09.22.06
MCFS Applauds Lansing State Journal
The Lansing State Journal editorial board had a very strong op-ed piece in today’s paper taking gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos to task for his support of teaching “intelligent design” in public school science classrooms. In addition to making the correct point that intelligent design is not really a scientific theory at all but rather a set of religious beliefs masquerading as science, they also make an important point about DeVos’ inconsistency with regard to educational standards:
Second, by associating a controversial issue such as intelligent design with the issue of local control, DeVos is speaking against his own position in improving state educational standards.
Earlier this year the legislature passed HB 5606, which attempted to standardize the curriculum requirements across the board for all of Michigan’s public schools and charter schools. Dick Devos was a staunch supporter of that bill. Yet on the issue of intelligent design, he suddenly changes positions and wants to have different things taught in different school districts without any consistency.
Why the change in position? Almost certainly because he wants intelligent design taught but knows that a state law requiring that is too controversial and would make the state the defendant in the inevitable court challenge to such a policy. By passing the buck to the local school districts and encouraging them to put intelligent design into the science curriculum on their own, he also passes the financial buck to them when, as in Dover last year, they have a Federal court rule against such a policy.
In an automated phone message that the DeVos campaign is sending out to voters all over the state, DeVos tries to couch his position in terms of giving parents control of education rather than the government. That message says, in part:
Now DeVos has the right idea. Let local parents make the choice of what’s taught in schools. Granholm thinks state government knows best - not parents.
But the reality is that local government is still the government, and when local school boards take him up on his invitation to put ID into science classes, it will be parents who will challenge those policies in court because they do not want their children taught religious beliefs dressed up in scientific-sounding language. What appears to be a plea for more parental control is really just an attempt to pass the legal and financial buck from the state government to cash-strapped local school districts. It’s the local school districts who take DeVos’ invitation seriously that will end up paying the price for his irresponsible political gamesmanship.