By Barbara Forrest

The Louisiana Coalition for Science is very pleased that the National Association of Biology Teachers has endorsed Zack Kopplin’s campaign to repeal the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008. We wish to thank them publicly for their letter of support [pdf].

The National Association of Biology Teachers fully endorses the campaign to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. The National Association of Biology Teachers joined other individuals and organizations to oppose the passage of this legislation on the grounds that it intentionally utilized language that clearly allows non-scientific explanations for topics such as evolution, the origins of life, and climate change, to be introduced into the classroom as science. The National Association of Biology Teachers affirms that teaching biology must be in a standards-based instructional framework, upholding scientific integrity and the right to teach accurate and current science without penalty of political or religious influences on content. The Louisiana Science Education Act can and does confuse students about the true nature of science by allowing classroom materials to bypass approval from the state’s science education standards committees for use in the classroom. Students are best served when scientific integrity is maintained in the science classroom. As an organization dedicated to biology education, we are honored to join the effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act.
 

By Barbara Forrest

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has become the first national organization to announce its support for Zack Kopplin’s effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. We present the SVP’s policy statement below, with our sincere thanks. And we ask all Louisiana science organizations to publicly support the repeal effort as well.

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Policy Statements

SVP Statement about Louisiana’s new “Science Education Act”

Today the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), the world’s leading organization of vertebrate paleontologists, urges Louisiana citizens and legislators to repeal the “Louisiana Science Education Act” and to prohibit the injection of religious content in America’s public school classrooms. The SVP added its voice to those of other leading scientific societies, scientists and citizens concerned about Louisiana’s new “Science Education Act (the Act).

The Act was drafted under the guise of “academic freedom” and appeals to cherished values of fairness and free speech. However, SVP says the Act intends to garner support and legal protection for the introduction of religious, creationist concepts, including intelligent design, in public school science curricula. By permitting instructional materials that are not reviewed by the state’s science standards committees, the Louisiana Act and those like it encourage teachers and administrators to work outside these standards. This makes it possible for local school boards to define science and science education to suit their own agendas, thereby compromising the quality of science education for students, and allowing religious discrimination in America’s public school science classrooms.

By Barbara Forrest

Zachary Kopplin, the Baton Rouge Magnet High School senior who has mounted an effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, has just issued a press release. It is the official kick-off of his campaign to get this creationist law repealed. The Louisiana Coalition for Science is proud to be working with Zack in this effort. Here is his press release:

High School Student Launches Campaign to Repeal Louisiana’s Creationism Law

Building upon a grassroots effort last winter that was successful in fighting off efforts to insert creationism into Louisiana science textbooks, Baton Rouge Magnet High School Senior Zack Kopplin is helping lead an effort to have the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) repealed during the Louisiana Legislature’s 2011 Regular Session. State Senator Karen Carter Peterson (New Orleans) has announced that she will sponsor the repeal legislation.

The misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act, which was passed and signed into law in 2008, is stealth legislation to encourage Louisiana public school science teachers to include creationist materials in their curriculum. In Livingston Parish Louisiana, school board members explicitly cited this law last summer in their push to mandate that creationism be made part of the science curriculum for the 2011-12 school year.

“State of Belief,” a radio program sponsored by Interfaith Alliance, recently featured a dialogue about the repeal effort between Kopplin and Welton Gaddy who is the President of Interfaith Alliance and a Baptist minister from Monroe, Louisiana. Dr. Barbara Forrest, co-founder of the Louisiana Coalition for Science also was featured on the show. The interview aired Feb, 13, and can be listened to here.   Gaddy said of Kopplin’s repeal effort,

It represents the the best thinking in American science, the best thinking in American religion, and it also reflects the United States constitution.

Kopplin’s role in this campaign was recently featured in an Op-Ed titled “Student takes role of David to creationists’ legislative Goliath” in The Lens, which wrote

Kopplin rightly views the legislation as costumed creationism – ridiculous Trojan horse legislation that lets instructors teach scientific “controversies” where none exist. He understands that when pseudo-scientific “supplemental” materials are used to critique scientific theories (such as evolution or gravity), a false balance results: ungrounded speculations are placed on par with the overwhelming scientific consensus.

For more information, please visit www.repealcreationism.com and see our fact sheet.

Drew Brees and baby Baylen

GEAUX  SAINTS!!

THANKS, BOYS!

WHO DAT NATION

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is one of the nation’s foremost defenders of religious liberty as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. AU played a vital role in the first intelligent design legal case, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005). In its monthly publication, Church & State, AU will be profiling activists who have worked on behalf of church-state separation. Below is the first of these profiles.

January 2010 Featured

By Sandhya Bathija

For Barbara Forrest, fighting for church-state separation and quality science education in Louisiana – and the rest of the nation – has become her civic duty.

“Someone once said, ‘knowledge brings responsibility.’ I had the skills to do it, I knew what was going on, I understood it,” Forrest said, describing why she wrote her first book with co-author Paul R. Gross, Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, a 2004 work (updated in paperback in 2007) that exposed the theocratic agenda of the Discovery Institute and other creationist organizations. “I don’t want these people running my country and running my kids’ schools.”

Read the rest of this article on AU’s website.

After Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana received an extraordinary outpouring of generosity and help from our fellow Americans and from people around the world. To this day, people are still coming to New Orleans to help rebuild the city. We now must help the Haitians, who are experiencing untold misery after the earthquake. Doctors Without Borders, a Nobel-Prize-winning organization that provides medical care in some of the most desperate places on earth, has lost all three of its hospitals in Haiti. We have to help them. Please donate directly to DWB here.

By Barbara Forrest

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. / Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look: This is something new’? / It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”  — Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, New International Version Continue Reading »

Just a slight twist on the words of Orleans’s popular song accurately describes Louisiana’s position at the top of the charts concerning the “academic freedom” bills that the Discovery Institute has been peddling in various and sundry states around the country. The results are in concerning this year’s roster of academic freedom bills:  Louisiana is still the one — the only one with a law on the books [pdf], Act 473, the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” permitting teachers to use creationist supplements in our public school science classes (a fact that the young-earth Institute for Creation Research has noted approvingly). Continue Reading »