
Ohio bill would allow students to be scientifically wrong due to religion - omarhaneef
https://local12.com/news/local/ohio-house-passes-bill-allowing-student-answers-to-be-scientifically-wrong-due-to-religion
======
crgwbr
Wouldn’t an easy non-law compromise here be to reword questions slightly? For
example, instead of asking “How did humans come into existence?” ask
“According to the theory of evolution, how did humans come into existence?“
That would accurately test a student’s knowledge of what was taught without
requiring them to agree with the answer.

~~~
gowld
Yes, if people followed the law independent of the law, the law would not be
needed. This holds in general.

The law is to protect students against anti-religious teachers who punish
students for making religious statements.

~~~
uryga
> _The law is to protect students against anti-religious teachers who punish
> students for making religious statements_

idk, it seems more aligned with protecting the weird thing some USA¹
Christians do where they take the Bible as historical fact re: creation of the
world...

quoting the article:

> _students can 't be penalized if their work is scientifically wrong as long
> as the reasoning is because of their religious beliefs._

is science class really the place to do that? are we cool with Ohio children
being unfamiliar with evolutionary theory because of their religion?

\---

1\. i'm not sure if singling out the USA is correct here, but it's the only
country where i've seen this. even here in Poland, where a lot of people are
seriously religious (Christian), this sort of thing doesn't seem to happen

~~~
XCabbage
_Read the bill_ instead of blindly believing the article. The article is lying
outright about what the bill says. Not only does it not require teachers to
accept religiously-based scientifically incorrect answers, it outright forbids
them from doing so, requiring them instead to grade such answers based on
"legitimate pedagogical concerns". The article - and your take based on the
article - are the complete opposite of the truth.

------
AdamSC1
So if this _WERE_ the case, I'd be against it. But, this is clickbait
journalism at its finest. If we read the actual text of the law:

> No school district board of education, As Passed by the House governing
> authority of a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the
> Revised Code, governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter
> 3326. of the Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory
> boarding school established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall
> prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion
> of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment
> grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of
> substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and
> shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a
> student's work.

This suggests, that, you may not _penalize_ __OR REWARD __a student because
their work contains religious references. However, the work is still to be
marked __using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance __.

So if a student said that "The world was created 6000 years ago" on a science
test, then they are still marked wrong. If they said "I believe the world was
created 6000 years ago, but scientists say that it is 4.543 billion years old"
then the student should be marked right for providing the correct answer, and
their religious view should not be considered or weighted.

Further, if a student was making a moral argument about a character in a novel
for an English paper, if they referenced morality as coming from god, they
shouldn't be penalized for that if the paper still is a strong well formed
academic work that assesses the themes in the book.

The other sections of this bill actually do a lot to protect the individual
rights of anyone religious (whether Christian or otherwise) and atheists, by
disallowing school boards to prevent you from practicing your beliefs and
requiring that they allow time for prayer, meditation or reflection, as well
as allowing students to opt-out of any such activity without repercussion.

This law is being constantly painted as some draconian attempt to allow wrong-
answers based on religious belief, and it simply doesn't even come close to
doing that.

~~~
cannonedhamster
It's going to be used to allow homeschooling to accept answers that are purely
based on religion. It's just going to harm Ohio as their schools lose
accreditation due to religion replacing science, after all you can't penalize
someone if they legitimately believe that the Earth was made by Xenu. It's a
legitimate concern after all. In fact how do we know what a legitimate concern
is and who dictates that? If this were as innocent as you say then there would
be no reason to create it as that's the status quo. You're not reading this
correctly through religious lenses. It also does nothing to protect atheists
unless there's some other part of the bill that covers it as atheism isn't a
religion.

~~~
AdamSC1
You should re-read some of the answers above.

First off, it doesn't allow homeschooling to do anything different than it
already does.

Second, you cannot penalize nor reward a student for the religious content in
the answer only the academic content.

Third, accreditation is an optional standard for accepting Government funding
for Universities and Colleges and doesn't apply to elementary and secondary
schools (other than charter/private schools), each state's board of education
sets the terms for a schools status and that's why they can also require laws
like this.

>after all you can't penalize someone if they legitimately believe that the
Earth was made by Xenu.

Correct, you cannot penalize them for believing that, but, you can penalize
them if they don't put the correct academic or scientific answer on a test. If
they put both answers, you must ignore the religious content.

>You're not reading this correctly through religious lenses.

Correct, this isn't religious texts. It's a law, and in the US court systems
there are standards in how we interpret legal language.

>If this were as innocent as you say then there would be no reason to create
it as that's the status quo.

That's nonsense. There are multiple types of laws. there are those that
prosecute for a violation of them, those that protect from a violation of them
and those that enshrine your rights. This is the latter.

Right now, there is nothing on the books to say that a young Muslim student in
rural Ohio who wrote a paper on morality but mentioned Allah, could not in
turn be marked wrong by their Christian teacher even if they met all the
parameters of the assignment. Such a case is absolutely worth defending.

>You're not reading this correctly through religious lenses. It also does
nothing to protect atheists unless there's some other part of the bill that
covers it as atheism isn't a religion.

Thank you for noting that you read the clickbait article and not the actual
law. The entire law substantially includes rights for students to take time to
pray, meditate, reflect on morality, or things of a philosophical or patriotic
value to them, and gives them the right to opt-out of any such activities in
the classroom that do not reflect their beliefs, their parents beliefs or the
lack thereof.

For something that is trying to be painted as an archaic pro-christian only
law, this law is remarkably balanced and takes into considerations other
religions, other systems of belief and the lack of any belief and enshrines
them all quite equally.

This law is not perfect, but, from reading the text I cannot fault the
intention of it the way that so many have.

Will it be misused and need to be challenged in courts? Absolutely. Most young
laws do need to evolve through that process of refinement and clarity.

But, I don't see anything here that merits being demonized.

------
omarhaneef
My new RaaS startup idea: religion as a service. Ohio students join the
religion, submit the answers to your latest test and we update our beliefs to
match your answers.

~~~
really3452
I suspect incorrect answers based on non-Christian religions will not get the
same treatment as incorrect answers based on a Christian religion.

~~~
omarhaneef
Sir, we are a business that doesn't like to get into the politics, but did I
mention the service fee is tax deductible?

~~~
akerro
Call it "Church of Churches as a Service" and you don't have pay taxes too!

------
phoe-krk
Does this bill protect against cases such as "my religious belief is that I am
always correct on exams" that would otherwise award a steady stream of A+s?

~~~
bootloop
I would argue that it doesn't matter. The possibility that you can do it for
parts of it already renders the results useless and without value.

------
mbostleman
3320.03: "[No one involved in running the school] shall prohibit a student
from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork,
or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be
calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance,
including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or
reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work."

Assuming this is the relevant section, does "grades and scores shall be
calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance" allow
this to be construed as "[allows] student answers to be scientifically wrong
due to religion"?

I don't think that the title expresses either the intent of the bill or it's
actual verbiage. It actually seems like it was made up specifically to make
people angry. But maybe I'm missing something in this section or maybe I
missed another section as I only skimmed the whole document.

------
spilk
I like how this basically enshrines in law that religion is factually
incorrect

~~~
gowld
No, it enshrines in law that religion is an axiom system _independent_ of the
state's axiom system, like the parallel postulate. Unprovable things are not
to be [edit: assumed] false.

~~~
mattigames
False, a giant teapot behind the moon is bot unprovable and safely can be said
to be false by anyone without further evidence needed.

------
vikingcaffiene
Besides the implied xenophobia here (the whole "war on Christianity" trope
that's been getting trotted out by the far right), it's important to remember
that an educated population is not in the best interests of the politicians
who put trash like this law together. They _want_ you to be uninformed. They
_want_ you to leave the big questions to a higher power. The stupider their
constituency, the better. There are few better ways to control a large mass of
people than to keep them stupid and then manipulate them emotionally. The only
thing I find shocking about things like this is that there are people so
devoid of anything I would call a moral compass that they are willing to go
here.

~~~
jacobush
I don't really _disagree_ with you, it's just that I think it's more of the
usual divide and conquer, and pander to your perceived constituency more than
anything else.

~~~
henryackerman
Keeping the general population uneducated is very beneficial for divide and
conquer. It's far easier to divide stupid people who don't have any sense of
critical thought.

------
PeterStuer
I think some essential context here is required. As I get from this article
[1] it is not so much about 'anything goes' student answers needing to be
accepted by a scientific teacher under the cop out of "according to my
religion", as indeed careful wording of the questions on tests could easily
prevent this as in “according to evolutionary theory”, it is about a
creationist teacher marking student's creationist answers as good and being
protected from scientific challenge by this law.

This article states: "This is an extension of a strategy that creationists
have been using in recent years. They are pushing for carefully crafted laws
that sound like they are just promoting freedom, but are specifically designed
to provide cover for teachers who want to introduce creationist materials in
their classroom. Alternatively, under the guise of “standards” they can
introduce laws carefully crafted to provide justification for not admitting
evolution or climate change into the classroom."

[1] [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ohio-
student-r...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ohio-student-
religious-liberties-act-of-2019/)

~~~
hhas01
Good summary link.

And yup, _of course_ those “loopholes” are Features, not bugs. The folks
crafting these edu laws are the same folks who craft the env and tax laws that
enable billionaires and megacorps to shit in your drinking water and pay fuck
all while you little people get it up the ass.

------
krapp
Here is the actual relevant text from the law[0].

    
    
        Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated
        using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance,
        including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not
        penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a
        student's work.
    
    

I'm not certain whether this means students must not be penalized for factual
errors if those errors are based on religious beliefs (eg claiming God created
the world in seven days and declaring evolution to be a heresy), or whether
they simply cannot be penalized for religious content given otherwise
factually correct answers, which would seem to be blatant religious
discrimination.

It does seem like a really weird, suspiciously contextually specific thing to
want a law for, since religious discrimination is already illegal and
something people can sue over.

[0][https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-
doc...](https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-
documents?id=GA133-HB-164)

~~~
pc86
Is getting docked points for bringing religion into an answer on physics, or
biology, or chemistry religious discrimination or is it requiring an answer to
be germane to the question?

If I'm asked a question in a biology exam and I start talking about computer
science, losing part of the score doesn't seem completely egregious.

~~~
krapp
>Is getting docked points for bringing religion into an answer on physics, or
biology, or chemistry religious discrimination or is it requiring an answer to
be germane to the question?

IANAL but reading the text of the law, I honestly can't tell. It seems like it
says a teacher can't go outside the bounds of normal academic standards for
grading in regards to religious content, which if true doesn't actually change
anything, since it's already illegal to discriminate against people for their
religious beliefs, but it would be acceptable to do so in the specific context
of education if religious beliefs aren't germane or factually correct IRT a
test or curriculum.... so what's the point?

Although it does use the weasel word "legitimate" which makes me suspicious
that the real purpose of this is a bait for pro-religious lawsuits.

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
Whenever you see "legitimate pedagogical concerns" in the scholastic context
you should probably understand it to be referring to the Hazelwood standard:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_School_District_v._K...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_School_District_v._Kuhlmeier)

------
cm2187
Maybe I am missing something but I think the inflammatory paragraph is this:

> _Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic
> standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical
> concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious
> content of a student 's work._

I am not sure that it means that negating something that is scientifically
proved is OK by "ordinary academic standard". Just that peppering a math paper
with religious references shouldn't be penalized if the math is correct (not
saying it is a good idea either).

Also, as far as I can tell, Darwinism isn't scientifically proven anyway. It
is just a very convincing theory compatible with all sorts of observations,
and for which we don't have a better explanation. But it cannot really be
falsified. I don't believe in creationism but I don't understand why people
get so upset about not taking the theory of evolution for granted.

------
mfer
Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist known for being outspoken,
recently blogged about how it's been a long time since something new was
theorized and then observed [1]. Some things scientists talk about have had
experiments run and their failed to show the expected results. But, there are
scientists still talking about them as if failed experiments had not happened.

There are philosophers (who study logic, reason, and belief) who have noted
that belief in unobserved things has crept into parts of science.

When people talk about scientifically wrong I wonder if we're talking about
observed and through the scientific method or the many things that don't have
anything close to an observation.

[1] [https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-
phys...](https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-physics-is-
not-only-about.html)

~~~
wjsetzer
This is not about defending new ideas, but about them trying to get
Christianity into schools in an official capacity.

~~~
mfer
What if we pulled all the belief systems out of public schools. Including the
non-traditional religion ones held by by some scientists that are not
observable.

Is this about belief systems, traditional religions, or something else? I ask
merely to try to get to the core issue.

------
champagnepapi
LOL Wonder what the long-term (10-20years) impacts of this will be? Will
college's be less willing to accept students from Ohio? Perhaps resulting in
more harsh economic conditions that result in bills like this and others
passing in the first place. As well as a negative economic loop.

~~~
danesparza
Well, I think it's no wonder that Ohio isn't a hotbed of engineering startups.

And before you get all hot and bothered and tell me the one obscure company
you know of in Ohio that is (kind of) technical ... I care just about as much
as Ohio cares about science.

------
gowld
This clickbait headline was refuted on Reddit. The law (dispayed in the
artcle!) says that students cannot be punished _and cannot be rewarded_ for
making religious statements. It says they must be tolerated, and the non-
religious portion of the answer is to be judged academically.

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
So what happens when the answer is wholly religious?

~~~
diffeomorphism
Then you effectively submitted a blank page, congratulations.

As a non-religious example:

Q: Here are two functions describing supply and demand, where do they
intersect?

A: A short essay on capitalism.

Yeah, you are not getting partial credit for that.

------
ddgflorida
It looks like local12 reached the wrong conclusion. I doubt they read the law
in question.

~~~
akerro
>I doubt they read the law in question.

No, but they answered it according to their beliefs.

------
sunasra
Looks great decision. this allows students to put their opinion in front of
everyone without any resistance in class or anywhere(including those who
follow old theory just because they learned in school).

For example, Darwin theory looks very illogical and nonsense to me as it is
never proven, everything is based on assumptions.

This will definitely gives extra space to students thoughts to connect the
dots between religion and science

------
vermontdevil
_Looks at the Senate and Governor of Ohio_

Republican controlled

Oh boy - this is going to pass for sure.

------
quantified
Will medical schools be covered by this? Wouldn’t the state be forced to
license doctors who followed a religion’s teachings on how to treat illness?

------
jdkee
Ohio, hollowed out by years of de-industrialization and the loss of a middle-
class future that depended on those jobs. Ohio, ground zero of the opioid
epidemic that is shortening residents life spans. Ohio, a state that needs to
attract world class intellect to compete on the world stage.

And this is their solution.

------
lolive
Next step: allow teachers to ask for scientifically wrong questions. (like How
long does it take to create a world?)

------
XCabbage
What utter bullshit reporting.

For context, this is a bill establishing religious and conscientious rights
for students in state law, including things like an explicit right to _refuse_
to participate in acts of collective worship at school, or in displays of
patriotism. Its effect, unless I have missed something very important in my
skim, is to _protect_ students with minority religious beliefs (including
atheism) from being bulldozed by the Christian majority. That's admirable! And
it's necessary, given how many stories there are from conservative states in
the US of students being unconstitutionally discriminated against by schools
for their beliefs - for instance, for refusing to say the Pledge of
Allegiance.

The bit that this article seems to be alluding to is this:

> Sec. 3320.03. No school district board of education, governing authority of
> a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the Revised Code,
> governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter 3326. of the
> Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory boarding school
> established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall prohibit a student
> from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework,
> artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores
> shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and
> relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not
> penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's
> work.

It's pretty clear that what this is saying is that teachers must assess work
in a secular manner; that if, for instance, if in poetry class a religious
student writes a poem about how their god helps them through life, the teacher
can't penalise them because they don't approve of the student's religious
beliefs but must instead mark the poem on its poetic merit.

But Local12 decides to spin this as _forbidding_ secular marking, instead,
claiming that a student denying evolution for religious reasons can't be
penalised for their scientifically wrong answer. Yet this is nonsense! The
teacher is in fact _required_ to mark the answers in a secular way - based on
"substance" and "legitimate pedagogical concerns". The bill that they're
saying forbids penalising this hypothetical evolution-denying students in fact
_requires_ penalising them.

But instead, through dishonest journalism, we have a good, liberal, secular
bill being reframed as Republican-imposed state theocracy. It's bullshit, and
it creates terrible incentives. Why should Republican lawmakers in
conservative states try to stop conservative schools oppressing minorities
over differences of belief if their attempts to do so are just going to get
spun by lying journalists as impositions of Christian theocracy like this?
They'd've gained more, politically, by doing nothing to help.

~~~
justin66
> we have a good, liberal, secular bill

Wow.

~~~
XCabbage
Care to expand?

------
bsenftner
Whatever is on that page, uBlock leaves the entire page blank.

~~~
ubermonkey
There's other coverage, e.g.

[https://www.inquisitr.com/5743685/ohio-law-student-
religion-...](https://www.inquisitr.com/5743685/ohio-law-student-religion-
science/)

The gist of the problem is covered in this paragraph:

"The language in the bill abolishes 'any restrictions on students from
engaging in religious expression in completion of homework, artwork or other
assignments.' What that means is that a student could, for example, turn in
work that claims that the Earth is 6,000-years-old, as some Christian
denominations teach, rather than 4.5 billion years, like the overwhelming
majority of accepted science teaches, and not be penalized for it. Similarly,
a student could turn in work that claims that Homo Sapiens were created by a
benevolent god, rather than having evolved from a common ancestor shared by
humans and other apes."

------
mnm1
So 2 + 2 = 5 because my god said so and therefore I'm right. And we wonder why
Americans are considered so stupid. Many of them literally are.

------
ken
Mods (dang?): the actual title (and content) is "Ohio _House_ passes bill
...". The current HN title, "Ohio passes bill ...", makes it sound like this
is already law.

------
hwestiii
What’s the matter with Ohio?

~~~
Spooky23
Globalization.

Industry went to China and Mexico. Agriculture is a dumpster fire.

The people who supported these industries moved on to other places. The people
who are left are idle and are occupied by crazy religious people and being
bitter.

~~~
hnuser77
Ohio's unemployment rate is 25% above the national average, but not
particularly shocking at 4.1%. It also has a GDP per capita higher than
Florida and Vermont. Ohio is 16th out of 50 states for weekly church
attendance.

------
paulcarroty
My school biology teacher said "Darwin theory was a pure garbage, we believe
in God." After years I absolutely agree.

------
jstewartmobile
Public schools--even "nice" ones--are an ideological battleground and/or
laboratory, where your kids get caught in the cross-fire and/or experimented
on.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Allowing outside bullshit is not going to help this issue.

~~~
jstewartmobile
That makes it sound like it hasn't been smeared with a dozen different kinds
of it already.

------
DoofusOfDeath
My working theory: the preference for believing received knowledge from the
academic science community over received religious-based knowledge is (in some
cases) a matter of competing epistemologies.

And although most people find the former epistemology more reliable, it can be
difficult to make a logically unassailable case that it always is more
accurate.

So one angle on this topic is the question of how much the majority will
tolerate a minority adhering to a different epistemology.

~~~
scarface74
I wouldn’t want to go to a doctor who doesn’t believe in the science that
viruses evolve.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Neither would I. However, as a counterppint:

I'm guessing that some people wouldn't want to see a doctor who believed that
ultimately my life had no value.

Both belief types can affect the outcome of patient care.

~~~
scarface74
I would think just the opposite. If you believe that this life is all there is
and you don’t have an afterlife to look forward to, you would value life even
more.

Off topic: to all of the people who are downvoting the parent post: Just
because you say something in a post, doesn’t mean that you believe it. For
example, I often take the devil’s advocate position. If you can’t argue both
sides of an issue, you don’t truly understand it.

