I emailed the members of the Senate Education Committee using the contact information I posted here about the Student Religious Liberties Act (SB2151). This bill is very similar to legislation that has been passed in other states, and it seems to me that it was designed to make it easier to get creationism in the classroom. I hope I'm wrong about that, but that is how it strikes me.I took care in writing my email so as to make it as polite and inoffensive as possible. I asked them to oppose SB2151 because I was concerned that it would be detrimental to science education in our state and that it represented a church-state violation. I kept it short and was sure not to include any inflammatory language.
Two senators responded to my email right away. After some deliberation, I've decided not to identify the senators here or to quote their responses verbatim. I will instead attempt to paraphrase what they said.
One senator seemed genuinely angered by my email in a way I was not expecting to see from an elected official. In his terse response, he chose to ignore the concerns I had raised and instead accused me of wanting students to do nothing more than memorize content instead of his or her own beliefs. I re-read my email multiple times and could find no connection between what I said and what he accused me of saying.
The really disappointing part of his email was that he seems to think that education should be about what a student believes about the facts presented in class rather than knowledge, understanding, or application of the facts themselves. That someone with such a perspective on education sits on the Senate Education Committee in our state is troublesome to say the least.
The second response was more thoughtful, even though it also disagreed with me. This senator pointed out that similar legislation has not only been passed in other conservative states but has also survived court challenges. In his opinion, my concerns were excessive because the bill allows teachers to evaluate student work based on academic standards. Thus, students in a biology course would still be expected to learn evolution because it was part of the curriculum. If they did not demonstrate adequate understanding of the material, writing about religion was not going to help them.
Based on these responses, it seems likely that this bill will pass in Mississippi sooner or later. I am still not convinced that it is not an attempt to get more religion in our schools. But I suppose we will find out.
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