It seems to me the left and the education lobby are trying to pin the abysmal state of science education in the U.S. on the crevos, when in actuality the evo/crevo debate is a very, very small part of that picture. For example, the evo/crevo feud has nothing to do with the attempt to introduce a dumbed down high school physics curriculum in many districts.
I somewhat agree with you. I think American education is being rent by the extreme right and the extreme left. But if you follow these threads enough, it's clear that the issue has nothing to do with evolution. It's more a case of "science is threatening my fragile religious beliefs". It's happened before; it'll happen again.
It's a minor subject in science, as well. Evolution is useful as a paradigm and a classificaion mechanism--but it's just a hatrack to keep track of genus and species. Physicians, most scientists, engineers--have no interest or use for it after that.
What I do suspect is that it is a political tool to try to chip off a few conservative Christian votes from the GOP. There is even a Soros-funded movie "documentarian" who is going to try to make some hay out of it. Wonder if he's here on FR doing some drumming-up of support? Not that there are any but the usual suspects and sufferers of Asberger's syndrome, but in places like Pennsylvania and candidates like Santorum (and a few of these regulars have shown an interest in going after Santorum)--it'd go a long way to throwing the Senate to the Democrats.
Scapegoating.
Shifting the focus to something as inconsequential as creationisism not only serves the purpose of justifying public ridicule of people of faith, but it also allows the obfiscation of the true curriculum deficits within public schools and even some private educational institutions, today.
Lousy, agenda-driven textbooks that focus on environmentalism and speciation at the expense of the scientific method and studies of basic chemistry and physics is just one example.