UPDATE 7.10.09: Readers can see Barton’s “expert” review of the Texas social studies standards, as well as those of the other reviewers, here. Barton does not believe that scientist Carl Sagan was of sufficient scientific stature to be included among the scientists about whom Texas students should learn:

In Grade 5 (b)(24)(A), there are certainly many more notable scientists than Carl Sagan – such as Wernher von Braun, Matthew Maury, Joseph Henry, Maria Mitchell, David Rittenhouse, etc.

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Supporters of science education both in Louisiana and around the country have scratched their heads in perplexity, trying to figure out how Gov. Bobby Jindal, who earned an undergraduate degree in biology at Brown University, one of the country’s finest Ivy League schools, could sign the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act [pdf]. They wonder how he can support the teaching of intelligent design, a form of creationism which has been thoroughly discredited by competent scientists and scholars. Only the governor can definitively answer this question. But if there is any truth in the old adage, “You are judged by the company you keep,” knowing something about the people with whom the governor keeps company offers at least partial insight into why he signed Louisiana’s creationism bill last year. David Barton is one of those people. Who is David Barton?

Barton is a friend of Gov. Jindal. According to Rev. Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), also a Jindal ally, Barton was Jindal’s guest at a January 14, 2008, inaugural prayer breakfast for Jindal in which the LFF  participated. Mills announced the event in his January 3, 2008, “End of Week” e-newsletter, and the announcement was also carried in the January 8, 2008, LFF’s Family Facts newsletter:

Louisiana Family Forum will take part in an Inaugural Prayer Breakfast on Monday, January 14th.  . . .

The event will feature Special Guest, Governor-Elect Bobby Jindal, who will be accompanied by Historian David Barton, Texas’ Governor Rick Perry and Dr. Laurence White.

Note that Mills calls Barton a historian. Keep this in mind . . . and keep reading.

Gov. Jindal also appeared twice on Barton’s Wallbuilders Live radio program on October 18 & 19, 2006, during which he praised Barton’s knowledge of the history of America’s founding. This was one week after Jindal’s tour of North Louisiana churches during his gubernatorial campaign — a tour on which he was accompanied by Barton. Jindal’s church tour with Barton was reported at the time by Frederick Clarkson, a veteran journalist who has documented the development of the Religious Right for many years.

Barton poses as a historian with expertise in the history of the Founding Fathers. Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been writing about him for years. Boston’s latest piece about him, “Texas Tall Tale,” is the cover story of the current issue of Church & State, AU’s monthly magazine. According to Boston, Barton is “a Religious Right propagandist who for years has pushed a fundamentalist ‘Christian nation’ view of American history.”

From his base in Aledo, a town of about 2,000 just west of Fort Worth, Barton runs an outfit called WallBuilders that issues a steady stream of books, videos, DVDs, pamphlets and other materials designed to ‘prove’ that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. Barton argues that American law should be based on the Bible (or, more accurately, his fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible) and says church-state separation was never intended by our Founders.

According to his Wallbuilders.com website, Barton leads private “Spiritual Heritage” tours of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, exclusively for “pastors and ministry leaders,” arranging “exclusive briefing sessions with some of the top Christian Senators and Representatives now serving in Congress.” He also promotes creationism on his website. But he has no credentials in either history or science, as Boston points out.

His official bio on the WallBuilders Web site says nothing about Barton’s educational background, probably for good reason: It’s not relevant to what he’s doing. Barton earned a bachelor’s degree in ‘Christian Education’ from Oral Roberts University in 1976 and later taught math and science at a fundamentalist Christian school founded by his father, pastor of Aledo Christian Center.

The Texas Freedom Network echoes Boston’s assessment of Barton’s academic “credentials”:

Barton’s college degree is in religious education, not history or another field in the social sciences. He works for no institution of higher education. He’s simply a smooth-talking political hack who distorts history in the service of an ideological agenda.

The really bad news is that Barton is targeting public schools with his propaganda:

Barton is also busy trying to slip his perspective into public schools in other ways. He is active in the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, a North Carolina group that works to persuade public schools to adopt a fundamentalist-oriented Bible curriculum under the guise of teaching ‘about’ religion. Barton serves on the organization’s advisory board, alongside several other Religious Right figures.

[Note: Darrell White of the Louisiana Family Forum also serves on the NCBCPS board.]

But it gets worse — Barton himself is among the most extreme members of the Religious Right. He is on the Board of Directors of the Providence Foundation, which, Boston says, “poses as a benign group dedicated to promoting a ‘biblical worldview.’ In fact, the organization seems to be aligned with Christian Reconstructionism, an ultra-fundamentalist theology that seeks to scrap democracy and impose a harsh Old Testament regime on modern-day America.” Christian Reconstructionists seek to impose a strict “biblical worldview” on all aspects of American life — whether their fellow Americans like or it not. (See Frederick Clarkson’s articles about Christian Reconstructionism for PublicEye.org.)

Barton also sells books, CDs, DVDs, etc., from his online store. But accuracy has never been his concern. Boston himself analyzed historical claims that Barton made in a videotape entitled “America’s Godly Heritage,” which “summarized Barton’s arguments as outlined in his self-published 1989 book The Myth of Separation.” The book’s title reflects Barton’s false contention that the separation of church and state is a myth and that it was never intended by the Founding Fathers. Boston catalogues Barton’s errors and distortions in two articles entitled “Sects, Lies and Videotape: David Barton’s Distorted History” and “David Barton: Master of Myth and Misinformation.”

But now the story gets much worse — Barton has been appointed by his supporters on the Texas Board of Education to serve on a panel of expert reviewers charged with reviewing the Texas social studies standards. Boston reports on this in “Texas Tall Tale“:

When the Texas State Board of Education issued a list of proposed ‘experts’ to sit on a social studies curriculum panel, one name immediately leaped out to defenders of church-state separation: David Barton.

The panel is supposed to consist of academics and others with specialized knowledge to assist the board in drafting new social studies standards for public schools across the state. The selection of Barton, a Religious Right propagandist who for years has pushed a fundamentalist ‘Christian nation’ view of American history, is a sure sign that trouble lurks ahead.

Concerned pro-science activists will recognize the Texas BOE’s appointment of Barton to the panel of reviewers for the social studies standards as a replay of the board’s appointment of three creationists to the panel of experts charged with reviewing the state’s science standards earlier this year. (See the press release by the excellent Texas Freedom Network. See TFN’s postings about Barton here and here.) One of those creationists was Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s creationist Center for Science and Culture. As chronicled on this website, the Discovery Institute played a major role in the drafting and passage of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act [pdf], which allows public school science teachers to use supplemental materials that undermine “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Apparently, Barton also has his finger in the anti-global warming pie, as Boston reports:

Amazingly, it looks like Barton is branching out into other fields – areas where, like history, he has no legitimate credentials. On June 7, 2007, Barton testified before the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, criticizing global warming and posing as an expert on how evangelicals view that issue.

Interested readers can read Barton’s committee testimony, where he also managed to take a swipe at evolution. Note Barton’s use of scare quotes around “science”:

For more than a century, scientists have asserted unaided materialistic evolution — that God had no part in the appearance of man. Yet, despite a century of this aggressive ‘scientific’ indoctrination, today only 12-18 percent of the nation accepts that position; some eighty percent do not believe what ‘science’ avows on this issue.

Interested readers can read all of Boston’s fine article for themselves. They can also google David Barton for additional information about this self-styled — but phony — “expert” . . . who is now in a position to get nonsense inserted into the Texas social standards as creationists managed to do in the science standards.

The fundamental question here is why Gov. Jindal would hobnob with someone like Barton. Someone should ask him.

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.

Among the states in which the out-of-state creationist think thank, the Discovery Institute (DI), has been hawking its “academic freedom” legislation for the last several years, Louisiana enjoys the distinction of so far being the first and only state in which one of these bills has become law.  On June 25, 2008, Bobby Jindal signed SB 733 into law as Act 473, the Louisiana “Science Education” Act (LSEA). So not only are we at the top of the list, we are presently the only state on it! As a result, Louisiana is now being boycotted by a national scientific society, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, which had held national meetings in New Orleans in 1976, 1987, and 2004. Why should a scientific society come to a state that attacks both its discipline and the way it is taught? Instead, SICB will hold its 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the State Board of Education issued a strong, unanimous statement in 2005 supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools when a Utah legislator threatened to introduce an “academic freedom” bill.

In 2009, the Discovery Institute, not content with having successfully targeted Louisiana, is again coordinating the introduction of their creationist “academic freedom” bills in legislatures around the country. So far this year, variations of DI’s “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution” have been introduced in seven states:  Oklahoma, Iowa, New Mexico, Alabama, Missouri, Florida, and Texas. However, the Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico bills are now dead. Not only are they dead, they never even made it out of committee. Contrast that with the fact that both the Louisiana Senate and House Education Committees passed the LSEA out of committee without a single dissenting vote, and during the floor votes in both houses of the legislature, only three members of the House of Representatives voted against it. The measure passed by a vote of 94-3 in the House and 35-0 in the Senate.

Laissez bon temps rouler, indeed. The bon temps rolled right over the distinguished Louisiana scientists and dedicated science teachers who appealed to legislators last year to kill the LSEA and then to the governor to veto it. The Discovery Institute’s partner in this effort was the Louisiana Family Forum, a Focus on the Family affiliate whose mission is “to persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence” — the centers of influence being the Louisiana legislature, which does the LFF’s bidding with respect to a lengthening roster of cultural wedge issues, and Gov. Bobby Jindal, its most essential ally in implementing its regressive public policy agenda. (Watch LFF’s executive director, Rev. Gene Mills, explaining his agenda to a Focus on the Family interviewer.)

In the wake of its success in getting the LSEA passed in 2008, the LFF continues to promote creationism in the guise of “critical thinking” on its new website. The organization is promoting textbook addendums written by long-time Baton Rouge creationist Charles Voss. It is also promoting a Discovery Institute DVD entitled Investigating Evolution, which is intended for teachers to use with one of DI’s creationist books, Icons of Evolution. (See the National Center for Science Education’s critique of Icons.)

Readers may wonder how Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico have kept themselves off such an undistinguished list as the one Louisiana is on. Part of the answer is that their legislators and governors are (1) not as susceptible to pressure from the Religious Right as are public officials in Louisiana and (2) more respectful of the professional expertise of their own scientists and educators who have lobbied them to vote against creationist legislation. Public officials in Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico apparently care more about the educational and economic well-being of their citizens than about the divisive social agenda of a well-organized minority of zealots whose aim is to enact their personal religious preferences as public policy. But the fundamentally most important reason is that concerned constituents in their states have mounted well-organized efforts to defend the teaching of science in their public schools. These citizens have spoken out collectively and persuasively both to the public and to elected officials, and they have sustained these efforts over a period of years.

Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE) launched a major effort to block passage of Senate Bill 320, the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act.” (See OESE’s distinguished board of governors.) OESE has also joined the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science in order to enhance their ability to carry out their mission.

In Iowa, over 200 university scientists signed a public statement calling on the Iowa legislature to  reject HF 183, “The Evolution Academic Freedom Act.” Their statement clearly helped: the bill died in the Iowa House of Representatives on March 13. It is notable — not to mention sad and embarrassing — that Louisiana was invoked as an example that Iowans should not follow:

Although the bill was given little chance of passing from the start, the petition helped to inform legislators and the public of the depth of resistance to such a bill within the academic and scientific community. Iowa faculty wanted to nip this bill in the bud before we had another Louisiana on our hands. (emphasis added) (Prof. Hector Avalos, Iowa State University, Panda’s Thumb, March 13, 2009)

New Mexico is fortunate to have a strong pro-science group, New Mexicans for Science and Reason, which has helped fight off multiple attacks on its science curriculum at both the state and local levels over the last decade. They fought off SB 433 this year and a similar bill in 2007.

Texas scientists have formed the “21st Century Science Coalition” to fend off the current attack on the state science standards; so far, 680 scientists in Texas universities, along with 870 other Texas scientists, have signed the “Scientists for a Responsible Curriculum in Texas Public Schools” statement. Along with Texas Citizens for Science and the Texas Freedom Network, these scientists are currently mounting a strong effort to protect their science standards, on which the Texas Board of Education will vote on March 25. (See the TFN page about this upcoming vote. ) Texans must now also combat the creationist HB 4224, which will permit the teaching of bogus “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution in public schools. (See NCSE’s report on Texas.)

At this point, the prospects of the Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Alabama bills are uncertain. Let’s hope that the public officials in these states have better judgment than the ones whom Louisiana voters have trusted with our children’s future.

In the meantime, nothing is more sorely needed in Louisiana than a similarly well-organized, long-term effort launched from multiple directions: by the scientific community, the civil liberties community, the mainstream religious community, and the education community. If Louisiana citizens don’t take the initiative to rescue public school science education from the grip of the Louisiana Family Forum and the Discovery Institute, we can count on remaining at the top of the list and the bottom of the ladder.  Laissez bon temps rouler.

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.

DI operatives are working through Texas Board of Education chair Don McLeroy, a self-described creationist, and other supporters on the board. ID-friendly board members nominated Stephen C. Meyer, director of DI’s creationist Center for Science and Culture, and two other ID supporters to serve on the six-member expert review panel that recently reviewed the draft of the Texas state science standards. The ID proponents’ goal is to have the “strengths and limitations” of evolution — code for ID creationist criticisms of evolution — included in the science standards. They are serving along with three nationally recognized Texas professors — David Hillis, Gerald Skoog, and Ronald Wetherington — who are legitimate experts in science and science education.

“Strengths and limitations” is the most recent evolution of  ID creationist code language. Until a few weeks ago, the code phrase used in the standards was “strengths and weaknesses,” which had been inserted by creationists two decades ago. Thanks to well-organized efforts by pro-science groups such as the Texas Freedom Network, “strengths and weaknesses” was exposed as merely a shopworn creationist code term, as can be seen, for example, in a 1983 Institute for Creation Research article:

Scientific creationists . . . think that evolution should be taught, but only when the strengths and weaknesses are discussed in comparison with the scientific merits of creation.  — Richard Bliss, 1983

As a result of the exposure of “strengths and weaknesses,” the code language has evolved yet again, this time to “strengths and limitations.” (See the letter to McLeroy and Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.)

In 2003, during the textbook selection process in Texas, DI operatives attempted to pressure the Texas Board of Education to include the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution in state-approved biology textbooks. They failed when the board resisted pressure from DI to alter the textbooks. In the best interests of the schoolchildren of Texas, the slim majority of moderates on the Texas Board of Education should see to it that the Discovery Institute fails in its current effort as well.

• At Southern Methodist University on November 11, 2008, Barbara Forrest explained DI’s evolving strategy in a public lecture, “Why Texans Shouldn’t Let Creationists Mess with Texas Science Education.” The video of Forrest’s lecture is available here. The mp3 audio file is available here.