"One Nation, Under the Designer"


The cover story of the December 2004 Phi Delta Kappan is Mark Terry's "One Nation, Under the Designer," which warns of "a sea change in the tactics of the anti-evolution forces, whose efforts have waxed and waned ever since the Scopes Trial." Terry writes:
[A] couple of years ago I began to sense something new in the air. The school where I work is just a couple of blocks up the hill from downtown Seattle, and, in one of the nearby high-rises, a great searchlight seemed to be scanning the country. If only it had been a light designed to illumine and promote great science teaching! But no. I began to see that the search was for efforts to revise statewide science standards, so that the forces of the Discovery Institute might weigh in on the side of weakening or eliminating evolution and substituting something called "Intelligent Design."
In addition to reviewing the motivations, tactics, and rhetoric of the "intelligent design" movement, Terry also provides a host of useful suggestions for resisting its attempts to undermine evolution education across the country, writing:
[A]cross the country, in the battles on the revision of state standards, in curriculum writing, and in textbook adoptions, Intelligent Design, especially as promoted by the Discovery Institute of Seattle, is causing great confusion. Those who care must not stand idly by. It is time for science educators and their colleagues in the humanities and in religious education to join with administrators and get into the discussions and on the appropriate committees.
Terry is a veteran science teacher now at the Northwest School in Seattle; Phi Delta Kappan, published by Phi Delta Kappa International, bills itself as "the professional print journal for education."

"One Nation, Under the Designer"