West Virginia governor signs vague law allowing teachers to answer questions about origin of life
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, signed a law Friday that supporters say would promote the free exchange of ideas in science classrooms, despite objections from opponents who said the vaguely worded measure could allow the entry of religion into public schools .
The legislation allows public school teachers to answer students’ questions “about scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came into being.”
It was proposed after Republican Senate Education Chairman Amy Grady, a public school teacher, said fellow educators told her they don’t feel comfortable answering questions about theories outside of evolution because they don’t know whether this is permissible.
Speaking on the Senate floor in January, Grady said the bill is intended to clarify how teachers can address these situations.
“What this says is, ‘If a student asks you about a theory he or she has read about or heard of — maybe it’s not a popular theory, but a theory — you can talk about it,’” she said.
She said the bill “encourages our students to think, encourages our students to ask questions, and encourages our teachers to be able to answer them.”
What is unclear is what types of education would be protected by the bill, which does not define what a “scientific theory” is.
Grady introduced a bill last year that would have specifically allowed intelligent design to be taught in public schools. This year’s bill contained similar language when it was first proposed. It was reworked early in the legislative session to remove any direct mention of intelligent design before it was even presented to lawmakers.
After the bill was amended, two high school students in support of the bill before Grady’s committee said they wanted it to pass so teachers would have the opportunity to teach intelligent design in addition to evolutionary theory — not as a requirement or condition. replacement for it.
Teaching intelligent design in public schools has been controversial for decades.
Proponents of intelligent design argue that many features of life, life, and the universe are too complex to have evolved by natural selection and must have been created by an intelligent designer. That designer could be identified as God, but need not be. They also claim that intelligent design is a scientific theory.
Others have argued that intelligent design is just creationism in a new guise. A federal court in Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that a public school could not require teaching the concept because intelligent design “is not science” and that it “cannot separate itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”
Hurricane High School juniors Hayden Hodge and Hunter Bernard, both 16, said they are both religious, but that intelligent design is not a religious argument and says nothing about God.
“I am not advocating Biblical Creationism, or Adam and Eve, or the Islamic and Jewish story. This is not a Biblical story,” said Hodge, later adding, “Why not allow teachers to offer students multiple views? Students deserve to hear a multitude of theories and then follow what is more reasonable.”
The National Center for Science Education said in a statement that the legislation “threatens the integrity of science education in the state’s public schools.”
Aubrey Sparks, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said the organization would closely monitor the law’s implementation. If the wording of the legislation is ambiguous to her, she says, it will also be ambiguous to teachers, students and parents.
Staff is in the process of creating a portal where families can report their concerns if they see cases of religious education in public schools, Sparks said.
“They condone this kind of thing to try to internalize the place of religion in public schools,” she said. “If they wanted to keep religion and public schools separate, they wouldn’t pass laws like this.”
When the bill passed the Senate in January, Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel said he has no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs and that as a Catholic he believes God created life. But he said he doesn’t think it’s something that should be taught in public schools, and expressed concern that the legislation could be used as a backdoor for that.
He asked Grady if the law would allow teachers to teach students about intelligent design, and she said yes. The definition of what is a “scientific theory” is not included in the bill, Woelfel said.
“What I do have a problem with is the Constitution, which says, ‘If you have a bill, it has to be specific. It shouldn’t be vague,” he said. “People need to know what the bill says so they can follow the bill.”
The Seattle-based Center for Science and Culture, the leading organization advocating for the adoption of intelligent design and research, opposes public schools teaching the concept.
Instead, the organization is pushing for policies for public schools “to protect the academic freedom of teachers to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution without delving into alternative theories such as intelligent design,” according to Center Associate Director Casey Luskin.
He said the “priority of intelligent design for supporters is to see it grow and develop as a science.”
“Bringing it into public schools politicizes the issue, and that politicization leads to witch hunts and discrimination against pro-ID scholars and academy teachers,” he said.
However, the academic freedom approach is “legal and helps greatly improve student learning.”