Cheers to the Ohio Board of Education, which voted Tuesday to remove language from the state's science standards that encouraged students to critically analyze evolutionary theory. Critics said this language opened the door for the teaching of intelligent design in science classes, a door that thankfully has been shut.
Using the curriculum in question, students were told to seek evidence for and against evolution. Any science class would seek evidence for and against any theory, so there is no reason to single out evolution - except to promote intelligent design, a politically correct front for Christian creationism. Though seeking to poke holes in theories is standard scientific procedure, a curriculum with such clearly religious motives has no place in a public school system.
Besides, high school students are too young to perform any true critical analysis of evolutionary theory. They don't have the knowledge base or, in most cases, the comprehension skills to critically analyze the well-established theory of evolution. As Ohio State University biology professor Steve Rissing told The Associated Press, the examples of disagreement earmarked in the previous high school curriculum would be better suited for graduate-level discussion. Those whose study of biology is limited to an hour between lunch and study hall should stick to the basics.
Science is a constantly changing field propelled by revision, and choosing not to examine accepted truths would be detrimental to the pursuit of knowledge. According to the scientific method, theories should be tested rigorously to see if they hold up. But people so young need not critically analyze theories so entrenched as evolution, and they should certainly not be asked to do so by people with religious motives.
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Finally, creationism-in-disguise falls
