Sarah Chaffee last week offered some needed instruction to Sean Illing at the website Vox, which purports to “explain the news.” Illing interviewed science educator Amanda Glaze about teaching evolution in the American South, including Louisiana with its academic freedom law, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Illing points out a video (above) in which Dr. Glaze and other teachers in the South talk about the challenges they face in discussing biological origins.

I don’t doubt their experiences, and Amanda Glaze seems like a personable, sympathetic, and intelligent woman who would make an excellent teacher. The video, from public radio’s Science Friday, includes an interview with a student of hers who’s charged up with enthusiasm for biology. Even his parents, who sound a little leery when it comes to evolution, are impressed that their son comes home talking about science as he might be expected to about sports.

But note some ironies. Says Amanda Glaze at the end of the video:

This is not a war of evolution versus religion. To me this is a war for science literacy. And you know what, if it costs me my job somewhere, then it costs me my job somewhere, but I’m still going to teach evolution.

Good for her. However, permitting teachers to let students know about scientific evidence for and against Darwinian theory is precisely in the service of promoting “science literacy.” Looking ahead to next week, it’s the scientific difficulties with Darwinism that have promoted some very distinguished scientists to seek a “Third Way” of evolution (neither orthodox Darwinism nor intelligent design), a theme that will be explored at the much anticipated Royal Society meeting, November 7-9 in London.

And that it should not cost you your job to teach evolution in an objective, fully informed manner is the point of academic freedom laws! Teachers should be able to teach without the fear of axe-grinding retaliation hanging over their head.

Dr. Glaze says regarding her own studies, “I research the evolution conflict in the southeastern United States.” Good, so she ought to have her facts on the subject straight. Another teacher in the video says of some her own students, “They think they know what evolution is. They have the idea that evolution is about people coming from monkeys.”

We’re all for accuracy — or we should all be for it. Yet look at this exchange between Sean Illing and Amanda Glaze at Vox:

Sean Illing

I lived and taught in Louisiana until recently, and there you had a well-educated Republican governor [Bobby Jindal] who was backing a law that allowed creationism to be taught in public school science classes. And he had the overwhelming support of the state legislature.

Amanda Glaze

Oh, yes. And we’ve seen similar movements across the South — in Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, and elsewhere.

Sean Illing

The defenders of these laws say things like, “we’re just introducing students to the debate.” By that logic, we ought to teach the Stork Theory of reproduction in biology class or alchemy in chemistry class or astrology in astronomy class.

Amanda Glaze

But, again, if you tell people their religious beliefs are obscured, you’re going to have a fight on your hands. What bothers me is the lack of understanding about what science actually does.

Illing mischaracterizes the LSEA, as Sarah Chaffee points out. He goes on to offer a stupefying comparison. Introducing students to a fascinating debate in mainstream science is equivalent to teaching alchemy, astrology, or the “Stork Theory of reproduction”! That is beyond preposterous, but Glaze fails to call him out on it. She lets the absurd analogy pass right by.

The Royal Society, among the world’s most august scientific organization, will devote a major event to examining “calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution,” including relevant subjects that it concedes are “hotly contested.” Contested by scientists, not by religious fundamentalists.

That information doesn’t seem to have registered with our news “explainer” Sean Illing, or, to judge from her apparent silent consent to his ignorant comments, with science educator Amanda Glaze. Students really are intellectually poorer for being kept in the dark about developments in science. You bet they are, and not only in the American South.

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