Good News from Ohio: Teaching the Controversy

How about some very good news, to brighten your day?

Recently, I told you that the academic freedom of high school students and teachers in Ohio was in serious jeopardy. At stake was the adoption of a groundbreaking new science curriculum, that allows for the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory—a basic freedom that scientists themselves take for granted.

But many American science organizations oppose the Ohio curriculum and lobbied hard against it. They said—falsely—that it brought religion into the science classroom.

Well, on March 9, despite heavy pressure, the Ohio State Board of Education voted 13 to 5 to adopt the new curriculum. And that’s very good news.

In fact, this good news could make a difference right where you live. People in other states like Minnesota are considering doing what Ohio did. And don’t forget the Santorum amendment to the federal education law, which encourages this very thing.

Let me give you a good resource in this effort, a new book just published by Michigan State University Press, Darwinism, Design, and Public Education. It is edited by John Angus Campbell and Stephen Meyer, and the book promotes an educational proposal that Campbell and Meyer call “teaching the controversy.”