Or even directly. Teacher can now tell them about Scientology or 
Posted on 04/28/2006 2:07:06 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
School officials can't prohibit teachers and students from discussing how life began under a new state law signed by Gov. Haley Barbour.
As originally drafted, the measure was designed to foster discussions about the theory of "intelligent design" and flaws with Darwin's explanation of how humans evolved. However, the Legislature expanded it to simply say no limits can be imposed on teachers and students in class talking about "the origin of life."
Intelligent design is presented as an alternative to natural explanations for evolution, but at least one court ruled it out of public schools because it's considered religious doctrine. A federal judge in Pennsylvania last year said intelligent design is not science and is essentially religion, which the U.S. Supreme Court says can't be taught in public schools.
The bill, which took effect with Barbour's signature, passed the Legislature in March.
"No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life," the bill reads.
While banning school leaders from muzzling classroom discussions on this subject, the new law isn't as detailed as the initial version. The Senate had voted to prohibit schools from stifling classroom discussions about the "flaws or problems which may exist in Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the existence of other theories of evolution, including, but not limited to, the Intelligent Design explanation of the origin of life." The House rejected that language, prompting legislative negotiators to draft the less explicit compromise that's now law.
Local school officials say they've not had a problem and worry the new law is so vague that court challenges may loom.
"That's probably something that's going to be contested. It is very vague," said Lowndes County schools Superintendent Mike Halford of the need for clarification of what can be discussed in the classroom.
"We're starting to see lawsuits pop up from this," said Halford, pointing to other states where disputes have sprung up about what students can be taught about the origin of life. "It's just a problem we don't need," he said.
Columbus High School Principal LaNell Kellum said her school hasn't faced disputes about what evolutionary theories can be discussed in class. "In all my years, we have not had a problem with that. That has not been an issue," Kellum said. "We've not had a problem with that in Columbus."
Noting Darwin's theory of evolution is part of the state's school curriculum, she said teachers use professional ethics and follow the state-written guidelines for teaching their subjects. "Our teachers have been able to use their professional judgment and teach the curriculum without a problem," she said.
Evolution is the biological theory or process of how organisms change with the passage of time with descendants differing from ancestors. Darwin propounded the theory of evolution by natural selection. Intelligent design's proponents say it is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, other suppositions about the origin of life.
However, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are unscientific. A federal judge in December ruled that a Pennsylvania public school district's requirement for teaching intelligent design violates the U.S. Constitution's clause separating church and state.
Another part of the bill would provide high school graduates who plan to enter the work force and not go to college with a special curriculum that provides a much-needed option to the college-prep courses that had been required.
The bill is House Bill 214.
Another thing that I taught my children is that knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Education seeks to instill knowledge while life experiences instill wisdom. In a society where there is free speech and where people appear to have taken no lesson in the fact they were given two ears and only one mouth, when walking through life one must be able to recognize a wet cow pattie from a dry one.
Muleteam1
Really? Do you submit your beliefs to rational thought? Or do you accept what you accept on faith? Probably the latter. Yet evolution is built on 150 years of research and massive mountains of evidence; no faith is required to accept it as the most accurate description for the diversity of life on this planet.
What a pathetic joke. Only in the kingdom of darwin would free and open discussion be condemned for 'vagueness."
It's "vague" because it doesn't toe the narrow line drawn by the ACLU between what is and isn't lawful to say about the origin and development of life.
In Iran you can be stoned for engaing in free and open discussions about Islam. In the US you can be sued into bankruptcy by the ACLU for engaging in free and open discussions about darwinism.
School officials can't prohibit teachers and students from discussing how life began under a new state law signed by Gov. Haley Barbour.It is sad when we have to pass laws to protect freedom of speech.
Why not give them the freedom to discuss the origin of rap music instead? At least we know something about how that happened.
Or even directly. Teacher can now tell them about Scientology or
If ID is bad science, it will fail on its own merits without any help from help from the state. Your tender concern for darwinism suggests that down deep you have no confidence in it. Apparently, unless it is propped up with boatloads of hot air, the ACLU, and the federal judiciary it will collapse.
Darwinism is rotten at the foundation, and you know it. That's why you refuse to stray more than a dozen from these threads and you panic and beg for the state to step with a club in when anybody suggests they don't believe in it.
Let it do battle on its own merits. let ID do battle on its own merits. Quit trying to force others to believe in your ignorant atheology.
Traffic cops for darwin. That's all we need.
I think you misunderstand the consequences of the law. Science teachers, given full freedom to discuss the origins of life, are going to discuss scientific conjectures, not religious ones. They will no longer be held back from teaching what science has to say.
Two guys speaking to each other using ebonics and a tom-tom?
Muleteam1
Another indication that the ID/creation movement has the momentum.
The 'movement' is really assertively exercising it muscle here. This is a truly impressive bold move.
You mean it is in a Book? They why isn't this Book being taught in school? :)
I assume 
is the book that Blzbba is referring too (Any schoolkid will tell you the 1940s were like the Dawn of Time)
There are enough Kitzmiller Syndrome sufferers at ACLU headquarters and Panda's Thumb to fill the psychiatric ward of a large urban hospital. They almost lose their minds at the thought that someone might think "unhealthy" (critical of darwinism) thoughts, and they demand that the state step in and stop it from happening.
Paradoxically, a lot of them get just as upset if you suggest the state ought not tell people what to put into their lungs.
Chin up - maybe the ACLU can soak Mississippi for their tax dollars, as was cheered on in PA. Doesn't freedom suck?
If conservatives with mixed up priorities didn't provide the sponge and what gets soaked by it and hand it to them, this wouldn't be a problem.
So you're applauding the ACLU's strongarm tactics to keep the atheology of darwinism enthroned?
No.
No.
Any conservative who supports the ACLU in its hamfisted efforts to stifle free discussion and dissent in the name of "liberty" ought to turn in his Reagan lapel pin and declare openly for the dark side, where black is white and up is down.
You seem to act as if only the ID/creation ideas alone will be given equal time in the classroom...that is not what this bill is saying...it is allowing for any and all different ideas to be included...ID/creation is only one such idea...there are many other ideas, which have nothing at all to do with the Christian religion...are you also in favor of allowing them equal time? This bill says nothing about ID/creation...it just says that other ideas may be discussed...Do you have any objection to the ideas that come from Native American groups?...do you have any objections to the Moonies, and their creation stories?..there are scores of such groups, all with their own creation stories...do we allow all of them equal time in the classroom?...that seems to be what this bill is saying...
Seems to me, this very vague bill, opens the way for any and all ideas concerning origin the species and 'origin of life"(phrase used in the article)...all views, according to this bill, would need to be given equal time and equal discussion...
ID/creation would be only one among many...does this have your suppport?...are all alternatives to evolution free to be discussed?...I would suggest, there is not enough time in a school day, to accomplish this...
A few quotations from The Wedge Strategy, by the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture:
The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built.Reading these quotes from the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture, and comparing with this more recent quotation (above), a person with a suspicious nature could come to the conclusion that the truth is being stretched here somewhere.We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
Goal: To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
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