<p>According to an AP story, President Bush said in an interview today that intelligent design should be taught in schools.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080200493.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080200493.html</a></p>
<p>Will this have an impact on actual school and college curriculums?</p>
<p>No impact on college curriculums. The whole evolution vs. creationism conflict has always been played out in terms of elementary and seconday schools. Mainstream US colleges, like the rest of the world, teach the “theory” of evolution in the same way that they teach the “theory” of relativity - pretty much as an accepted fact. Good article on this topic in the current Economist also.</p>
<p>Depends what you mean by “actual schools and colleges.” I’d be interested to learn how intelligent design accounts for, say, the recent Tsunami, or my younger sister’s fatal cancer.</p>
<p>George Bush doesn’t know the meaning of the word intelligent. It’s just something he dreams about.</p>
<p>If intelligent design does become mandated in high schools or middle schools, could it then become mandated in state colleges? If, for example, Georgia high schools require intelligent design to be taught, could UGA, a public, state school, be required to teach it too? I don’t know too much about the governmental workings behind state schools, but could the state government require something to be taught?</p>
<p>Bush isn’t a scientist- I am just waiting till he comes up with the Dixy Lee Ray school of dealing with nuclear waste</p>
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<p>Didn’t say how the issue came up in the round table, but the quote they offer seems reasonable enough. It doesn’t say that ID will be mandated in any curriculm as I’ve seen some people represent it. </p>
<p>Sounds like someone spinning a relatively mild, intelligent response to fighten people who don’t know any better or want to believe the worst.</p>
<p>There’s a school of thought that the Earth is flat, too. I guess an “intelligent response” to that would be to expose students to that one as well…</p>
<p>There’s a school of thought that the Earth is flat, too. I guess an “intelligent response” to that would be to expose students to that one as well…</p>
<p>I don’t know how you prepare them for the real world if you don’t. :D</p>
<p>Show 'em how to get the facts and teach them to think for themselves. The world would be a better place.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41278-2004Dec6.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41278-2004Dec6.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“U.S. Falling Behind in Science - ABC News”>http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=276464&page=1</a>
but would teaching about people who beleive the Holocaust was a hoax, that Earth is flat, that we never went to the moon, should that be spent during time allocated to teaching sciences?</p>
<p>We already have many areas teaching “connected math” where the process is more important than being able to find the correct answer, can we afford to spend the little time that children are in school on things that they can pick up outside of school?</p>
<p>I once had a friend who believed that the only reality was what he physically saw at any moment. Everything else was fabricated at best an illusion, at worst an outright lie. All people ceased to exist when he was not looking at them. The entire universe revolved around HIM, and no would could ever prove him wrong, because no other theory was “logical” to him.</p>
<p>I now concede that this theory should be taught in the schools and colleges. It’s only fair that our students be exposed to this legitimate viewpoint, which obviously is just as valid as Darwin.</p>
<p>The problem is, Stick, that you could have made the same apologetic answer, saying it was a reasonable position for our President, had the question been, “Should children be taught our scientific belief that Black people are inferior?” or “Should we be able to teach in History that Jews control the government and economic systems?.” Or any number of outlandish repugnant beliefs. After all, exposing people to those things would also be exposing people to different ideas.</p>
<p>You may believe in intelligent design, teach it to your children, endorse teaching it in Sunday school (or Shabbat School) or anywhere esle that is private. But it is essentially a religious belief, not a scientific theory or scientifically accepted principal.</p>
<p>When you “expose” young maleable minds to ideas in a classroom it you lend it an iprimatur.</p>
<p>Read the article, mhc48. It doesn’t say that Bush wants anything taught. It says he thinks it should be discussed. How is that ever wrong?</p>
<p>The whole thing seems to be blow out of proportion. It appears Bush responded to a specific question (which we aren’t entitled to read in the article) that he qualified and responded to.</p>
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<p>Again, is that wrong? I’d like my children to know that some people think Holocaust was a hoax if for no other reason than for them to learn, for themselves, what the facts are and that Holocaust is not just a word.</p>
<p>Id also like my children to be taught how to get the correct answer in math- not just be able to write about it, that there is reliable birth control and how to get it and about the history of blacks, natives and women in the US, but those things it looks like I will have to arrange to teach them myself.</p>
<p>Schools are cutting back on recess and PE even for lower grade school children, many schools don’t have any art or music to speak of, science labs in many high schools are poorly funded and a joke, I have more things to advocate for than whether my students are taught about others ill founded opinions</p>
<p>I’m not sure of the context in which this came up, so I don’t know if W is suggesting that government should mandate teaching ID and how it is taught. Like Strick11, I think the quotation, taken alone, is quite reasonable. Lamarckian evolution is a discredited theory, though on its face it is plausible concept. At the time, it was not necessarily bad science. Teaching about it and how it came to be discredited is a useful lesson in the scientific method. Similarly, ID is an ascientific notion dressed in the language of science. Discussing it in that context could be a useful lesson in how science can be manipulated and in critical thinking. (I’d put a lot of what passes for accepted “environmental science” in the same category). I’ve got to disagree with mhc48–children should be taught that a lot of people thought, and still think, that black people are inferior, that Zionism is an international conspiracy, etc., and they should be taught about the consequences and cruelty of racism. Exposing kids to bad ideas in the classroom will prepare them for their inevitable confrontation with them outside the classroom, and give them the ability to analyze and critique them. ID is in the news occasionally, and is a great opportunity to reinforce the principle that if it’s not testable, it’s not science, among other things. I’m sympathetic to emeraldkity4’s point about limited time and resources, though, and think the choice of what is and is not taught should be province of the local school boards, on which, of course, W does not sit.</p>
<p>Also from teh same story</p>
<p>Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over “creationism,” a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution. On Monday the president said he favors the same approach for intelligent design “so people can understand what the debate is about.”</p>
<p>If schools want to make the choice to introduce debate about controversial ideas great- I htink debate classes are a very valuable part of school ECs and give students experience in preparing and researching arguments
But I think it should be up to the school district how much time they want their students to spend on ideas like “is the earth flat” and “did we really go to the moon” just because some people beleive it</p>
<p>Vadad: I really liked your post.
EK: As usual, you damn Bush with other people’s quotations. I think people should be “exposed” to creationism. That doesn’t mean that I support teaching it as science. I just think they should understand that it’s a concept that’s out there, and what it means. That doesn’t mean I’m mandating that it be “taught,” or how many resources should be so deployed. This is “gotcha” journalism at its worst.</p>
<p>If schools want to make the choice to introduce debate about controversial ideas great- I htink debate classes are a very valuable part of school ECs and give students experience in preparing and researching arguments</p>
<p>If there’s a major difference in our positions, emeraldkity4, it’s that I don’t think you can teach science, or frankly, most subjects, without that kind of debate. The debate is a central part of the scientific method. Without it, you’re just teaching facts, not how to think.</p>
<p>In science, the whole point is debate. You have a question, you have a hypothesis, you test it. Newton was a creationist. As best I can understand quantum theory, it looks like Einstein was wrong about God not playing dice. No debate, no scientific progress. The best thing students can learn about science is that it is a process of discovery, not some immutable list of rules. And it is not a democracy, so what “most scientists” think is pretty much irrelevant. The ID proponents have a facile, appealing approach–they claim to ask questions that are unanswered by the current understanding of evolutionists, they have a list of Ph.D.'s that support their approach, and they conclude that what they have is science. Until the late eighteenth century, creationism was the accepted solution to how we got here by all of the leading scientific societies in the Western world. Darwin’s ideas overturned hundreds of years of that being the predominant view, and since Darwin, creationism has had periodic resurgences of popular appeal. I don’t think it is at all like flat earth or moon consipiracies.<br>
Driver, I do think that W is dodging a bit with his answer. Notice that he reframes the question so he avoids addressing what the questioner really wants him to say–that he supports the unconstitutional approach taken by Kansas and other states that would denigrate evolution and support creationism as science. Not surprising for a talented politician to answer a question other than the one he was asked. That the AP journalist would cast his response in the light of what he/she was looking for (W as troglodyte), of course, is equally unsurprising.</p>
<p>Ive been trying to find direct quotes but so far I only have summaries
these apparently are the papers Bush spoke with
Bush spoke with reporters from the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Austin American-Statesman.</p>