Louisiana Coalition for Science

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 »

Barbara Forrest

Fifty-seven point five percent is not a happy figure in Louisiana.  We may as well round up and say 58%. That’s the percentage of Louisiana residents who indicated in a recent survey that they favor teaching creationism along with evolution in the state’s public schools. The creationists at the Louisiana Family Forum and the Discovery Institute, who teamed up to promote the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, are surely rejoicing to learn this. Continue Reading »

Barbara Forrest

Louisiana is at or near the bottom of quite a few lists, a fact that is not news to anyone who lives here and cares about the future of the Pelican State. Gov. Bobby Jindal himself announces on his “Workforce Development” website that Louisiana is #49 —second from the bottom — with respect to schoolchildren’s educational success and economic prospects as adults:

Student achievement and preparation for the workforce:  In a 2007 national Chance-for-Success Index, Louisiana ranks #49 in the nation based on 13 indicators that highlight whether young children get off to a good start, succeed in elementary and secondary school, and hit crucial educational and economic benchmarks as adults.

But things are looking up — as of March 22, 2009, Louisiana is now actually at the top of a list. The only problem is that it is a list on which the Louisiana legislature and the governor should be ashamed to have placed us. Continue Reading »

Barbara Forrest

The repercussions that were expected from the Louisiana legislature’s passage and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signing of the creationist 2008 LA Science Education Act have begun. Louisiana taxpayers and schoolchildren are now reaping what the legislature and governor have sowed: the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, one of the nation’s leading scientific societies, is boycotting Louisiana. In a February 6, 2009, letter [pdf] to Gov. Bobby Jindal, SICB Executive Committee President Richard Satterlie told the governor that “The Executive Committee voted to hold the 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City in large part because of legislation SB 561, which you signed into law in June 2008…. Utah, in contrast [to Louisiana], passed a resolution that states that evolution is central to any science curriculum.” [See the resolution adopted by the Utah State Board of Education affirming that "The Theory of Evolution is a major unifying concept in science and appropriately included in Utah's K-12 Science Core Curriculum." Contrast this resolution with the recent decision by the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to strip the prohibition against teaching creationism from the policy implementing the LSEA.]

The LA Coalition for Science has issued a press release [pdf] announcing SICB’s decision. [Correction: Although the LA Science Education Act was first introduced as SB 561, it was renumbered during the legislative process and signed into law as SB 733.]

The legislature and the governor cannot say they weren’t warned. They were, but they ignored the warnings. Indeed, they ignored everyone except the creationists at the Discovery Institute and the Louisiana Family Forum. Before the Louisiana Family Forum and the Discovery Institute — and perhaps well-meaning critics — start squawking about how mean this is, let’s just consider a few things, shall we? Continue Reading »

By Barbara Forrest

“Louisiana Open for Business — Creationists Welcome”

That is the message that Louisiana public officials are sending to the rest of the country since the creationist LA Science Education Act (LSEA) was enacted into law in 2008. They are taking their instructions from, among others, the creationist Rev. Gene Mills, the executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), the Focus on the Family affiliate that engineered passage of the bill in the Louisiana legislature. Rev. Mills, whose own children are homeschooled and attend private Christian schools, actually made his victory announcement using those exact words: “Louisiana is open for business. . . . And academic freedom and inquiry are welcomed here in the state of Louisiana.” Of course, in referring to “academic freedom and inquiry” he was speaking in the well-documented creationist code language in which his friends at the Discovery Institute, an intelligent design creationist think tank, have coached him. Last year —2008— was a good year for creationists in Louisiana. So far in 2009, they are still batting a thousand. Continue Reading »

By Barbara Forrest

Today, December 20, 2008, marks the third anniversary of the landmark decision in the first intelligent design (ID) creationism legal case, Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Area School District (2005). Ever since that ruling, the plaintiffs and those of us who served on their legal team in the now-famous “Dover trial” observe the anniversary by wishing each other an affectionate “Merry Kitzmas!” On December 20, 2005, in a Memorandum Opinion that a former Ohio judge described as “judicial poetry,” Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the 2004 ID creationist policy statement adopted by the Dover, PA, school board “violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and . . . the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

As an expert witness for the plaintiffs, I would like to thank Judge Jones for helping to preserve both the integrity of public school science education and the constitutional separation of church and state through his decision. I was honored to serve in his courtroom and in this case. But this year, the anniversary of the plaintiffs’ success in the Kitzmiller case has been turned bittersweet by my state’s refusal to learn the lessons of Dover and of our own history. Despite Louisiana’s passage of a 1981 creationist law and the subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), which outlawed the teaching of creationism, the Louisiana legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal, by respectively passing and signing the LA Science Education Act (LSEA), ensured that our state will remain tethered to the bottom of every national quality-of-life survey. Continue Reading »

By Barbara Forrest

The kind of publicity that Gov. Bobby Jindal brought to Louisiana by signing the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), a stealth creationism bill, is the kind that the state could well do without. The December 2008 issue of Scientific American, the country’s most respected science magazine for the educated public, calls the attention of the entire country to the fact that Jindal ignored his Brown University biology professor, Dr. Arthur Landy, who publicly requested that he not sign the bill. (Prof. Landy’s appeal was only one of many. See here and here.) In “The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom,” Glenn Branch and Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education use Louisiana as the prime example of the creationist strategy of disguising their agenda in legislation such as the LSEA: “Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises.” Why did they use Louisiana as the prime example? Because we are the prime example—thanks to the Louisiana Family Forum, the Discovery Institute (the LFF’s partner in this sorry episode), the Louisiana legislature, and Gov. Jindal. Continue Reading »

• See Barbara Forrest, “Why Texans Shouldn’t Let Creationists Mess with Texas Science Education,” Southern Methodist University, November 11, 2008  — Video —  MP3

By Barbara Forrest

November 27, 2008

Texas science education is currently in the crosshairs of the Discovery Institute (DI), the conservative Seattle think tank that serves as the headquarters of the intelligent design (ID) creationist movement. DI’s supporters in the Lone Star state are using the same code-language strategy that its Louisiana supporters used earlier this year, in spring 2008, when DI targeted the science education of Louisiana children. Working through the Louisiana Family Forum, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, DI helped to promote the “academic freedom” bill that the legislature passed and Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law on June 25 as the “Louisiana Science Education Act” (LSEA). Long-time DI fellow David K. DeWolf admitted helping to shape the legislation, which is designed to permit the use of creationist supplementary materials such as DI’s intelligent design textbook, the deceptively titled Explore Evolution, in public school science classes. When Gov. Jindal signed the LSEA into law on June 25, the Discovery Institute declared victory. Now, in fall 2008, DI has targeted Texas. Continue Reading »

By Barbara Forrest

One of the clearest indications that the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) is intended to advance the religious agenda of the Discovery Institute (DI) and the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), the organizations that jointly promoted this legislation, is the law’s inclusion of a religion disclaimer that comes directly from DI’s doublespeak-titled “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.” Continue Reading »

SB 733, the “LA Science Education Act,” is now law in Louisiana. Prior to being passed in its current form, this bill was first introduced as SB 561, the “LA Academic Freedom Act.” It was one of six such bills, the introduction of which the Discovery Institute (DI), a creationist think tank in Seattle, coordinated in legislatures around the country. (Louisiana is the only state in which any of these bills has passed thus far.) During the LA Family Forum’s promotion of the bill, which was introduced on their behalf by Sen. Ben Nevers, the LFF’s partnership with the Discovery Institute became increasingly evident. This alliance emerged fully into public view with Casey Luskin’s presence at the May 21, 2008, meeting of the Louisiana House Education Committee. Luskin is DI’s program officer for public policy and legal affairs.

During the advancement of the bill in the legislature, DI, the LFF, and Sen. Nevers strenuously objected to any suggestion that the bill would allow the teaching of intelligent design (ID) creationism. In numerous publications and in federal court, ID has been shown, using Discovery Institute ID proponents’s own words (pdf), to be creationism, thus making it a religious belief. DI, the LFF, and Nevers repeatedly denied that the bill has anything to do with promoting religion; it will, they insisted, enhance the “critical thinking” skills of Louisiana students. No one was ever fooled by such denials, however, and no one is fooled now. Everyone knew then, as everyone knows now, that SB 733 has one and only one purpose: to give Louisiana school boards and teachers cover for teaching ID creationism. Continue Reading »