Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Icons Lite
Yesterday, we linked to a World Magazine article touting the effectiveness of Discovery's "teach the controversy" approach to sneaking creationism through the public school house door.
"State school boards in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Minnesota along with local boards in Wisconsin and Louisiana have adopted science standards that encourage critical analysis of Darwinian Theory," enthused WM reporter Mark Bergin. "To date, not a single lawsuit has challenged such standards."
The hope that intelligent design might at last succeed in finding its way into public schools may seem slight to many following the Dover ruling, but ID activists are pinning their hopes on a new textbook, Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism which proponents claim doesn't address alternative theories of origins but instead "lays out the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the most critical elements of Darwinism."
One prominent ID activist isn't so sure "critical analysis" is on the verge of success.
Here in Kansas, John Calvert of the ID Network, reportedly doesn't "share the Discovery Institute's optimism that this new textbook and the approach it embodies will significantly dent the uncritical Darwinist dogma currently taught in most public schools," according to Bergin.
After all, that was the strategy in Kansas and the voters here seemed more than happy to get back to "uncritical Darwinist dogma."
"Critical analysis" in Kansas -- teaching the strengths and weaknesses -- turned out to be nothing more than injecting a series of recycled creationist arguments, long discredited, into the science curriculum.
We can expect that Explore Evolution will be more of the same. Think of it as Icons Lite.
"State school boards in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Minnesota along with local boards in Wisconsin and Louisiana have adopted science standards that encourage critical analysis of Darwinian Theory," enthused WM reporter Mark Bergin. "To date, not a single lawsuit has challenged such standards."
The hope that intelligent design might at last succeed in finding its way into public schools may seem slight to many following the Dover ruling, but ID activists are pinning their hopes on a new textbook, Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism which proponents claim doesn't address alternative theories of origins but instead "lays out the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the most critical elements of Darwinism."
One prominent ID activist isn't so sure "critical analysis" is on the verge of success.
Here in Kansas, John Calvert of the ID Network, reportedly doesn't "share the Discovery Institute's optimism that this new textbook and the approach it embodies will significantly dent the uncritical Darwinist dogma currently taught in most public schools," according to Bergin.
After all, that was the strategy in Kansas and the voters here seemed more than happy to get back to "uncritical Darwinist dogma."
"Critical analysis" in Kansas -- teaching the strengths and weaknesses -- turned out to be nothing more than injecting a series of recycled creationist arguments, long discredited, into the science curriculum.
We can expect that Explore Evolution will be more of the same. Think of it as Icons Lite.
