Back in November I was worried about the Texas Board of Education including a requirement in their new science curriculum to “teach the controversy” over evolution and other theories which could be interpreted as contradictions of a literal bible interpretation. Fortunately, they dropped that clause, which should protect the content of the textbooks we would all be subjected to if it had passed. But Texas is not out of the woods yet.

Rep. Wayne Christian has now filed a bill saying that neither student nor teacher could be penalized for subscribing to any particular position on any scientific theories or hypotheses. The concern of opponents is that the “position” one could take is the outright rejection of a scientific theory. Christian has explicitly stated that he filed the bill to allow teachers to continue to teach the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution. But the wording is broad enough to pretty much allow a student to reject any or all the content of a science class and use the bill to claim a grade of A. After all, since he can’t be penalized, whatever position the student holds would have to be deemed as correct.

The good news is that I don’t see this as a threat outside the borders of Texas, but it is an outright disservice to the students there. This controversy that Christian and his supporters are desperate to teach is entirely manufactured, and not accepted by mainstream scientists or science educators. Let’s put this in different terms.

There are those who contend that the Holocaust never happened. This is not a position supported by historical fact, nor is it a position accepted by credible historians. But it exists as a controversy. Extending the proposed Texas science curricula caveat to the subject of history, should a student be penalized for asserting that the Holocaust never occurred on his World History exam?

Christian asserts, “If students have every opportunity to learn about every idea, it empowers students to have a better ability to debate. If they are exposed to and know the other side of things, they will be able to come back and debate that side.” Clearly, the ability to debate both sides of an issue should be an educational goal of any school system. But that system also needs to be able to teach students to identify credible information.

We live in a world glut of information. A few minutes Googling a topic will yield a panoply of often conflicting points of view. Teaching students that any expressed points of view are potentially valid and true, or teaching that majority opinion can define reality is a recipe for creating completely dysfunctional individuals.

But clearly I’m off track. Christian isn’t proposing anything this broad, at least intentionally. He’s trying to teach (or at least allow the teaching) of Creationism as science, which the courts have repeatedly ruled as constitutionally illegal. Therefore, he’s forced to word his proposals so broadly as to have unintentional and ludicrous implications. So I guess the real question is, why is anyone even entertaining a law which is specifically designed to circumvent the constitution?