theories such as evolution and global
climate change. As a result, HB 368 became law on Tuesday (April 10).
Proponents of science education had been urging Haslam to veto the bill after Tennessee’s state Senate and House of Representatives passed it by a 3-to-1 margin last month.
The new law—which makes Tennessee the second state to open public school doors to the teaching of creationism, intelligent design, and climate change skepticism after Louisiana enacted a similar law 3 years ago—states that educators “shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” It highlights specific topics that can stir the pot, “including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy.”
Opponents of the legislation see red flags in the topics the law singles out. “HB 368 and other bills like it are a permission slip for teachers to bring creationism, climate-change denial, and other non-science into science classrooms,” Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, told Nature.
Proponents of science education had been urging Haslam to veto the bill after Tennessee’s state Senate and House of Representatives passed it by a 3-to-1 margin last month.
The new law—which makes Tennessee the second state to open public school doors to the teaching of creationism, intelligent design, and climate change skepticism after Louisiana enacted a similar law 3 years ago—states that educators “shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” It highlights specific topics that can stir the pot, “including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy.”
Opponents of the legislation see red flags in the topics the law singles out. “HB 368 and other bills like it are a permission slip for teachers to bring creationism, climate-change denial, and other non-science into science classrooms,” Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, told Nature.
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