Columnist Susan Sndyer: Ruling is a true education

Susan Sndyer

Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 | 8:19 a.m.

Rather than ramble across the state, for this week's Monday column we are going to join a Pennsylvania school board and take a giant leap into a huge black hole.

Last month board members for the Dover Area School District mandated that high school students learning about evolution and Charles Darwin must simultaneously learn the concept of "intelligent design," the Associated Press reports.

Ninth grade biology students in the rural Pennsylvania village will still learn about scientific research that shows Earth is billions of years old, and all life forms on it evolved over the eons.

But now they also will learn the theory that the universe is so incredibly complex, its creation defies any explanation and therefore must be the result of some "unspecified higher power."

Where is old Darwin when you truly need him?

Critics, the article says, call the curriculum change a "veiled attempt" to teach public schoolchildren as fact the biblical belief that God is the origin of the species.

"Veiled" in what -- Saran Wrap?

The head of the Dover school board's curriculum committee, a self-described, born-again Christian who believes in creationism, had hoped the district would adopt as a supplement his chosen textbook on the theory:

"Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins."

However, fellow board members managed to avoid voting on that part of the measure, the AP reports.

Still, just before the new "science" curriculum was approved someone anonymously donated 50 copies of the panda text to the high school, along with several copies of "Fox In Socks" and "Curious George Rides a Bike."

OK, I'm kidding about the socks and Curious George. But they are better books.

One can almost understand their reasoning, however. We ought to expand all the ideas and theories taught in today's schools, seeing as how we're not teaching as much reading, math and other boring stuff.

I, for one, think they ought to include the concept that life as we know it actually was brought to Earth by petri dish-toting aliens sporting argyle socks.

OK. Again, I'm kidding about the socks.

You have to give these zealo... uh, public officials, credit for trying to expand their pupils' exploration of various theories behind their basic subjects of study.

The father of a Dover high school student told the AP, "You can't be hypocritical with these kids, teaching them one thing but not another."

So true, Pops.

What good is an education if all sides of the situation aren't considered?

And who knows? Maybe these Dover dudes are more forward-thinking than they seem.

Perhaps American Indian tribes should now ask that Dover schools expand the American history curriculum and include the "theory" that the U.S. government won the West by lying to and stealing from American Indians and sought to obliterate all Indian language and culture.

Frankly, it's hard to imagine that the Dover district officials would object.

Seems they're pretty comfortable exploring the 19th century.