Earlier this week, legislators in Tennessee approved a bill that singles out public school science education for special attention. Now, the Oklahoma House has passed a very similar bill that attacks an identical range of subjects that the legislation deems controversial: biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

Both bills contain identical language, saying they "shall not be construed to promote any religious or nonreligious doctrine." There's also identical language about how they're intended to "help students develop critical thinking skills they need in order to become intelligent, productive, and scientifically informed citizens." However, the subjects they target are not areas where there are significant scientific controversies; either the bills' sponsors are poorly informed (and thus shouldn't be injecting themselves into science education), or they have non-educational goals in mind.

In any case, the legislators want to do what they can to enable science teachers to teach the controversy. To that end, they're basically attempting to block any educational authority—school board, principal, the state board of education—from punishing a teacher for covering the "scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories." The Oklahoma bill goes a bit further, adding protections for students who choose voice their disagreements with the science in any medium.

Given the staggering amount of scientific-sounding misinformation available on topics like evolution and climate change, these bills are a recipe for chaos in the science classrooms. It's a chaos that state legislators are inviting local school districts to sort out at great expense via lawsuits.