Ohio House passes bill allowing student answers to be scientifically wrong due to religion
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WKRC ) - Ohio lawmakers are weighing in on how public schools can teach things like evolution.
The Ohio House on Wednesday passed the "Student Religious Liberties Act ." Under the law, students can't be penalized if their work is scientifically wrong as long as the reasoning is because of their religious beliefs.
Instead, students are graded on substance and relevance.
Every Republican in the House supported the bill. It now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate.
15 comments
Well ok, my religious beliefs are that the Ohio republicans are illiterate idiots and assholes, disproving evolution as a concept since natural selection could never bring forth such maladapted people without quickly removing them from the gene pool. Relevance? Check! Substance? Well… About as much as any creationist substance, which ALL boils down to ‘God did it, the end.’
Seriously though, how often will they try this bullshit? It’s getting ridiculous. Even if you irrationally believe that evolution doesn’t happen and God did everything, you can still answer a fucking test about the theory of evolution quite fine (and if you don’t that just tells us that you are willfully ignorant). I answered questions in tests about hinduism and buddhism just fine without having to convert to those religions. In the subject Religion of course, not in fucking biology where it doesn’t belong.
Kitzmiller vs. Dover.
Good luck with that.
Student: “WTF, teacher?? The Student Religious Liberties Act says you CAN’T mark that answer as wrong because it’s based on my RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!!!”
Teacher (in a “HOW many times will I have to EXPLAIN what OUGHT to be GLARINGLY OBVIOUS??” tone): “The SRLA only applies to CHRISTIAN beliefs, you silly Mooslime!!!”
Instead, students are graded on substance and relevance. So cretinist idiocy will still fail, but they can’t even retreat into claiming religious persecution anymore?
Wow, this would be a field day for a bright kid. Just think of the bull he/she could produce, pushing the envelope on that law to the breaking point, making the whole thing become the total absurdity that it is. Then again bright kids don’t have to worry about bad grades.
THAT is just ridiculous! It completely negates the reason for education in the first place. If you are allowed to ignore all science that you don’t like, based on whatever fairy-tale you were taught as a kid, then what’s the point?
SCIENCE is the basis of both substance and relevance, dingbat!
Well, we all know that the Republicans just LOVE the unedumacated. They are much more gullible, and easier to sway the “right” way, easier to fool that it’s in THEIR interest to vote for the part that ONLY caters to the filthy rich. (A hint; most filthy rich people ARE educated.)
You know the next time I hear some dickhead equate calls for an examination of the race/sex wage/position gaps and criticism of the bell curve which can see multiple students who all got the same number of answers right on a math test receive different grades impacting how their education and by extension their work ethic and overall competence is perceived which often has a direct and dire effect on their academic and professional future - systemic allowances and normalization of unequal compensation for equal measurable accomplishment - with a participation award I’m just going to ask what they call it when you have to give an automatic passing grade to the kid that writes down that earthquakes and disease come from God when he’s mad at gay people requiring no further explanation and all of recorded history is unknowable save for the content of the Bible because you weren’t there on a test so they don’t feel discriminated against for being demonstrably and emphatically wrong or flat out refusing to take part in certain lessons like any biology relating to reproduction and thus hurting their feelings while marking any other student based on the content of their report applying penalties when information is technically accurate but insufficiently explained which might result in a poor grade despite having put considerably more work into their answers.
Well, actually participation award seems like the wrong turn of phrase because it doesn’t need to involve participation and the guaranteed reward might be better than it would be for somebody that actually tried.
Now that I think about it this gets me pondering a few choice words I would have for the people who keep trying to force mandatory prayers in school. “Oh they’re just words, if they don’t have any meaning to you then you shouldn’t have any problem repeating them just to comply with the rules.” Yeah? Well you can give the right goddamned answers on a standardized test if you think it’s all a big empty gesture instead of saying you won’t have other people’s beliefs - namely that observable process like evolution exists which is used in practical medicine such as developing countermeasures against constantly evolving viruses - forced upon you. Or being forced to read the Communist Manifesto aloud, since you don’t believe it and are under no obligation to adhere beyond daily recitation it shouldn’t hurt you, right?
I’m just in a grumbly mood tonight.
@checkmate #19181
I think that might be the entire curriculum of schools specifically geared towards teaching the spawn of politically entrenched, old money douchebags the finer points of how to play fast and loose with the exact wording of the law, how to make vague but appealing promises while avoiding actually promising to do anything, and how to make very clear rules, indisputable facts, and damning statements caught on tape impenetrably murky to avoid accountability.
“Smart” like pretty much everything else including the lines between right and wrong tends to be a very relative term in that school of thought.
So, instead of asking questions on religious matters, i will ask questions on history.
Then, "No, you got that wrong. Unless you can prove to me that it's a Baptist theological position that Darwin did NOT develop the theory of evolution? No? Then you got the question wrong."
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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