The never ending Christian war against science education. Evolution (aka the strongest fact of science) makes Christian crybabies cry.

Steven Newton, Contributor
Professor of Geology, College of Marin
Celebrating Kitzmas in the Age of Trump 12/20/2017

December 20th marks a special day both for creationists and those who support science. This day is the anniversary of the landmark ruling in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which a school district in Pennsylvania attempted to promote the form of creationism known as “intelligent design” (ID).

The Republican-appointed judge in this case issued a cutting verdict, finding that “ID is not science” and that “the religious nature of ID” meant any endorsement of it by school officials would be tantamount to declaring one religious view superior to another. Therefore, promoting intelligent design in public schools violated the Constitution.

Merry Kitzmas, in other words.

At the time, scientists and science educators rejoiced at this clear, forceful repudiation of attempts to inject religiously-motivated pseudoscience into American public schools. But while this ruling slammed the brakes on intelligent design, anti-science forces simply changed gears.

In the years following the Kitzmiller ruling, droves of so-called “academic freedom” bills appeared in state legislatures. These proposed laws closely followed a pre-determined script with three main assertions: 1) some classroom topics, such as evolution and climate change, are controversial, 2) teachers should be free to teach what they please about these alleged controversies, and 3) these “academic freedom” bills did not promote religion. This last provision, in particular, begged the question: If a bill did not obviously promote religion, why would you have to clarify its intent? A facial reading of these bills exposes their transparent purpose: to give creationist teachers legal cover to teach creationism in public schools.

These so-called “academic freedom” bills fooled no one. They were obviously just one more round in the never-ending fight to defend good science in public schools. Despite legal victories, such as the Kitzmiller case, the vehement rage some Americans feel at the idea of students learning basic science continues unabated.

And now we arrive in the Age of Trump.

We live with daily assaults on the idea of science as a way of knowing about the world. Just this last week, the Washington Post reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructed policy analysts to avoid terms such as “science-based” and “evidence-based.” (An embarrassed CDC may now be backtracking on this.) This is not the first instance of this kind of Orwellian language control: In 2015, the Miami Heraldreported that officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had been told to avoid using “climate change” or “global warming” in official communications. A 2012 law in North Carolina forbade state officials from considering sea level rise when determining coastal policies. Rather than using our wealth of scientific knowledge to prepare for the problems of climate change, Americans seem intent not only on denying a problem exists, but on restricting the language officials are allowed to use.

Anti-science forces existed long before Trump, but now they have been encouraged and unleashed. Trump’s head of the EPA denies that climate change is real. The US will withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Scientific information on government websites is disappearing or being altered to fit political ideology. Government scientists have been denied permission to make presentations about climate change at scientific conferences.

The Trump administration has not yet clearly articulated an educational policy; so far science education seems mercifully low on their hit list. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems focused on shrinking her department and undermining public education in general, rather than specific attacks on science education.

That might change under a Pence administration.

While Trump has expressed little interest in science education, Pence has a long record denying the reality of climate change and of targeting evolution education. In July 2002, Rep. Pence endorsed intelligent design during an extended attack on evolution he delivered on the House floor. He dismissed evolution as a mere theory, which evolution is—just like the theory of gravity or the theory of plate tectonics. Pence then characterized classroom evolution graphics this way: “There’s the little monkey crawling on the grass, there’s the Neanderthal with his knuckles dragging, and then there’s Mel Gibson.” (Wait—what? Pence thinks Mel Gibson is the pinnacle of evolution? Hasn’t Pence seen The Beaver, the one where Gibson goes around talking with a hand puppet? Doesn’t he know about Gibson’s infamous mullet from the Lethal Weaponmovies?)

Bill Nye has expressed hope that what we see in the Age of Trump may be the “last gasp of the anti-science movement.” It may turn out that anti-science forces go too far, exposing to everyone their delusional rejection of reality. It may turn out that voters want decisions affecting their lives to be “evidence-based.”

On this 12th Kitzmas, one thing is clear: the Kitzmiller decision was not the end of attacks on science. We should honor this anniversary by reminding ourselves that the struggle to defend science continues.