Print this page

On Allowing Public Schools to ‘Teach the Controversy' Surrounding Evolution and Intelligent Design

By Mark E. Souder
Written for The CQ Researcher

The question of biological origins continues to plague discussions about public school science education policy. But why can’t high school students just learn the standard scientific view and be done with it? Science is science, and that should end the debate.

Normally it would. But evolution is different.

Charles Darwin’s theory—and its modern variants—assert that everything we see in the living world is the result of an unplanned, unguided process of random variation and natural selection. It has, from the very beginning, been something more than just a scientific theory. Darwinism quickly became a near-religious conviction for modern agnostics, and since its early days it has been used against people of faith. That history, of course, does not disqualify it as science, but it does help explain why many well-educated Americans have not made, and perhaps never will make, their peace with Darwinian theory.

Still, public doubt alone might not be enough to affect public school treatment of an overwhelmingly established theory. But the Darwinian mechanism as an explanation for macro-evolution has long been the subject of cogent and powerful scientific criticisms. And those criticisms have become more compelling in recent years as new evidence piles up: recently uncovered fossil beds deepen the mystery of the Cambrian explosion, and molecular biology reveals the nanotechnology and digital information inside each lowly cell.

Moreover, any historical theory should be taught with proper modesty and candor. Repeatable experiments involving microevolution in the lab are one thing; but the vast extrapolation of “molecules to man” macroevolution is quite another, and students should understand the huge difference in certainty between one and the other.

There is strong public support for teaching Darwin’s theory critically. For example, a 2001 Zogby Poll found that 71 percent of Americans agree that “biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.”

Whatever its philosophical implications, Darwin’s theory dominates current thinking about origins in modern biology, and so a high school biology education would not be complete without learning the theory.

But the theory should not be taught as an absolute. Instead, it should be taught as a synthesis—the current dominant scientific theory explaining the origin of species—but also as a theory subject to significant limitations, failed predictions, and important scientific criticisms. Efforts to exclude from public schools the scientific debate on this sensitive topic serve only to thwart the true purpose of education—and science itself.