Thoughts in a Haystack

The American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy has weighed in on the decision by Ohio’s Board of Education to immediately repeal both its benchmark requiring critical analysis of evolution and the approved model lesson plan for doing so.

In a press release entitled "Darwin’s Censors Strike Again," the CLP says:

. . . Martha W. Wise, the board member who offered the emergency motion [to repeal the measures], told her colleagues during the debate Tuesday afternoon that "tis (sic) lesson is bad news, the 'critically analyze' wording is bad news." She is also reported to have said, "It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about the nature of science."

"It is inconceivable that someone in the business of education could argue that the ‘critically analyze’ wording in the Ohio standards is ‘bad news,’" said Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy (CLP). "[Wise] followed up that astonishing comment with the absurd conclusion that children who are taught to think critically about evolution will be mislead about the nature of science," Fahling added.

CLP chief counsel Steve Crampton said he was "hopeful that the board will revisit the issue and vote in favor of critical thinking, rather than censorship. Governmental imposition of orthodoxy of belief such as the board has voted in favor of is inimical to a free society and genuine scientific inquiry." Crampton offered to defend the Ohio Board free of charge in the event the mandate was reinstated and the board was sued.

First of all, after Dover, the best advice for any school board when it comes to offers of help from "public policy law centers" is: Be afraid . . . be very afraid . . .

The Dover School District still faces paying the plaintiffs’ legal fees of a million dollars or more and, like the Thomas More Legal Center, the AFA’s Center for Law and Policy is not apparently offering to indemnify the State of Ohio for that.

As to "critical analysis," only the uninformed could think this is anything but a way to smuggle theology into public schools. No one could be against "equal education" either . . . as in "separate but equal education." It is axiomatic that the very first thing people who are bent on mischief will do is invent a fair sounding name for it.

That the real aims of the AFA have nothing to do with science education is let slip by the claim of censorship on behalf of "orthodoxy of belief."

Not every possible subject is taught in public schools. Some, like the truth or falsity of religious tenets, are positively forbidden by the American Constitution. Not giving access to a particular forum for the discussion of an idea is not censorship, as long as other forums are open to those discussions. You may have the right to express you views in public but not with a bullhorn outside my bedroom window at 2 a.m.

Science classes in American public schools represent a small proportion of the school year, which itself consists of only six or seven hours a day, five days a week, for about nine months a year. Add to that the fact that evolution is only a tiny portion of the science curricula and compare that to the access that parents and churches have to children for purposes of teaching their religious views, and the claim of "censorship" is revealed to be completely empty.

Even more, the statement of Mr. Crampton shows that he considers science to be a belief system, rather than an empiric enterprise engaged in by anyone willing to restrict themselves to evidence that can be shared regardless of faith.

I suppose we should be grateful that Mr. Crampton and his ilk are so bad at hiding their agenda.