New Hampshire bills aim to roll back teaching evolution
Bills aim to roll back teaching evolution
Lawmaker says kids must get alternative
By Sarah Palermo
December 29, 2011
He would like to see intelligent design - the idea that a creator controlled how early life on Earth developed - taught in classrooms, but hasn’t been able to find an example of the philosophy being successfully legislated into schools.
“I want the problems with the current theories to be presented so that kids understand that science doesn’t really have all the answers. They are just guessing,” he said.
Currently, science class “is like having a creative writing class where the students are told what to create,” he said. “Science is a creative process, not an absolute thing.”
To state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, the horrors of the Columbine school shooting and the atrocities of Nazi Germany are linked by the theory of evolution, and that’s all the evidence he needs to see that New Hampshire’s children shouldn’t be taught that it’s correct.
Rep. Jerry Bergevin (R-NH)
Bergevin, a Republican from Manchester serving his first term, introduced one of two bills that will be before the Legislature next year addressing evolution, the first in the state since the late 1990s.
The second bill, introduced by Reps. Gary Hopper of Weare and John Burt of Goffstown, more vaguely calls for science teachers to “instruct pupils that proper scientific (inquiry) results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis … and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories.”