Iowa Rep. Won’t Back Qur’an Classes in School Because “The Bible is Different”
January 31, 2018 by Hemant Mehta

Iowa State Rep. Skyler Wheeler is the anti-science legislator who, last year, co-sponsored a bill that would have required public school teachers who taught evolution, global warming, the origins of life, or human cloning to “include opposing points of view or beliefs relating to the instruction.” Even when there was no credible opposing point of view. If a teacher taught climate change, Wheeler wanted her to teach climate denial, too.

The bill died in committee, thankfully, but Wheeler wasn’t done arguing with people about it. The graduate of Pat Robertson‘s Regent University kept pushing his anti-science ideas on Facebook and deleting any criticism.

Wheeler’s latest attempt at making Iowa as ignorant as he is comes in the form of House File 2031, which he co-sponsored and which we’ve written about before. It would allow public schools to teach classes on the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in order for students to learn (among other things) of their influence on “law, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values, and culture.”

These would be elective courses that are supposed to be objective, so on paper, they’re not illegal. But in so many states where these courses are taught, the “objective” classes quickly turn subjective, and the teachers frequently peddle indoctrination and treat Christian mythology as actual history. More importantly, this would become the only elective course in Iowa in which the State Board of Education is tasked with creating the course standards. They’d be pushing districts to offer the class in a way they don’t do for, say, a regular elective history class. In that sense, this course receives special treatment, and advocates of church/state separation know it.