Fort Collins Coloradoan (12-FEB-2007)

What is wrong with the Public School Religious Bill of Rights?

State Senator Dave Schultheis of Colorado Springs has introduced a bill that claims to be a "Religious Bill of Rights".   It would direct local school boards to allow teachers to avoid topics that "conflict with the individual's religious beliefs" while students could "opt out of any class ... inconsistent with his or her religious beliefs".   Parents could also "excuse his or her child from any class ... that is inconsistent with the parent's religious beliefs."    Perhaps the bill should be renamed as the "Leave children ignorant bill."    It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the bill is aimed at the teaching of evolutionary biology.   As a biologist, I have no problem with allowing students to opt out of education - after all the pursuit of happiness is a basic premise upon which our country was founded, and it is often said that ignorance is bliss.   That said the ignorant do not deserve credit for the courses that they, or their parents, disapprove, and which they do not attend.   It is no more possible to avoid evolutionary theory in biology, than it is to avoid the theory of gravity in physics, the laws of thermodynamics in chemistry, plate tectonics in geology, the big bang and an ancient (13 billion year old) universe in astronomy, the neural basis of consciousness in psychology and neurobiology, the common origin of humans in anthropology, or the reality of the Nazi holocaust in history.   I simply ask that those not willing to be educated wear the evidence of their ignorance in their transcripts.

At the same time, what to do about conflicts between students who want to learn, and parents and teachers not willing to allow learning - is this a form of child abuse?   Who will mediate such disputes?    Before a teacher is hired will they be required to disclose those topics they are unwilling to teach?   And what has belief got to do with it anyway? It is possible to lay out the overwhelming evidence, experimental, historic, and theoretical, in favor of evolutionary mechanisms in biology, without having to "believe" them.   I am curious as to what types of racists, and other sorts of delusionists, will be excused from teaching those parts of the curriculum (for example, equal protection under the law, separation of church and state, the impossibility of perpetual motion machines, or the reality of global warming) that offend their beliefs.  

Mike Klymkowsky

The Bioliteracy Project / Molecular, Cellular & Development Biology

University of Colorado, Boulder