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Igel

(35,300 posts)
2. Yes, it was a bad interpretation.
Sun Oct 24, 2021, 04:01 PM
Oct 2021

But this part of the law isn't new. It's been around for over a decade that if you teach a theory you have to allow opposing viewpoints to be heard, and then handled in a reasonable way.

"Reasonable" isn't "STFU and do as you're told." That's not education, that coercion.

So when teaching evolution in one class I had the occasional creationist pipe up, we'd discuss things, and my response was fairly straightforward: If s/he argues that the physical record is misleading or somehow falsified (either by people, god, or satan) then science is stuck; all it can do is rely on the physical because that's the rules of the game. It can't answer political questions, it can't answer moral questions, it can't say happiness is the highest good. It's not theology.

"So since this is a science class, we're forced to limit ourselves to the physical record and make sense out of it in those terms. I can't ask you to believe science, because it's not a faith system, but I do expect you to know the facts as they appear and the usual interpretations of them and understand the reasoning behind those interpretations." That's never gotten an objection, the strongly anti-evolution and anti-religion folk are both okay with it, and everybody keeps talking to each other.

In the end, nobody has a clue what I believe. Which is exactly how I want it. I take sides in a polarized environment, I'm both a lightning rod and I make my job harder by turning off some kids from the get-go. That's bad for me, that's bad for the kids.

But the law doesn't say that we teachers necessarily have to raise the objections ourselves, from the briefing on the law that I got at the start of the school year.

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