Learning your lesson

This is from a few days ago but still well worth noting. It the link is from Pharyngula via Lean Left.

Back at the beginning of December, I mentioned that Dover, Pennsylvania had achieved the dishonor of being the first place in the country to mandate the teaching of the intellectual fraud of "intelligent design" as a scientifically-valid alternative to evolution. As part of that, teachers were required to read a four-paragraph disclaimer at the beginning of the unit on evolution that boiled down to "don't put too much stock in this evolution stuff 'cause nobody actually knows and by the way, check out this book on intelligent design" and yes, it did refer to a specific book, one called Of Pandas and People, regarded as the founding document of the intelligent design movement.

But the National Center for Science Education reports that on January 5, eight high school science teachers in Dover delivered a letter to the district superintendent stating their refusal to read the required statement on the grounds that doing so would violate professional standards set down in state law. The letter said (emphasis as per the original)

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.

I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students to "Of Pandas and People" as if it is a scientific resource breaches my ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.

We've all had some bad ones, I know I certainly have, but the fact is that on the whole, teachers rock!

I'm reminded of the nonviolent resistance to Naziism undertaken by Norwegian teachers during World War II, who, by simply refusing to cooperate, undermined the attempts of the man whose name has come to mean "traitor," Vidkun Quisling, to establish Nazi organizations in Norway. "You have destroyed everything for me," he railed at them.

Now, let's be clear. Am I equating the risks the Dover teachers face - potentially, they could lose their jobs, although for the moment the administration is not pressing the issue - with the threats of forced labor camps and death faced by those in Norway? Of course not.

Am I equating the Nazi's drive for power with an ultimate desire of our "Christian" fundamentalists for a theocracy, for total control, for the ability to force all others to do, act, and even be taught to think as they would have them do, act, and think?

Damn straight I am.

Just remember that the risks of labor camps arose for the teachers only when the threat of job loss was not enough. If you really think that the fundies of this country would not, had they the power to do so, escalate from threats to firings and then beyond if firings did not prove sufficient to their ends, then you simply have not been paying attention. Back in December, I noted how William Rivers Pitt had written of being "down to the ethic of total opposition." At some point, and perhaps sooner than many of us would like to think, we may have to discover just what "total" means.

In the meantime, the more such exemplars as those Dover teachers we have, the more that day is put off and the more the likelihood of it dims.