what's the big IDea?
Continuing my brother's discussion on ID, or Intelligent Design, I ran across an article in the local Waco Tribune Herald that actually got my attention. Martha Raffaele wrote an Associate Press piece titled "Debate Revisited" on the Dover, Pennsylvania School District's fight over Intelligent Design.
In case you haven't followed the story, the Dover Area School District adopted a policy "requiring ninth-grade students to hear about 'intelligent design' in a preamble to biology lessons on evolution." The Pennsylvania ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are assisting a group of local parents who have sued to stop this practice.
Apparently there is currently a law in Pennsylvania that forbids the teachign of creationism. The parents and backing organizations argue that current law thus forbids the preamble Dover requires to be read.
The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank supporting the Dover Schools on this issue, alleges that their opponents are attempting to "squelch voluntary debate."
Setting aside the "scientific" issues at the moment, I simply want to ask, "what happened to free speech?" Am I missing something?
One side wants to uphold current law that FORBIDS a particular teaching. The other side wants to enforce a policy REQUIRING the reading of some specific text.
It seems there is agreement at least on one point, that the article in my local paper and all the others I have found seem to miss. It seems there is widespread agreement that teachers are not to be trusted to teach!
In case you haven't followed the story, the Dover Area School District adopted a policy "requiring ninth-grade students to hear about 'intelligent design' in a preamble to biology lessons on evolution." The Pennsylvania ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are assisting a group of local parents who have sued to stop this practice.
Apparently there is currently a law in Pennsylvania that forbids the teachign of creationism. The parents and backing organizations argue that current law thus forbids the preamble Dover requires to be read.
The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank supporting the Dover Schools on this issue, alleges that their opponents are attempting to "squelch voluntary debate."
Setting aside the "scientific" issues at the moment, I simply want to ask, "what happened to free speech?" Am I missing something?
One side wants to uphold current law that FORBIDS a particular teaching. The other side wants to enforce a policy REQUIRING the reading of some specific text.
It seems there is agreement at least on one point, that the article in my local paper and all the others I have found seem to miss. It seems there is widespread agreement that teachers are not to be trusted to teach!
posted by Steve Heyduck at 11:28 AM
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