For one thing, it wastes valuable class time.
For another thing, intelligent design proponents use a lot of misinformation to advance their argument. Filling young minds with slick yet invalid and misinformed arguments is seldom beneficial to their education.
If there is so little scientific basis for ID, it won't hold any water.
It doesn't; that's precisely the point.
Besides, what's the harm in exposing both sides to the controversy? …For one thing, it wastes valuable class time.
***If we roll up all that wasted class time where haps-based teachers bloviate from their own “viewpoint” in non-science classes, we end up with a lot of saved valuable class time, with teachers dealing with students who want to listen to that particular subject, and some very good object lessons on the value of scientific method.
For another thing, intelligent design proponents use a lot of misinformation to advance their argument.
***You have a great deal of leverage when you bring out charges of dishonesty, especially if it is factual dishonesty. I would suggest that you make it very easy for people like me to find where the creat/ID side has been dishonest, because they might lose their support lickety-split. For the time being, the way I view this debate is kinda like what happened when Barry Schecht was asking question after question on TV to the scientist in the OJ trial. The way he asked the questions (perfectly allowable in a legal debate) was masterful, and the answers became secondary. The science was unassailable, but it didn’t stop 12 jurors from letting a murderer go free. There was more going on there than just a murder case. There is more going on here than just science.
Filling young minds with slick yet invalid and misinformed arguments is seldom beneficial to their education.
***Ahh, some social policy comments. I disagree, and if anything it helps students to wrestle with what they need to when they get out into the world. The haps-not side thinks that the haps side is simply trying to indoctrinate young believers, which is “seldom beneficial to their education”.
If there is so little scientific basis for ID, it won't hold any water. … It doesn't; that's precisely the point.
***Then what is the fear? Use it as a punching bag. If I saw a movement of people who wanted to push astrology in my kid’s astronomy class, I would consider it a perfect example of the opportunity available to educate the public in scientific reasoning and at the same time, what a slam-dunk looks like. In a psychology class I had, the teacher brought in someone who was a handwriting analysis “expert” who analyzed all of our signatures. I asked if it was necessary to sign our own name (no it wasn’t), and signed it with “Ashur Du Smelbad”. The expert was all over the map on her reading of my signature, telling me I had a signature like a medical doctor and I had a tremendous amount of fun slamming her unscientific nonsense in front of the class. Up until my signature, the class was politely nodding and agreeing, but after me they were smiling and shaking their heads in disbelief.