One side can be wrong

[ecdab]

It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Such a modest proposal. Why not teach "both sides" and let the children decide for themselves? As President Bush said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." At first hearing, everything about the phrase "both sides" warms the hearts of educators like ourselves.
One of us spent years as an Oxford tutor and it was his habit to choose controversial topics for the students' weekly essays. They were required to go to the library, read about both sides of an argument, give a fair account of both, and then come to a balanced judgment in their essay. The call for balance, by the way, was always tempered by the maxim, "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong."

As teachers, both of us have found that asking our students to analyse controversies is of enormous value to their education. What is wrong, then, with teaching both sides of the alleged controversy between evolution and creationism or "intelligent design" (ID)? And, by the way, don't be fooled by the disingenuous euphemism. There is nothing new about ID. It is simply creationism camouflaged with a new name to slip (with some success, thanks to loads of tax-free money and slick public-relations professionals) under the radar of the US Constitution's mandate for separation between church and state.

the rest is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,,1559743,00.html

[kentuck]

1. Very true....another example....

Bush says in his cabinet meeting conference yesterday, "We will look at what we did right and we will look at what we did wrong..." I don't think anything was done right??

[TyeDye75]

2. An exce;;ent artical, a real smack down for the ID crowd

[ecdab]

4. it's the best piece

I have read on the subject.

[patrice]

3. Oh! You make me MISS teaching!!!

AP Psychology and Eng. IV. It is so amazing to see kids who have trouble reading get! Poe or Hawthorne or Shakespeare etc.

I taught Psychology as Science in prep for the College Boards. Sometimes someone like a couple of young women I remember decide to take a special interest in things like Neurophysiology.