Kansas is in quite a state
I know I'm not supposed to be paying attention to anything other than my Asia trip, but I read about the Kansas Board of Education approving the teaching of "theory" of intelligent design in public schools in the South China Morning Post this morning and...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGH!!!!!!!!!
What the hell, Kansas? And those poor science teachers in Kansas public schools...what are they supposed to do? Teaching pseudoscience as real science, that's like asking the math teachers to tell the kids that 2+2=5 because God said so. You can't quit, because then those kids will really be lost. If you don't teach that ID is valid science, you'll probably get reprimanded or fired. So what to do? I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Teach your students about evolution, and then tell them about intelligent design, just as the state curriculum says. Then spend some time going over what science is, what a theory is, and so on. Apply the definition to each. That way, you've taught ID by the books and then demonstrated its relationship to science.
2) Or, as long as you're teaching your students that a higher power designed the world/universe, why not take it a step further and tell them about your personal and scientific belief in The Flying Spaghetti Monster? As long as science can include anything now, why not a supernatural being made from pasta?
Update: There appears to be hope. In Dover, Pennsylvania:
In that small, relatively conservative Pennsylvania town, voters booted all eight Republican pro-intelligent design school board members who were up for re-election and replaced them with Democrats who oppose the curriculum policy. Dover is not some bastion of liberal politics; it's more like Kansas than parts of Kansas are.
(thx, steve)
