Minnetonka School Board Elections

gregladen — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:46:52 +0000

Bill Wenmark, a member of the Minnetonka School Board who supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in High School Cirriculum was ousted in yesterday's election.

Bill sent me an email that included a note to his constituents, and he and I have been discussing the possibility of me posting it here. Now that the election is over, I doubt that will materialize. In any event, he sent me the email to clarify his position on ID, and I'll pass my interpretation of that on to you. He can certainly add comments to this if he feels more clarification is in order.

My understanding is that Bill Wenmark's position is no longer to see ID taught in the biology classroom. Good idea. The earlier efforts to do so led to great difficulty. A school board that insists on this strategy is opening their district ... over which they have stewardship ... to serious and expensive legal difficulties.

Mr. Wenmark does, however, believe that ID should be taught as a current social controversy in social studies. This is something that I deeply disagree with. This is a little like saying that social studies must cover the "bigfoot exists" vs. the "bigfoot is fake" controversy, even if it is not covered in biology classes.

Yes, it is a current social controversy of more import than the Bigfoot issue. So it could be taught in social studies, but it should not in any way be required. In this way, as well, I disagree with the National Council for the Social Studies, who suggest that this controversy can and maybe should be taught in the schools (in Social Studies) and suggest ways to do it.

As I wrote about here, this is simply leaving an opening for the Wedge Strategy of the Intelligent Design movement.

gregladen Wed, 11/07/2007 - 07:46