Higher ed bill might as well be called 'Make College Courses Boring Act.'| Biology
College faculty “don’t want to teach General Education biology courses because they’re soooo boring!” argued a member of my college’s General Education review committee several years ago.
It reminded me of a joke among fellow graduate students back in the '70s. The motto of a local, cheap beer claimed, “It’s the water!” The rejoinder: ‘If they know the problem, why don’t they fix it?’
The “Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act,” SB 83, introduced recently and assigned to a committee chaired by its sponsor in the Ohio Senate sounds like a non-fix. It might as well get called, “Make College Courses Boring Act.”
The proposed legislation “Affirm(s) and guarantee(s) that faculty and staff shall allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial matters and shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.” What about a scientific point of view in a science class?
Further, “’Controversial belief or policy’ means any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate change, electoral politics …” What if there is no scientific controversy?
Officials have tried repeatedly to control how issues they find controversial are taught — or not — in Ohio. Two decades ago, after the state Board of Education eliminated creationism from its model curriculum, creationism board supporters proposed a policy of neutrality on topics it deemed “controversial”. Those included evolution, climate change, and human reproductive technologies.
Higher education faculty members across the state have voiced strong objection to the effects SB 83 will have on them. But what about its effects on student learning?
I directed Ohio State University’s Introductory Biology Program for five years. Our General Education (“non-majors”) courses were, well, boring. My colleagues and I addressed this by finding ways to show how biological insights that students had already learned helped them understand issues of social concern: Controversial issues by definition.
By examining the biology of breast cancer and why its incidence is increasing in developed countries but not developing ones, we applied aspects of genetics and cell biology learned in kindergarten-high school (K-12). We didn’t teach cell division as if students had never heard of it. Rather, we showed how exposure to ‘environmental endocrine disruptors’ effected cell division processes they already learned.
We also applied students’ previous course work to issues related to human reproduction, biodiversity loss, and climate change. We achieved political balance of a sort when we explained biological and ethical differences between therapeutic and reproductive cloning. In the former, we may make a new pancreas for you. In the latter, we make a new you. We helped students consider the ethical issues raised by both.
We could not, however, say the same on topics such as biodiversity loss, evolution, or climate change.
We won’t lie to our students. We won’t tacitly support “both sides” of “politically controversial” issues that are not scientifically controversial.
Non-tenure track lecturers and adjunct staff increasingly teach large enrollment, general education courses like biology. Their contracts often renew term by term based on student feedback and complaints, like spending class time on evolution or climate change.
If SB 83 becomes law, look for a lot more boring, yet safe for instructor retention, college courses in biology.
Steve Rissing is professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University. steverissing@hotmail.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio higher education bill would result in boring college classes
