Yesterday I posted a short note about the new Louisiana Science standards, which call for schools to encourage students in

critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

One commenter quickly responded with deep invective, including,

Come on. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is trumpeting this legislation except for its religious proponents. And yet it’s being heralded on sites like this as a triumph for science education. Talk about hypocrisy.

Call it what it is: a triumph of religious organization, an act of political calculation, and another reminder that the state with perhaps our poorest historical and current educational standards supports politicians who will preserve that status quo well into the near future.

He’s not alone in this; his was just one representative response that happened to be handy for me to use.

Now compare that to the James Corbett incident in Orange County, California. Corbett has been caught on tape making repeated derogatory comments about Christianity in the high school social studies classes he was teaching. His supporters rushed to his defense, in interviews and in a rally on his behalf, saying,

He Made Us Think

He’s all about opening people’s minds.

I don’t agree with everything he says, but that’s not the point. Can you tolerate someone saying something that you don’t agree with? Can you have a fiery debate about ideas? It scares me that that’s not acceptable.

Corbett is training young students to think critically.

I can’t prove this, but I’d be willing to bet that many of the people around the country who would support Corbett’s “teaching how to think” are the ones most appalled that Louisiana will be encouraging students to learn critical thinking skills and logical analysis.

The difference, of course, is that Corbett’s apparent religious agenda is more agreeable to these people than the one they see behind the Louisiana bill. It seems many people really like learning to think critically, as long as “thinking critically” means learning how to disagree with religiously-connected ideas.

There’s a double irony here: Corbett’s supporters, as displayed in reports at the time, weren’t displaying good critical thinking at all. They weren’t even engaging the issue that was in question. Maybe some of them should go back to school—in Louisiana.

I was going to close on that note, but instead I am going to repeat a quote from above, and ask you to think of it in a different light:

I don’t agree with everything he says, but that’s not the point. Can you tolerate someone saying something that you don’t agree with? Can you have a fiery debate about ideas? It scares me that that’s not acceptable.

Ironic.