to quote a quote from fark...
'Well, we've developed an admittedly imperfect but nonetheless workable screening process to keep every idea under the sun from being taught in basic k-12 core courses as fact or even reasonable alternatives.
The lesson plans have to be structured logically; you can't teach algebra before you teach arithmetic. The material has to be widely accepted by the relevant professionals, it's best to teach material which has withstood the test of time. In science or history the lessons have to be backed by evidence or make sense, and the material needs to underscore the basics because we are talking about K-12 curricula.
ID comes up short on all these criteria. IDC makes no valid testable predictions, it is not widely accepted, and far from withstanding the test of time IDC has failed miserably and was rejected long ago. Furthermore what little has been presented as candidate lesson plans underscoring ID as advocated by the Discovery Institute rests entirely on criticisms of evolutionary biology (many of which are hardly credible and are in fact well known Young Earth Creationist crap), Irreducible Complexity, or mathematics involving algorithms and topology, none of which can be taught effectively to students in K-12 schools without substantial prerequisite course work in basic skills.
Precisely because IDC fails all these criteria, the IDCists try end run those safeguards and steamroll over those protocols by appealing directly to grass roots orgs. The IDCists lobby-just as the holohoaxers lobby-mostly to religious groups, cultural prejudice and bigotry, and ignorance by presenting highly dubious misinformation to the public as equally valid to the mainstream conventional explanations. Their goal is openly stated; to bring intense political pressure on local school boards, elected officials, and textbook publishers, to teach these fringe ideas as equally valid regardless if they've met the above criteria that all other curricula must meet.
To allow that to happen is to do our children and ultimately our culture an educational disservice. It's dishonest, it's unethical, it opens up an expensive can of worms because every self proclaimed victim of conspiracy and persecution with a whacky idea clamors for teaching time, it's inaccurate, it's counterproductive to our interests as a species, and I hope most importantly for theists and atheists alike, from a moral perspective alone it reeks.
~DS~'
just because I don't feel like typing it all out myself. that should give a little perspective.
-Pat
