Teaching creationism or intelligent design in a public school is unconstitutional and violates the first amendment. I don’t believe the Supreme Court will ever support grand design theory in a public school curriculum. There is an established precedence in the court to uphold the first amendment and separation of church and state.
Parents who want their child to learn creationism need to find a church or a private school. I honestly don’t understand why people want to assert their religious beliefs at the expense of other people’s rights.
Higher education is extremely competitive these days, particularly the top twenty five. I hope the vast majority of high school freshman plan to take rigorous math and science courses. A school like UVA, which is a public institution, does expect to see IB or AP math and science courses on transcripts along with a high GPA. The university does take into account that not all high schools are equal. Students can only take what is offered. It is unfair to exclude a student based on the high school s/he attended.
There aren’t any “both theories.” ID is not a scientific theory. It is a religious view. The reason to exclude someone from a certain level science class is that person has not attained the minimum level of competence required for that class.
I agree. Intelligent design/creationism is a euphemism for religious ideology. It has no place in a public school. Expecting a public school science teacher to instruct religious doctrine is insulting. Ministers and priests should teach spiritual doctrine.
We live in a country where people are free to practice any religion and impart those beliefs to their children. This should be enough. It directly opposes the constitution when a state funded institution mandates a religious belief, even if it is veiled as theory.
I certainly don’t think anyone should be discriminated because of their religious beliefs. A Jewish, Christian, or Rastafarian student should have equal access to all education, including higher education.
Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory and should not be taught as though it were such.
I don’t think that it would have much influence on Kansas voters if the Ivy League decided that they wouldn’t accept students from that area. It is not as though Kansas is known for having lots of students that go to Harvard.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this will change the minds of the people who required teaching ID in Kansas or Dover. What people don’t always grasp is that there are people who deeply, sincerely believe that Christians (or True Christians) really are persecuted in this country and they’ll just take this of more evidence of that, especially since it’s being perpetrated by what they regard as “liberal academics.” I’ve interacted with some of these people on-line and been told outright that I cannot accept evolution and be a real Christian. If the major universities were to take the line that you cannot study there if you were taught ID or Creationism, those folks would just take this as more evidence of America’s moral decline.
Moderates might indeed successfully protest it and get rid of it as they did in Dover, but the people pushing for ID believe that saying evolution is a lie is as clearly and obviously true as saying it gets cold in winter.
Of course it’s not going to change any minds. But the secret to winning elections is not changing somebody’s mind, it’s motivating the people who already agree with you to get off their butts and go to the polls. In Dover, nobody changed their mind about creationism/ID in between the election where the fundies took over and the election where the fundies got thrown out. In the earlier elections, the fundies were more successful in getting other fundies to the polls. The moderate people probably thought it was no big deal and didn’t vote. Then, when the moderates saw what they had allowed to happen, they came out in droves to kick them out. Same thing would happen in Kansas. A lot of people probably don’t care enough to even pay attention to school board elections. But, if all of a sudden they realize their kid may not be able to go to the best college, they’re going to be highly motivated to go elect someone else.
I think a state by state admission ban is absurd. I think, in fact that a school by school ban is troubling. You get a lot of information on a student when he applies for a University, especially a good one. I believe you get enough to make a student by student choice. The fact is that letting a fundamentalist into your biology program doesn’t risk your program. If they can learn the material, they can learn the material. If what you teach them doesn’t give them a reason to question creationist dogma, the fault lies in the program more than it does in the student.
Knowledge is greater than ignorance. Faith is not necessarily an impediment to reason. All forms of bigotry are equal.
Regional profiling would be absurd for all the reasons already listed. The much more rational approach is simply to test all applicants for their individual grasp of scientific method and (for curriculums where it matters) individual knowledge of biological evolution. I don’t even think it should matter if they believe it as long as they understand the theory. No student should be summarily denied the opportunity to prove himself simply because he has had the misfortune to have had his public school board hijacked by nutjobs.
I agree, but I would go further, nutjobs themselves, if they have the intellectual capability, and put forth the scholastic effort, should be provided the same opportunity to learn.
To me the public school is the real foundation upon which rests the entire fabric of a free society. Restrictions upon students must be based on scholastic ability, and prior attainment of the prerequisite body of knowledge needed. Any other rational has in it an implicit bias that any scientist should reject. The fact is that my objection to the creationist dogmatists is not that they want their side to be heard, but that they wish to silence the opposing side. The answer is not to silence creationists, the answer is to educate. Education is always voluntary, and ignorance must be made voluntary as well.
The politics that supports anti-evolution is the same old prostitution that has become our entire government. Let’s not take that to school, huh?
I’m betting that the parents of the kids who might go to Harvard are in general not big supporters of ID, or of the nut jobs who run for office based on support for ID. So this is just going to hurt the innocent.
I don’t know if this is necessarily true. Didn’t GW Bush attend Harvard? Doesn’t GW talk to God for guidance on the quickest way to completely destroy the US?
At least one of the Ivy League schools has been been “creative” in its admissions policy. It has has been known to admit students who had poor grades in high school but tested well. (I suspect the other IL schools do also.) And many of the top schools accept early admissions including those who have not graduated from high school. I cannot image their being so punitive as to exclude a student for having been exposed to the dreaded ID “theory.”
By the way, for those of you who are college bound, I beg you not to use “and ect.” That ect. stands for et cetera – a Latin phrase meaning “and the rest.” Et already means “and.” So when you write “and etc.,” it is as if you are saying “and and the rest.” Your professors will grind their teeth and slobber on your paper and give it back to you wet.
Not certain, but it would probably get them in trouble with the Feds if they participate in federally funded loans (which most do) and could be shown to discriminate based on geography (and, it could be argued, religion), which would probably be done if it were shown they were admitting people from other regions and backgrounds with equal or lesser scores on standardized college admissions tests (ACT, SAT, PSAT, AP, whatever else is out there now).
If it’s a school like Bob Jones, which is unaccredited and private, then they can refuse you admittance because your name sounds like you might be gay, Italian, or just has too many letters for their liking, and they can say so on your rejection letter with complete impunity. However, hardly any major private college that someone with an interest in the hard sciences would apply to is in this category.
Semi-relevant aside, but my niece applied to Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and a couple of other Ivy League schools last year. She has a perfect 4.0 and blew the top off of her standardized tests, but only received admission to Columbia (she declined). The reason was that the Ivy Leagues and other hyper-selective private colleges have X admission slots and each year their formula for who they admit is different, and they do divvy it up many different ways including x southerners, x ethnic minorities, x from below the poverty line, x legacies, x etceteras. Point is: it would be fairly easy for such an institution to hide behind their admissions policy for at least a few years by saying “Hey, we had 29,000 applicants who were all tops of their class and only 2,000 openings”.
Just like the Bush appointed (and Santorum nominated) judge that ruled in the Dover case? Oh, that’s right…he viewed the evidence and totally ripped the ID side a new one.
What about the broader question - do colleges currently discriminate against certain high schools based on their academic reputation? For example, there’s been some controversy about some schools which grade teacher performance solely on how many kids pass, and so these teachers have just been passing all the students. I believe Florida state schools also have a general reputation for not having a very challenging curriculum. I’m guessing that the SATs and other standardized tests, as well as things like application essays factor into this already, and would also be the way that colleges would deal with the ID issue.
I forgot about his alcoholism. I don’t want to taint the image of Harvard, the oldest US college and one of the most prestigious. I will blame his religious revival on the bottle. I agree with you. GW is not his dad. I am not a fan of either, but I would take dad over son if I *had *to choose.
Religion, of any kind, does not belong in public schools or the executive office. Nancy Reagan met with astrologers, but she wasn’t the president. I thought it was inappropriate. I don’t have a problem with anyone practicing religion or faith, as long as it is private and not funded with tax dollars.
Intelligent design is a way to deny evolution and label evolution an atheistic belief. This type of dogma prevents factual understanding of our vastly complex biodiversity and proven common ancestry.
Again, these school boards can try to introduce intelligent design into a science curriculum, but it will always be challenged and the Court’s decision will rule against it based on the constatution, so the idea of excluding a student because the public school taught ID is moot. As others have said, students should be admitted to universities based on academic achievement, test scores, and extracurricular school involvement.
It might go the other way also. A school with a very high reputation, and lots of kids who could go to a top school, might get discriminated against by the desire of the college to not pick too many kids from one high school.
I agree with you. GW is not his dad. I am not a fan of either, but I would take dad over son if I *had *to choose.