Via PZ Myers, we learn about the latest legislative abomination to threaten education in the great state of Oklahoma:

[Oklahoma legislator Sally Kern] had earlier sponsored something called the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, a ghastly piece of legislation that would require teachers to pass any old crap a student turned in, as long as the student said it was his religious belief - it prioritized belief over evidence. That bill died in a senate committee, fortunately.

But now it has been resurrected! The language from the earlier bill has been inserted into Oklahoma House Bill 2633.

A controversial provision in House Bill 2633 states that "students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions."

A note to meddling legislators - and to Representative Kern in particular: classroom assignments are not free-for-all expositions for a student to share her beliefs with her instructor.  They serve the important pedagogical functions of helping students integrate the concepts and facts about which they've been learning and providing a means to evaluate how well students understand the course content.

Perhaps an example would be illustrative.  When I was a TA for a class on demography, I had to grade the following paraphrased short essay question: "Compare and contrast the causes of food scarcity advanced by proponents of the Green Revolution and by critics of neo-liberal trade policies."  The short answer is that the former would attribute food scarcity to a shortfall in production and the latter to inequality in the distribution of food.  One student - a star player on that year's basketball team, no less - answered that food scarcity was a punishment from God meted out to those who refused to provide the proper obeisance to His Authority.  The student received a grade of zero for that particular question, not because I objected to his religious views, but because he didn't answer the question to demonstrate that he understood the material.  I could care less whether or not he modified his religious beliefs in light of one of the two explanations on which he was to answer.  My job was to ascertain whether or not he had learned the material at hand, and from the answer given, I could only conclude that either he hadn't learned it or he willingly ignored it.

Myers is right - this proposed legislation is completely insane and gives students an excuse not to have to learn anything that butts up against their preconceived notions.  And it is the very antithesis of education.