Re: Fine Tuned Intelligent Design - should it be taught in schools?

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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Practicalities of teaching ID (David and Edward).

Actually, I really see this as outside of my remit. I'm arguing against
censorship rather than on behalf of any set of lessons. I think it's OK to
argue for a principle and establish it without always giving a full set of
rules and guidelines for its implementation? Thinking Mill in
Utilitarianism, a fair amount of Physics papers, etc.

But, since I think it's also important to be honest and not duck things
with (what I think always sounds a little lame) 'that's beyond the remit
of my paper', even if it makes your defensive job a bit more difficult,
here's a draft paragraph I'm considering for the introduction of my new
draft:

'I take it that we are looking for reasons of principle to rule out
teaching ID, rather than questions of logistics, though some of these have
been put forward (Dawkins, Guardian article ref) and will be considered in
closing below. After all, there were presumably similar questions raised
when Darwinian evolution first emerged as a credible theory. It would not
have been a good argument to state 'We're not sure which lessons this
ought to be in other than biology, or how much time to give to it in RE,
so we ought to keep the current system of not teaching it.' I am looking
for consistency in approach here, so such logistical questions should not
be seen as objections to teaching ID any more than they were allowed to be
objections to the adoption of Darwinism.

Furthermore, it may be that 'How should / could it be taught?' is a red
herring, or perhaps a dogmatic comfort-blanket. Questions about the
fundamental make-up and operation of our world cross subject boundaries,
and constitute far more of the background context to an education than the
foreground official syllabus. To take two similarly fundamantal concepts,
I received my most thorough school lessons in cause and effect in History.
We studied and discussed long-term and short-term causes, and the dangers
of identifying Archduke Ferdinand's death as the cause of the first world
war. It was not something that came up in the sciences, though of course
physics and chemistry rely on it thoroughly. Education is holistic, and
much of what you discuss is off-the-cuff and off-the-syllabus. Teaching
and exploring ideas in schools should not (indeed cannot) be conducted
along artificial subject-distinct lines. This much was admitted in, for
example, the blanket nature of Clause (or Section) 28, the infamous
guideline 
which prevented homosexuality being promoted as a fair choice in life in
UK schools until 2003, no matter which subject was technically at hand. If
something is taught anywhere in the core syllabus that all children take,
it is taught everywhere, no matter what subject is officially on the
blackboard. Concepts do not get dropped in a schoolbag as you walk from
one lesson to another. 

A fair minimum, I would have thought, would be to let ID come up in RE,
PSE, Physics, General Studies and Biology. How long you are prepared to
spend discussing it really depends on the subject. A lesson or two in RE
seems almost essential, considering the state of the debate and the desire
to turn out informed pupils. A couple of lines in Physics and Biology
lessons, acknowledging the problems of asserting the leading theories over
the design argument would seem to be intellectually honest. As long as
RE/PSE (or philosophy, though that is much less often taught at school)
covered the material in reasonable detail, there's no need to let it take
up any more than a minute or two. I would like to strongly defend the
principle that science pupils should know the weaknesses in their
subjects' arguing abilitites. They need to know the intellectual and
social context to what they are being taught, and where it does not work
as well as it should against other points of view. That's the only way to
make sure enough 
people are thinking about these problems, so that there's a fair chance of
the next generation of scientists, public thinkers, students actually
getting them fixed.

How you teach ought to be moulded to what there is that is worth teaching,
not the other way around. This paper comes to the uncomfortable conclusion
that there is something distinctly worthwhile in teaching ID, so will not
pursue the logistics of that teaching in a great deal of detail.'

This will be in addition to my existing comments on pp.19-20 of the Durham
paper.

Hope that (still) doesn't seem like ducking the issue.

Rab. 



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