For the second consecutive session a bill has been filed that would repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, a 2008 law that purports to encourage critical thinking among students in public-school science classes.
For the second consecutive session a bill has been filed that would repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, a 2008 law that purports to encourage critical thinking among students in public-school science classes. The act was opposed by major scientific organizations, which characterize it as an attack on well-established findings regarding climate change and evolution.
State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, is sponsoring Senate Bill 374 with the support of a cadre of scientific organizations and science educators. Peterson's bill last year died in committee. The repeal effort has been spearheaded by Rice University freshman Zack Kopplin, who last year was a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High. Kopplin has now gotten more than 70 Nobel laureates in the sciences to sign on to the repeal effort.
Opponents of the LSEA deride the act as a Trojan Horse for inserting creationism and Intelligent Design into the high school biology curriculum by allowing teachers to include supplemental materials that question the validity of scientific tenets widely accepted within the mainstream science community.
Read Peterson's bill here.