I have previously discussed my views on the place of creationism in school science classes. To recap,
- I argued that it is important to distinguish between creationism per se (the belief that the universe was created) and Young Earth creationism (the belief that the Earth was created over a short period - perhaps six days - something less than twelve thousand years ago).
- I stated that I believe that naturalism is an axiom of science - science aims to see how much can be accounted for without appeal to the supernatural - but this of course creates a wedge between "science" and "historical truth" (science, on this account, does not even aspire to historical truth).
- I suggested that although it follows that creationism has no place in science, it did not follow that creationism had no place in school science classes, because school science classes do not aspire to carry out scientific research; because they discuss broader issues such as global warming or MMR scares; because we can learn to appreciate the scientific method through contrasting it with non-scientific approaches; and because philosophy of science is valuable. (I emphasize that I did not envisage the above topics taking more than a few class-slots of time per year.)
I was interested to note the recent Ipsos Mori poll of schoolteachers on this topic. This found that opposition to teaching creationism in science classes is only 47% to 37% in favour! An astonishing 65% favour discussion of creationism in science classes compared to only 23% opposition; and, probably the most amazing result of all, only 26% of schoolteachers agreed with the proposition that "Creationism is completely unsupportable as a theory, and the only reason to mention creationism in schools is to enable teachers to demonstrate why the idea is scientific nonsense and has no basis in evidence or rational thought", compared to 54% who disagreed!!
I can only assume that these quite extraordinary numbers reflect schoolteachers' understanding of the attitudes and beliefs of their students - i.e. that many, many of these students are themselves creationist or have some interest in creationism that might mean a science class discussion would be of particular interest. Of course, the DSCF guidance, although it states that creationism should not be "taught", goes on to say
there is a real difference between teaching ‘x' and teaching about ‘x'. Any questions about creationism and intelligent design which arise in science lessons, for example as a result of media coverage, could provide the opportunity to explain or explore why they are not considered to be scientific theories and, in the right context, why evolution is considered to be a scientific theory.
This sounds like a good way to proceed to me.
