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Teach the Controversy

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Teach the Controversy is a controversial political-action campaign promoted by the intelligent design movement originating from the Discovery Institute[1] that seeks to advance an education policy for US public schools that introduces intelligent design to public-school science curricula and seeks to redefine science to allow for creationist explanations for the origin of life. Teach the Controversy proponents portray evolution as a "theory in crisis."

Intelligent design (ID) is the controversial conjecture that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as natural selection. Both the intelligent design movement and the Teach the Controversy campaign are largely directed and funded by the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank[2] based in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares teaching intelligent design in schools with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children."[3]

Origin of phrase

While the term "teach the controversy" originated with Gerald Graff, a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, it was later appropriated by Phillip E. Johnson, Discovery Institute program advisor and father of the ID movement. Discussing the 1999-2000 Kansas State Board of Education controversy over the teaching of intelligent design in public school classrooms, Johnson wrote [4]: "What educators in Kansas and elsewhere should be doing is to "teach the controversy." In his book "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism", Johnson proposed casting the conflicting points of view and agendas as a scholarly controversy.

Strategy

The Discovery Institute or constituent groups acting on its behalf lobby state and local boards of education and local, state and federal policymakers directly to enact policies and laws and propose classroom curricula that feature ID prominently.

The Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy campaign's strategy has been centered around attempts at the local and state level to undermine or remove altogether the presence of evolutionary theory from the public school classroom by portraying it as "controversial," and "in crisis,"; to having the federal government mandate the teaching of intelligent design; to 'stacking' municipal, county and state school boards with ID proponents. The Discovery Institute has played a significant role in many of these cases, providing a range of support from material assistance to federal, state and regional elected representatives in the drafting of bills to supporting and advising individual parents confronting their school boards. is to move from standards battles, to curriculum writing, to textbook adoption, while undermining the central positions of evolution in biology and methodological naturalism in science. The Discovery Institute is the primary organizer and promoter of the Teach the Controversy campaign, though it has recently adopted the tactic of remaining behind the scenes and orchestrating, underwriting and otherwise supporting local campaigns, ID groups, and proponents to act on its behalf in lobbying state and local politicians and schoolboards. This strategy is consistent with the Discovery Institute's Wedge strategy, in which the Teach the Controversy campaign plays a significant role.

The Institute and other proponents allege that the program and curricula they advocate for presents evidence both for and against evolution and then encourages students to evaluate the arguments themselves. The overwhelming response of the scientific community is that there is no controversy to teach, that evolutionary theory is one of the most well-supported theories and that the "controversy" is manufactured to further the Discovery Institute's political and social agenda.

According to published reports, the nonprofit Discovery Institute spends more than $1 million a year for research, polls, lobbying and media pieces that support intelligent design and their Teach the Controversy campaign. [5].

Political action

The Discovery Institute aggressively promotes its Teach the Controversy campaign and intelligent design to the public, education officials and public policymakers. Its efforts are largely aimed at conservative Christian policymakers, where it is cast as a counterbalance to the liberal influences of "atheistic scientists" and "Dogmatic Darwinists." As a measure their success in this effort, on 1 August 2005, during a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, President Bush said that he believes schools should discuss intelligent design alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life. Bush, a conservative Christian, declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life, but advocated the Teach the Controversy approach - "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought... you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." Christian conservatives, a substantial part of Bush's voting base, have been central in promoting the Teach the Controversy campaign.

In 2001 the Discovery Institute drafted and lobbied for the Santorum Amendment to the No Child Left Behind education act. The amendment encouraged the "teach the controversy" approach to evolution education. The amendment was passed by the U.S. Senate, but was left out of the final version of the Act, and remains only in highly modified form in the conference report, where it does not carry the weight of law. The conference report language is commonly touted by the Discovery Institute as model language for bills and curricula. The Discovery Institute lobbies states, counties, and municipalities, and offers them legal analysis and Institute-developed curricula and text books which they tout as meeting constitutional criteria established by the courts in previous creationism/evolution First Amendment cases.

The Discovery Institute employs a number of specific political strategies and tactics in their furtherance of their goals. These range from attempts at the state level to undermine or remove altogether the presence of evolutionary theory from the public school classroom, to having the federal government mandate the teaching of intelligent design, to 'stacking' municipal, county and state school boards with ID proponents. The Discovery Institute has been a significant player in many of these cases, providing a range of support from material assistance to federal, state and regional elected representatives in the drafting of bills to supporting and advising individual parents confronting their school boards.

In some state battles, the ties of Teach the Controversy and intelligent design proponents to the Discovery Institute's political and social and its strategy and the Institute's role in the debate have been made public resulting in their efforts being temporarily thwarted. The Discovery Institute takes the sophisticated view that all publicity is good and that no defeat is real. The Institute has shown a willingness to back off, even to not advocate for the inclusion of ID, to ensure that all science teachers are required to portray evolution as a "theory in crisis." The Institute's strategy is to move, relentlessly, from standards battles, to curriculum writing, to textbook adoption, and back again doing whatever it takes to undermine the central position of evolution in biology. Critics of this strategy and the movement contend that every day and tax dollar spent responding to and corroborating the claims of intelligent design proponents and paying the costs of lawsuits, is a day and a dollar not spent educating children.

Some of the political battles which have involved the Discovery Institute include:

  • 2000 Congressional briefing In 2000, the leading ID proponents operating through the Discovery Institute held a congressional briefing in Washington, D.C., to promote ID to lawmakers. Sen. Rick Santorum was and continues to be one of ID's most vocal supporters. One result of this briefing was that Sen. Santorum inserted pro-ID language into the No Child Left Behind bill calling for students to be taught why evolution "generates so much continuing controversy," an assertion heavily promoted by the Discovery Institute.
  • 2001 Santorum Amendment As a result of the 2000 Congressional briefing, the Discovery Institute played a central role in the drafting and inclusion of pro-ID language known as the Santorum Amendment in the Conference Report of the federal No Child Left Behind education act. Though the amendment lacks the weight of law, its inclusion in the conference report is constantly cited by the Discovery Institute and other ID supporters as providing federal sanction for intelligent design.
  • 2001 & 2004 Pennsylvania Board of Education In 2001 the Pennsylvania Board of Education approved revised science standards that raised questions about the status of evolution as science and a theory. In 2004, Pennsylvania's legislature passed a law requiring the teaching of Intelligent Design. A challenge was filed contending that the law violates the First Amendment. A hearing in Federal District Court is scheduled for September 2005.
  • 2002 Ohio Board of Education The Discovery Institute proposed a model lesson plan that featured intelligent design prominently in its curricula. It was adopted in part in October 2002, with the Board's advising that the science standards do "not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design." Still, this has been touted by the Discovery Institute as a significant victory.

Origin of the campaign

Intelligent design movement

Main article: Intelligent design movement

The Intelligent Design movement began in the early 1990s and is an organized campaign promoting a religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering around intelligent design in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The overall goal of the movement is "to defeat materialism" and the "materialist world view" as represented by evolution, and replace it with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." The movement's hub is the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture (CSC). The CSC counts the leading ID advocates and authors among its fellows or officers, including the movement's founder Phillip E. Johnson, Michael Behe, William A. Dembski, Steven C. Meyer and Jonathan Wells.

The movement consists primarily of a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public and that of the popular media, and an aggressive lobbying campaign directed at policymakers and the educational community which seeks to undermine public support for teaching evolution while cultivating support for what the movement terms "intelligent design theory." Its near-term goal is greatly undermining or eliminating altogether the teaching of evolution in public school science, and with the long-term goal of to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian values. Intelligent design is central and necessary for this agenda as described by the Discovery Institute: "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

The ID movement grew out of a creationist tradition which argues against evolutionary theory from a religious (usually Evangelical Christian and Fundamentalist Christian) standpoint and the 1987 US Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard prohibiting the teaching of creationism in public school science classrooms. Although ID advocates often claim that they are only arguing for the existence of a "designer," who may or may not be God, all the leading advocates do believe that the designer is God, and frequently accompany their allegedly scientific arguments with discussion of religious issues, especially when addressing religious audiences. In front of other audiences, they downplay the religious aspects of their agenda.

The Wedge strategy

Main article: Wedge strategy

The Wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute. Informally known as the "Wedge Document," it was a fund raising tool used by the Discovery Institute to raise money for its subsidiary charged with promoting its science and education agenda, the Center for Science and Culture, at the time called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC). As stated in the Wedge Document [6], the strategy is designed to defeat "Darwinism" and to promote an idea of science "consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." The ultimate goal of the Wedge strategy is to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian values.

The strategy outlines a public relations campaign, of which teaching the controversy is part, meant to sway the opinion of the public, popular media, funding agencies, and the scientific community in order that they should effect an "overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies". Wedge advocates have stated they hope to reinstate a "broadly theistic understanding of nature" to replace materialism. Phillip Johnson, the architect of the strategy, invokes the metaphor of a wood-splitting wedge to illustrate his goal of splitting apart the concepts of science and naturalism. A fundamental part of the Wedge strategy is the rejection of naturalism as unnecessary to science. Though the alternative to naturalism is supernaturalism, ID proponents avoid this word when speaking to mainstream audiences, substituting euphemisms like "non-natural" or skirting the issue altogether. Critics of the campaign characterize this as a semantic subterfuge made in the hope that it will enable ID proponents to skirt the First Amendment prohibition against promoting religion in public schools.

According to critics of the intelligent design movement, the Wedge document, more than any other Discovery Institute project, betrays the Institute's and intelligent design's political rather than scientific purpose.

Criticisms

"Teach the Controversy"

The theory of evolution is fully accepted by the scientific community. Such controversies as do exist concern the details of the mechanisms of evolution, not the validity of the over-arching theory of evolution.

For example the National Association of Biology Teachers in a statement endorsing evolution as noncontroversial quoted Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." and went on to state that the quote "accurately reflects the central, unifying role of evolution in biology. The theory of evolution provides a framework that explains both the history of life and the ongoing adaptation of organisms to environmental challenges and changes." They emphasized that "Scientists have firmly established evolution as an important natural process." and that "The selection of topics covered in a biology curriculum should accurately reflect the principles of biological science. Teaching biology in an effective and scientifically honest manner requires that evolution be taught in a standards-based instructional framework with effective classroom discussions and laboratory experiences."[7]

Tufts philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, describes how they generate a sense of controversy: "The proponents of intelligent design use an ingenious ploy that works something like this: First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a 'controversy' to teach." [8] Such a controversy is then self-fulfilling and self-sustaining, though completely without any legitimate basis in the academic world.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares teaching intelligent design in schools with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children."[9]

Critics of the Teach the Controversy movement and strategy can also be found outside of the scientific community. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State described the approach of the movement's proponents as "a disarming subterfuge designed to undermine solid evidence that all living things share a common ancestry."

"The movement is a veneer over a certain theological message. Every one of these groups is now actively engaged in trying to undercut sound science education by criticizing evolution," said Lynn. "It is all based on their religious ideology. Even the people who don't specifically mention religion are hard-pressed with a straight face to say who the intelligent designer is if it's not God." [10]

The Discovery Institute

According to critics of the Discovery Institute's efforts through the Teach the Controversy campaign and the intelligent design movement, the Wedge strategy betrays the Institute's political rather than scientific and educational purpose. The Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture (CSC) has an overarching conservative Christian social and political agenda that seeks to redefine both law and science and how they are conducted, with the goal of a religious "renewal" of American culture.

Critics also allege that the Discovery Institute has a long-standing record of misrepresenting research, law and its own policy and agenda and that of others:

  • In announcing the Teach the Controversy strategy in 2002, the Discovery Institute’s Stephen C. Meyer [11] presented an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "Darwinian evolution" [12]. In response to this claim the National Center for Science Education, an organization that works in collaboration with National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association that support the teaching of evolution in public schools [13], contacted the authors of the papers listed and twenty-six scientists, representing thirty-four of the papers, responded. None of the authors considered that their research provided evidence against evolution [14].
  • The Discovery Institute, following the policies outlined by Phillip E. Johnson, obfuscates its agenda. Opposed to the public statements to the contrary made by the Discovery Institute, Johnson has admitted that the goal of intelligent design movement is to cast creationism as a scientific concept:
  • "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."[15]
  • "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy."[16]
  • "If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this....We call our strategy the "wedge."[17]
  • "The objective (of the Wedge strategy) is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'"[18]
  • "So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do."[19]
  • Instead of producing original scientific data to support ID’s claims, the Discovery Institute has promoted ID politically to the public, education officials and public policymakers through its Teach the Controversy campaign.

Johnson's statements validate the criticisms leveled by those who allege that the Discovery Institute and its allied organizations are merely stripping the obvious religious content from their anti-evolution assertions as a means of avoiding the legal restriction on establishment. They argue that ID is simply an attempt to put a patina of secularity on top of what is a fundamentally religious belief and agenda.

Conclusion

Given the history of the Discovery Institute as an organization committed to opposing any scientific theory inconsistent with "the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God", [20] many scientists regard the movement purely as a ploy to insert creationism into the science curriculum rather than as a serious attempt to discuss scientific evidence. In the words of Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Education:

" 'Teach the controversy' is a deliberately ambiguous phrase. It means 'pretend to students that scientists are arguing over whether evolution took place.' This is not happening. I mean you go to the scientific journals, you go to universities... and you ask the professors, is there an argument going on about whether living things had common ancestors? They'll look at you blankly. This is not a controversy." [21]

Though Teach the Controversy proponents cite the current public policy statements of the Discovery Institute as belying the criticisms that their strategy is a creationist ploy and decry critics as biased in failing to recognize that the intelligent design movement's Teach the Controversy strategy as really just a question of science with no religion involved, is itself belied by Discovery Institute's former published policy statement[22] and statements made to its constituency by its leadership, and in particular Phillip E. Johnson.

Writes Johnson in the foreward to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000) "The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message." Johnson admits that intelligent design arguments are carefully formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer and that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments which are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately reintroducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. "...The first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." [23] This bolsters the claims of those critics who cite Johnson's admission that the ultimate goal of the campaign is getting "the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."[24]

Amidst this political and religious controversy the clear, categorical and oft-repeated advice of established national and international scientific organizations remains that there is no scientific controversy over teaching evolution in public schools.

See also

External links

Neutral

Pro

Con

Audio and video

Reference notes

  1. ^ "ID's home base is the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute. Meyer directs the center; former Reagan adviser Bruce Chapman heads the larger institute, with input from the Christian supply-sider and former American Spectator owner George Gilder (also a Discovery senior fellow). From this perch, the ID crowd has pushed a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution that closely influenced the Ohio State Board of Education's recently proposed science standards, which would require students to learn how scientists "continue to investigate and critically analyze" aspects of Darwin's theory." Chris Mooney. The American Prospect. December 2, 2002 Survival of the Slickest: How anti-evolutionists are mutating their message
  2. ^ Patricia O’Connell Killen, a religion professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma whose work centers around the regional religious identity of the Pacific Northwest, recently wrote that "religiously inspired think tanks such as the conservative evangelical Discovery Institute" are part of the "religious landscape" of that area. [25]
  3. ^ Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Phillip E. Johnson. 1997. pp. 91-92
  4. ^ Phillip E. Johnson. Quoted in Church and State Magazine, April 1999
  5. ^win Phillip E. Johnson. Touchstone Magazine interview, June 2002 [26]
  6. ^ National Association of Biology Teachers. Statement on Teaching Evolution 2004. [27]
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