Monday 26 October 2009

Sometimes we should worry about our fellow countrymen

According to a recent poll, 54% of Britons believe that Creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary theory in science lessons!

The story, as reported in the Guardian is here.

Thankfully, the government seems to have come up with a reasonable response:

The UK government has been quick to denounce creationism and intelligent
design as unrecognised scientific theory that did not meet the requirements of
the national curriculum, but it has said that young people can "discuss
creationism as part of their religious education classes".
Neither the
primary nor secondary school science curriculums mention creationism or
intelligent design.


Perhaps creationism could be taught in science with the purpose of demonstrating that there is no evidence for it. This may be a useful exercise in teaching children how an argument or theory can fail when there is insufficient evidence to support it. However, from memory, enough went wrong in the school science lab when we were trying to prove things that did stand up to scrutiny. That seemed to take enough time as it was; surely there isn't enough time in the classroom to take apart an argument which doesn't meet scientific criteria?

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