Sunday, November 20, 2005
The Week
This week we read articles and talked in class about a few issues that are important to me, most notably school funding. If you know me at all, you know that I'm pissed off about school funding.
We also had a guest speaker on Wednesday who talked about students with disabilities. Here again I was pretty interested because out of sheer coincidence I had had a troubling conversation with another Ed. major about funding and disabilities. This person had said something like, "as a business investment, we spend way too much on students with disabilities and not enough on the gifted and talented kids." I wrote to a former professor of mine looking for guidance on how to respond, and he wrote back with a simply fantastic answer... my current instructor even let me read that email to our class. Good stuff.
And then Friday... well, Friday reminded me just how tricky the evolution/intelligent design debate can be. Our instructor couched intelligent design in terms of a compromise between evolution and creationism, and because I had spoken enough that day, I didn't give the ID advocates the earfull they so richly deserve. ID is not a compromise. It is not, as our instructor said, halfway between evolution and creationism. ID is 99 steps from evolution and 1 step away from creationism. Everything I've read about ID indicates that its proponents, at least the vocal ones, are Christian.
My concern here is twofold: first, that teaching anything other than scientific fact in a science class subverts just about everything school should stand for. I'm aghast - literally aghast - at the idea of ID being taught in public schools, simply because it is an infinitely regressive argument and therefore not scientific fact and therefore not appropriate for public school. It is a religious theory, not a scientific one. It is, at its core, a transparent attempt to bring God into the classroom. Its proponents tend to argue that, well, if you can't prove it, how can you argue against it? To which I would say, well, we can't prove Yellowstone Lake was created by a giant bird who dropped water from its beak, either, so we probably shouldn't teach it.
Which brings me to my second concern. If we're going to teach human origins in anything other than scientific terms like "hydrogen" and "water" and "useless leftover organs like the appendix that sure don't seem like they were designed by some intelligent creator," then we're going to wind up devoting a whole lot of time to a whole lot of creation myths. In other words, if we teach ID, what's to stop other groups from insisting that their version of human origin be taught? I'm envisioning weeks of story time dedicated to every single creation myth ever, replete with quizzes on trivial "facts" of various groups' belief systems. As soon as we open the door to ID, we open the door to every religious wackjob and their wild-ass guess at where we came from.
Let's keep this one simple: if it can't be proven, it shouldn't be taught in science class. If you don't want your kid to believe in evolution, if you want your child to be cowed into religious obeisance in the face of reason, fine. Teach them at home or at a religious school. But as long as they're in public school, they will learn about one of the most important scientific theories in the history of human existence. ¶ 11:29 AM
We also had a guest speaker on Wednesday who talked about students with disabilities. Here again I was pretty interested because out of sheer coincidence I had had a troubling conversation with another Ed. major about funding and disabilities. This person had said something like, "as a business investment, we spend way too much on students with disabilities and not enough on the gifted and talented kids." I wrote to a former professor of mine looking for guidance on how to respond, and he wrote back with a simply fantastic answer... my current instructor even let me read that email to our class. Good stuff.
And then Friday... well, Friday reminded me just how tricky the evolution/intelligent design debate can be. Our instructor couched intelligent design in terms of a compromise between evolution and creationism, and because I had spoken enough that day, I didn't give the ID advocates the earfull they so richly deserve. ID is not a compromise. It is not, as our instructor said, halfway between evolution and creationism. ID is 99 steps from evolution and 1 step away from creationism. Everything I've read about ID indicates that its proponents, at least the vocal ones, are Christian.
My concern here is twofold: first, that teaching anything other than scientific fact in a science class subverts just about everything school should stand for. I'm aghast - literally aghast - at the idea of ID being taught in public schools, simply because it is an infinitely regressive argument and therefore not scientific fact and therefore not appropriate for public school. It is a religious theory, not a scientific one. It is, at its core, a transparent attempt to bring God into the classroom. Its proponents tend to argue that, well, if you can't prove it, how can you argue against it? To which I would say, well, we can't prove Yellowstone Lake was created by a giant bird who dropped water from its beak, either, so we probably shouldn't teach it.
Which brings me to my second concern. If we're going to teach human origins in anything other than scientific terms like "hydrogen" and "water" and "useless leftover organs like the appendix that sure don't seem like they were designed by some intelligent creator," then we're going to wind up devoting a whole lot of time to a whole lot of creation myths. In other words, if we teach ID, what's to stop other groups from insisting that their version of human origin be taught? I'm envisioning weeks of story time dedicated to every single creation myth ever, replete with quizzes on trivial "facts" of various groups' belief systems. As soon as we open the door to ID, we open the door to every religious wackjob and their wild-ass guess at where we came from.
Let's keep this one simple: if it can't be proven, it shouldn't be taught in science class. If you don't want your kid to believe in evolution, if you want your child to be cowed into religious obeisance in the face of reason, fine. Teach them at home or at a religious school. But as long as they're in public school, they will learn about one of the most important scientific theories in the history of human existence. ¶ 11:29 AM
