[ml1954]

So you would be ok with biology teachers deciding for themselves whether to include in the curriculum criticisms of evolution or intelligent design or creation?

Criticisms of intelligent design or creation in a biology class would be a waste of time...they shouldn't even be mentioned...they're religious beliefs, not science. As for criticisms of evolution, what do you think scientists have been trying to do for 150 years? They've tried to poke holes in it and it's been spectacularly resistant.

[StJacques]

The debate over Intelligent Design/Creationism/Evolution in the public schools needs to be handled outside of a biology class, because, of the three, only the Theory of Evolution posits a potentially-disprovable hypothesis as scientific theories must do.

I would very much favor a required course on "Critical Thinking" for high school students in which the entire debate was aired out fully, not as an entire course mind you, because training in logic and rhetoric, epistemology (Theories of Knowledge), and a brief overview of schools of philosophical thought should form the greater part of the course. But once the students get a background in the "tools of critical thinking," they could then go on to an exercise in using those tools, and this debate would be a very good subject to examine. I have no problem whatsoever with Intelligent Design or Creationism being presented to students in their methodological context, which is to say that both are metaphysical and Creationism also has strong overtones of religious belief attached. I want students to know and understand the principles of reasoning that are involved in when approaching such a debate.

But I have a very big problem with forcing metaphysical constructs into a science class. That brings us right back to Galileo before the Inquisition.