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I must say, I am suprised that there are so many people who are scared of their children being exposed to various ideas,

Indeed:

some of which are purely speculative.

I have nothing at all against children being exposed to various "speculative" ideas, as long as they are presented *as* speculative ideas. The problem with "ID", however, is that it's a speculative idea that dishonestly wants to be taught as if it were an established field of science, which it most certainly is not. They want ID to disingenously be presented in a way that accords it the respect which established science has, without actually having done anything to *earn* that respect.

Worse, much of what has been suggested as an "ID curriculum" is actually just science-bashing propaganda, comprised of falsehoods, misrepresentations, and "spin".

This goes far beyond just exposing kids to "speculative ideas", it's an outright propaganda campaign, it's a Big Lie.

I would have thought that those who were confident in their beliefs would be unafraid of having their beliefs challenged... but history has shown that to be untrue time and time again, and a lot of brilliant minds went to the stake for it, so I do not know why I expected any greater enlightenment in thought now.

Yes, the anti-evolutionists don't seem very confident of their beliefs at all, that's why I keep seeing so many posts about them wanting to yank their kids (and everyone else's kids) out of public schools so that they'll no longer be exposed to evolutionary biology and other fields of science which scare them.

If I may interject an off-topic comment, I tend to agree that teachers treat some topics as if they were written in stone by God. this is nothing new.

My fourth grade teacher (1954) had lost her son in WWII and would seldom let a week go by without assuring us that the only good Jap was a dead Jap. This woman spent her summers traveling the world.

One of my son's teachers assured him that snakes do not have bones.

I could mention a couple of other stories, but my point is I believe people when they say teachers frequently fail to mention that scientific knowledge is subject to update and correction.