From James Williams, University of Sussex School of Education
As a science education specialist and researcher into the issue of creationism teaching in schools, I am extremely disturbed by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s dismissive attitude on the issue of creationist teaching in UK schools (4 November, p 51). To state that action would only be necessary should creationism become “the mainstream of the education system in this country” is naïve in the extreme. Action at that point is no action at all and would be too late.
This attitude displays a lack of understanding of the motives and tactics of the creationist community. Mr Blair’s statement about his visit to the Vardy Foundation’s King’s Academy indicating that, “as far as I’m aware they are teaching the curriculum in a normal way” is surprising since Vardy schools have publicly accorded equal importance to creationism and theories of evolution. Indeed Stephen Layfield, the head of science at another Vardy academy – Emmanuel College Gateshead – backs lessons on creationism that contain factual errors and unscientific ideas on the relationships of living organisms. That is not at all what I would call normal science curriculum teaching. He is also a Director of the newly instigated “Truth in Science” movement, “that appears to have sufficient funding and determination to distribute thinly disguised “six-day” creationist teaching materials to all secondary schools, masquerading as science lessons. They clearly intend to make creationist teaching in science “mainstream”.
Mr Blair’s contention that creationists do not view their ideas as “science” is also incorrect. Having attended more than one creationist lecture that purports to refute scientific evidence for evolution, I can confirm that for most, the mission is to replace good science with a faulty, unscientific explanation for the development of living organisms. They seek to undermine geology, biology and astronomy with their unscientific claims. They dismiss long-established, well-evidenced and widely accepted scientific facts, such as the existence of transition fossils, with nothing more then unsubstantiated ideas of “created kinds” and a tired mantra that fossils of transitional species “do not exist”, even when the physical evidence is clear for all to see in the many fossil collections around the world.
It may interest readers to know that the current curriculum in UK schools already has provision for an examination of the perceived tensions between religion and science and an examination of ideas, religious and scientific, on the development of the universe and life. The problem for the creationists is that this exists in the Religious Education curriculum, its rightful place, and not in the science curriculum which is where they seek to place their own unscientific ideas, including so called “intelligent design”.
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Given that this provision for an examination of origins already exists, I wonder then why the creationists are so vocal and insistent on teaching their non-scientific ideas in science? Clearly it is their intention to replace mainstream science with pseudoscience.
Falmer, Brighton, UK
