Sorry. I don't agree. What's unAmerican about simple intellectual honesty, i.e. telling students that an idea that is, quite objectively, part of science is part of science, and one that, equally objectively, isn't part of science isn't? What's unAmerican about saying, IF AND WHEN "Intelligent Design" achieves scientific standing on merit, it can and will be taught as science, and until then, TOUGH LUCK. (And btw, should ID, or something else, succeed, as science, to the point of supplanting evolutionary theory, then it would be TOUGH LUCK for evolution too. It should be excluded under those circumstances.)
I think hard-nosed academic standards are the American Way. I think a meritocracy of ideas is the American Way. I think a meaningful competition of ideas (where ideas can succeed and fail) is the American Way.
If they insist on teaching it, they should also be teaching ID and letting people have their own opinions and choices on which is which. They can decide if they are 'theory' or 'fact.'
Yeah, I know. It's "only fair" to teach "both sides". Baloney. It's not fair at all if one "side" represents a successful scientific theory -- one actually utilized by working scientists in the conduct of ongoing, productive and original research -- and the other "side" has no such standing.
That's just a wishy-washy intellectual relativism, where ideas that can't cut the mustard in the marketplace are included in curricula just to be "fair," or to appease and appeal to the "self esteem" of "identity groups" (whether racial or religious). I do NOT think that is the American Way.
There are scientists who believe in creationism and not Darwinism. What do you do about them? They're still scientists aren't they?