Thursday, October 30, 2008
A Modern Day "Monkey Trial"
In 2004 the Dover Board of Education voted to include "Intelligent Design" in the science curriculum. This led to a historic First Amendment trial. Laurie Lebo, a reporter who covered the trial has written a book, "The Devil in Dover" about these events and trial. This fits directly in with our discussions about evolution and intelligent design. Read the interview and post a comment!
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4 comments:
[rant]
I really found Dover to be quite ridiculous. I'm sure most people who pother reading this comment already know my view on Intelligent Design, and whether or not it should be taught in schools.
The fact that the school board would lie like that really infuriated me. Is it so important to get schools to teach creationism that they have to disguise it as intelligent design, forbidding students to ask questions, etc.
Wait, let me go back to 'forbidding students to ask questions.' Forbidding a student to ask questions ruins the purpose of having a teacher. The school might as well just have the students sit around and watch ID videos. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Anyway, I'm glad the judge had some sense, at least. He ruled that school board members had lied, and 'chided the 'breathtaking inanity' of what the board had done in trying to push their religious views into science class.' HE EVEN RULED THAT ID IS NOT SCIENCE.
THIS JUDGE IS MADE OF WIN.
So, I'm glad all turned out for the better for Dover, and I hope the ID virus does not continue to spread in school across our country. Or science will be sad.
[/rant]
Well after reading Greg's comment i figured out his view on ID :)
i agree about most of what he said, especially about being mad that they forbad students from asking questions.
This part really struck me and just kind of stayed in my mind for the rest of the article.
Starting as early as kindergarten and maybe even preschool my teachers stressed the importance of asking questions. At CPS (sorry, college prep) teachers always encourage us to ask questions, that there is no stupid question, and that it is very likely that someone else has the same question. Almost 100% of the time I have wanted to ask a question and then heard another student ask the same one, no matter how stupid I thought it was when I wanted to say it. In my opinion, there is no learning and therefore no point to school if students can't ask questions. Everyone has their own learning style and if people didn't ask questions then the teacher would be doing all the talking, and I know very few people who actually learn from teacher's who talk every second of every day.
Basically I think that not letting students ask questions should be illegal.
of course its not going to be, but I think it should be.
But its definitely good that this case turned out the way it did, because there could have been some serious harm done if the Judge had made the wrong decision.
I think the thing most resounding to me in this interview is that schol board members lied under oath. Besides this being illegal, its against the Christian faith, something they were trying to protect by integrating personal beliefs into a curriculum.
The second most astonishing thing is something both Greg and Lisa have talked about is the courageousness of the fact that kids weren't allowed to ask questions of the administrators who read the pre-written statement. This is so absolutely crazy I can't even but it into words. School is not supposed to be a center of indoctrination, it is supposed to be a place where kids can learn.
Without knowing anything more about this judge, it seems to me like he is a rare judge who goes with the facts, and doesn't legislate from the bench. The fact that we was willing to condemn the idea of Intelligent Design is amazing.
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