Patrick Anderson

panderson@argusleader.com

Educators in South Dakota public schools would be able to teach alternatives to climate change and evolution under a bill proposed this year in the state Senate.

The proposal from Sen. Jeff Monroe, R-Pierre, appears to be an effort to give teachers more academic freedom in the classroom. But language in Monroe’s bill opens the door to teaching intelligent design, or even wild claims that Earth is flat, critics say.

Science educators too often take a “unidirectional” approach when it comes to lessons about the Big Bang Theory and whether humans affect Earth’s natural resources, Monroe said.

“In societies those are debates that rage, but in the schools they’re taught as fact,” Monroe said.

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A group of 12 lawmakers have signed their names to Senate Bill 83, which would bar school officials from intervening if a teacher was lecturing on the “weaknesses” of scientific information in class.

The proposal could make it easier for teachers to bring Creationism into a public school classroom, despite parts of the bill that disavow any association with religion, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education. Even without the religious implications of the bill, Monroe’s proposal undermines the democratic process of approving curriculum standards for K-12 schools, Branch said.

“It’s kind of a recipe to encourage teachers to go rogue,” Branch said. “I admit that it’s fairly unlikely that teachers are going to be doing that, but teachers are people too, and people have funny ideas.”

The bill is an effort to protect educators who offer a different school of thought on some of the subjects outlined in the state’s science standards, Monroe said.

But science teachers don’t need the protection as long as they’re working with theories based on factual evidence, said Julie Olson, a science teacher in Mitchell. Olson is president of the South Dakota Science Teachers Association.

“Science has got to be fact-based, it has to be evidence-based,” Olson said. “Intelligent design isn’t evidence-based, so it isn’t science.”

State officials approved new standards last year after a group of teachers, college professors and education leaders outlined new guidelines for K-12 science classrooms. The group’s recommendations spent more than a year going through a public vetting process, with hearings in four different corners of the state.

But Monroe said the 2015 science benchmarks don’t allow teachers to approach subjects with enough of a critical lens. He has problems with a number of the standards outlined for grades 9-12, including an earth science standard that asks students to explain the Big Bang Theory based on astronomical evidence.

Students shouldn’t be forced to swallow the idea that the universe was created billions of years ago, and the same goes for any other theory that might be covered in science classrooms, Monroe said.

“If the schools taught that they can make robots become real people, they should be able to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of that theory, instead of just making the students believe it,” Monroe said.

Monroe said his bill has nothing to do with religion, even though two years ago he proposed a similar measure would have blocked school boards from intervening if a teacher covered intelligent design in class.

In fact, the bill states it “may not be construed to promote any religious or nonreligious doctrine.”

Authors give no direction for determining what the promotion of religious doctrine might look like, Branch said.

“It’s like wearing big sign saying, ‘ignore me,’” Branch said.

The bill is based on model legislation from the Discovery Institute, a group with a curriculum for teaching intelligent design.

Olson wishes Monroe and other lawmakers behind the senate bill would be more direct about their intentions.

“I just hate the fact that they’re trying to sneak in the discussion on intelligent design,” Olson said. “If that’s what they want taught they should at least say it.”