Sidenote: My apologies if this is incoherent. I’m exhausted. I was going to use this space to tell you about why, but I think that’ll have to wait until after the holiday. In case I forget to post on Saturday, have a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and a very good just-another-day if you don’t. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…
According to an attorney for the Dover Area School District, a restraining order is not necessary to prevent the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classes next month. Of course, none of the articles I’ve found seem to offer any specifics about what’s being taught instead. While I suppose it’s unlikely that Dover biology teachers are the driving force behind this law, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that ID, in some form, was already being taught.
My sophomore 20th century US history class at Red Land High School included three days of lecture (well, argument, since I was in the class) on creationism and its merits, presented in the guise of “learning” about the Scopes Monkey Trial. The thing is, it doesn’t matter so much what the official policy is, or what’s Constitutional or not. For better or worse, teachers are going to manage to work their beliefs into the classroom.
In some ways, I think that’s good. It’s important to learn that people have different views. I also think it’s okay to point out that there are holes in Darwinism. I think, in a class about Christianity, it’d be good to point out that there are a lot of unaccounted for years in Christ’s life. I don’t think we should guard any one idea from criticism simply because we’re afraid of the current alternatives.
My tenth grade history teacher began his Scopes lecture by saying, “In order to believe in evolution, two things are necessary: you must have faith, and you must believe in the spontaneous creation of life.” My hand was in the air. “Uh, isn’t that what’s necessary to believe in creationism?” I got no satisfactory answer, of course, but that didn’t stop him from proceeding to tell us that this proved that creationism was a better model.
While there were elements of truth in his initial statement, holes in one theory are not sufficient evidence that another is true. It seems like this is the entire premise of the ID argument — there is no other science involved. In my mind, this should preclude it from being taught in a science class.
I think it would be cool to offer an Origin Theory class, examining Darwinism, ID, literal biblical creationism, and perhaps creation “theories” from other cultures and religions, too. Kind of a very focused comparative religion class. But not a science class.
As long as we have a government monopoly on education, I’d like to see a wider variety of subjects and perspectives being taught in public schools. The Supreme Court has said that the 14th Amendment gives parents the right to educate their children as they see fit. Provide opportunities for children to receive the right education for them, as they and their parents see it. Don’t force anything.
And especially not in a science class.
Mostly, I’m kicking myself for not raising a bigger stink about that 10th grade “history” teacher.