Creationists Push Public Schools to Provide Academic Freedom
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
November 12, 2004
(AgapePress) - A public school district in Wisconsin is permitting science teachers to instruct their students in various theories of origins in addition to evolution.The Grantsburg (Wisconsin) School District has given its teachers freedom to create their own science curriculum standards. Mark Looy with the creation science group Answers in Genesis (AIG) supports the move, which allows the educators to point out the grave problems with the theory of evolution.
Looy says Answers in Genesis approves of public schools allowing teachers to design their curricula to include creation science or intelligent design, origins theories which set forth the idea that life is too complex to have evolved by accident. "We are not, however, in favor of mandating that creation or intelligent design be taught in schools," he notes. "We think teachers already have that academic freedom."
The problem, the AIG spokesman explains, comes in requiring educators who are aware of the problems with evolution science to ignore the facts and teach an outdated theory that has been scientifically called into question. "When you force teachers to teach something they probably don't believe in, I think it's going to be counterproductive," he says.
A Grantsburg School Board spokesperson says the board's goal is to teach students how to think, not what to think. The Board states that its intent is not to teach creationism, but "rather to allow other scientific views supported by scientific data to be discussed and presented" in class.
Dr. Duane Gish of the California-based Institute for Creation Research says Grantsburg is doing exactly what should be done according to federal constitutional law. "The United States Constitution supposedly guarantees academic freedom and freedom of religion," he asserts, "and academic freedom would give the teachers and the students the right to examine the evidence on both sides of this question of origins."
Gish, a biochemistry professor and author of Teaching Creation Science in Public Schools (ICR, 2000), believes a proper science education should not omit the contradictions and weaknesses in evolutionary theory. For instance, he says students should be taught how the laws of thermodynamics clearly establish that the universe could not have created itself naturally.
Also, the Creation Research Institute scholar says students should be made aware of the existence of "a massive amount of scientific evidence that supports the creationists' position," so they can weigh the facts for themselves. "The scientific evidence from the fossil record, I believe, beyond doubt establishes the fact that evolution has not taken place on this planet," Gish says.
A National Push for Science Teachers' and Students' Rights
Other creationists and academic-freedom advocates across the nation are involved in similar efforts to break the monopoly evolution science holds in so many of America's public school systems. William Buckingham, a member of the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, is one who agrees that biology classes should not focus exclusively on Darwin's 19th-century theory.
For that reason Buckingham spearheaded a curriculum change in the Dover Area schools. The Associated Press reports that a new high school curriculum in the Pennsylvania school district requires ninth-grade biology students to learn about alternate theories to evolution. The Dover Area School District is believed to be the only one in the U.S. to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.
Meanwhile, in Texas a group of concerned citizens has been advocating for the right of all students to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory and the right of all teachers to teach the truth about Darwin's theory without censorship or intimidation. That group, Texans for Better Science Education (TBSE), has led highly successful efforts to remove errors related to the dogmatic teaching of evolution-as-fact from high school biology texts, and has also been instrumental getting conservatives elected to Texas' State Board of Education.
Last June TBSE announced its "Teach Evolution Weaknesses" initiative. This ongoing effort has focused on educating teachers, parents, school administrators, media, and government officials about the scientific facts relating to the teaching evolution in Texas classrooms and what the law has to say on the issue.
