INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND PUBLIC EDUCATION



INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

By: Ronald F. White, Ph.D.

College of Mount St. Joseph

The intelligent design controversy is not just a problem for high school biology teachers. It is part of a much larger problem that also affects the teaching of history, literature, reading, math, and even sex education. This problem is political and not scientific: plain and simple it is our public schools.

There is still an unexamined assumption that we need large scale, governmentally-supported, monopolies whereby elected local and state school boards and a host of other politicos become empowered to shape the curricula. We can’t attack political problems from the top down lightly armed with only logical arguments and a preponderance of scientific evidence. It is votes and campaign contributions, not good science that win elections. Science will lose the culture wars unless scientists become more realistically engaged in the political process. This means organizing grass roots political action committees that lobby congress and work to defeat anti-science school boards and other anti-intellectual politicians. It means sending our own kids to good schools that respect science and encouraging others to do the same.

Even if we do become more politically active, that doesn’t guarantee the survival of science. My view is that we are now paying the price for not attacking public schools years ago. Do really we need huge school districts that purchase notoriously poor textbooks from publishing companies that mold content based on political demands? Would any of you choose one of those generic textbooks to teach? Would you like to teach science in an atmosphere where non-scientists control the curriculum? Do you wonder why so many high school teachers change careers?

As an evolutionary philosopher and a libertarian, I prefer variation in education, even if it means tolerating individual public and/or private schools that teach nonsense. Most of all, I am in favor of simply removing education from local and state politics by supporting the expansion of private schools and/or independent public schools that are engineered from the bottom up by educators and parents that support science. Large scale public education is inexorably political, which means that scientists will always have to defend science against the forces of anti-science. In an era when most Americans are scientifically and mathematically illiterate, more times than not we’ll lose those battles.

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