Why would the alternative be more scientific than design?
The 'probability calculations' presented to discredit evolution are entirely and transparently specious.
In that case you can put ID in the class, state the reasons why the probability calculations are specious, the allow the proponents to counter and so on. The most reasonable view would win in open debate.
Moreover, according to the modern founders of the 'design' movement, ID is not as you say; ID is a pretext to get the Christian deity into academic discourse and into the classroom. Philip Johnson has explicitly said so.
No, it's been explicitly stated that it could apply to any designer. OTOH, science is a means of understanding reality. If God exists, shouldn't science reflect that?
Uh, how do you want to detect design if you don't even have a model of the designer?
We have a myriad examples of known design. If elements of nature resemble complex items of known design, why not assume design?
We don't make a practice of teaching science by presenting bad ideas and then showing they're wrong. And in any case, why pick this one bad idea among so many?
Have you ever taken a science course? How much chemistry do you think we'd get through in a semester if we did it by having a discussion over every concept? I find it amusing so-called conservatives are pushing this mushy, liberal, 'whole-science' approach to pedagogy, after the utter failure of 'whole math' and 'whole language', which also had students 'discover for themselves' the rules of math or language.
An additional irony is that scientists like Pinker, whose views are anathema here, and who is politically quite liberal (though not very liberal) is campaigning for the abandonment of such teaching methods, because they ignore how the brain actually learns things, and because they don't work. So we have mush-brained conservatives and hard-headed liberals; truly a world turned upside down.
No, it's been explicitly stated that it could apply to any designer
Sure; it's also been admitted that this is a prevarication. I'm simply taking people like Johnson at their word.
We have a myriad examples of known design. If elements of nature resemble complex items of known design, why not assume design?
We tend to interpret complex objects in terms of what Dennett calls the 'design stance'; seeing something, we ask ourselves 'what is it for?'. It's hardwired into the way we think, not the object we're looking at.