Tuesday, November 13, 2007

PBS's Judgmant Day

Another goodie: PBS and NOVA had a two hour program on tonight called Judgment Day which dealt with the Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy in Dover, PA, that was decided during a much publicized trial a few years back. That was the town that voted out the entire school board that had voted to have read to Biology students a little thing that said Evolution was only a theory and that Intelligent Design was an equally valid theory and why don't you look at it - books are in the school library. Of course, ID is not a scientific theory and it was proved during the trial that it was a direct descendant/substitution of Creationism, a decidedly religion based idea put forward by fundies to discredit science.

Reminds me of my doing practice teaching and having the distinct honor of teaching the Bible as Literature (was only given this assignment because I had graduated from a university with a religious affiliation - Notre Dame). This was back in the late 80's after the Supreme Court had once again said that state stuff and church stuff must be separated. It didn't take me long to figure out that this course was this public school's attempt to skirt that decision. And yes I did have some disagreements with my supervising teacher as I went about the task of helping students see the Bible as literature.

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