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November 03, 2005
ID Populism
I might have mentioned before I'm doing my legislative seminar paper on Intelligent Design legislation among the several states and it just so happens that a perfect storm of evolution v. ID hit the University of Nebraska this week. There have been speakers and panel discussions all week about the debate despite Nebraska being one of the few states in which this issue hasn't arisen.
Today during Conflicts when we were going over Minnesota's Leflar choice of law method I asserted the court must take Minnesota's populist history into account when deciding whether to apply Minnesota or New York Statute of Frauds law. Prof. Conflicts countered that I must have gone to the ID speaker the day before because he talked about populism. Well, I didn't and I didn't really understand what she was talking about until I clicked over to Full Metal Attorney and found he had attended the lecture.
FMA writes about what the speaker had to say: "He went through the history of the Bible’s relationship to public schools. A couple of things became clear. One, that religion as we know it in the US is not anti-science, or anti-intellectual, but instead anti-elitist." I could debate that assertion all day but the anti-elitist stance does jive well with what Prof. Conflicts assumed I was referencing.
FMA goes on and presents the speaker's solution to the issue and I think it's a damn good one.
So that brings me up to the lecturer’s suggestion. He implied that ID should be disregarded altogether. He also implied that ID (or any variant formulation thereof) should stay out of the science classrooms. However, he would have a sort of epistemology class offered. Call it introductory philosophy if you will. He didn’t go into much detail on it, but here’s how I would do it.The class would go over the very basics of epistemology. Addressing Parmenides would make an excellent introduction to the class, and would make the kids more likely to listen and open to different suggestions. It would discuss popular epistemological traditions such as revelation, reason, and, of course, the scientific method. The course would promote pluralism and would hopefully make everyone happy.
In my world, it would be a required class in order to graduate.
That's my world too, but being married to a high school teacher, I know there's no way it could be a required class to graduate although throwing in The Do'h of Homerand The Matrix and Philosophy might help the average student. I also can't let FMA slip Parmenides into the curriculum without equal representation of my man Heraclitus.
FMA is also correct in pointing out mandating ID in public school science classes would eventually run afoul of the Supreme Court if Edwards v. Aguillard is still considered good law when a case finally gets there. In my research I've found the various think-tanks advocating ID in science classes have pulled back from that position in the last year because of the likelihood of losing at the appellate level. There's now a move toward mandating criticism of evolution without expressly invoking ID or Creationism.
While this might seem more palatable, it still imposes requirements on the teachers of science. One of the questions that came up during my presentation in seminar this week was "What is academic freedom?" Do high school teachers have it? From where I sit, it is up to the local school boards to give the school principals the ability to adjust as they see fit. The thing is the administrators in public schools aren't geniuses who know the ins and outs of every subject. That's why they're administrators. They're likely to defer to the teachers as long as the the conduct isn't outrageous. That's probably the way things should be since the teachers know the students and what they can comprehend.
Posted by Half-Cocked at November 3, 2005 09:39 PM
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