The story of the public school biology teacher who wrote to us over the weekend reminds me that we haven’t said enough here about an additional reason to check out the new Discovering Intelligent Design curriculum, co-authored by ENV’s Casey Luskin. There’s now a special back-to-school offer — go look at the website.
We’ve been very clear that DID is not intended for use in public schools, but rather for private and home-schooling contexts. However, the teacher who sent us that taunting email wrote about how he targets ID in his classroom, assigning New Atheist authors like Dawkins and Coyne and counting it as a triumph when students give up what he considers foolish beliefs about design or a designer behind the history of life.
He’s going after young people who don’t know enough to question him, even as he declines (what else is new?) to exchange views with us here at ENV in a public forum. Because there are some teachers like that out there, and many who are simply unaware that there’s more than one legitimate scientific view on Darwinian evolution, if any of my kids were in high school biology class now anywhere — public school, private, wherever — I would want to supplement what they learn, for study at home, with the great and highly accessible material in Discovering ID. And don’t forget Explore Evolution, either, which casts light on the strengths and weakness of Darwinian theory.
For students to get significant benefit from them, these books don’t need to be introduced into a classroom setting at all. They make fantastic resources for at-home supplementing.