Media Coverage of Dover against Kansas
Regular readers will know that I have posted several times on the debates throughout the country over teaching intelligent design in science class. The big battle grounds of late have been in Kansas and Dover, Pennsylvania. Both localities have been in the news this week. Elections this week resulted in the Dover school board being essentially outsted, with eight of the nine members replaced. At the same time, the Kansas school board voted 6-4 to approve teaching intelligent design in the science classes.
I have a bone to pick with the media coverage of these two stories. Press coverage of the two debates tends to equate them. They are not the same at all. For example, CNN writes
The Kansas board's action is part of a national debate. In Pennsylvania, a judge is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit against the Dover school board's policy of requiring high school students to learn about intelligent design in biology class.MSNBC's coverage of the Dover election results makes several references to Dover schools teaching intelligent design. The Dover policy in question does not require students to study intelligent design, nor teachers to teach it. It required teachers to read a brief statement one time that I have commented on in detail before, before continuing on to teach evolution as they should. This is a far cry from redefining science, as the Kansas school board did, so as to actually teach intelligent design. Whether one agrees with the Dover policy or not, surely the difference from Kansas' board is obvious.
Why can the media not understand the difference between the two cases? The media are being very sloppy in their coverage if they cannot convey the essential differences in the two cases. This sloppy coverage is misleading to readers. Bloggers can be just as bad, of course. Badger Blues characterizes the Dover case as "a weird, Scopes-like trial over teaching science in science class" when the case had nothing to do with not teaching evolution.
If we are going to have intelligent discourse in this country, the news media (and bloggers) needs to be a little more diligent in their coverage, so as to provide accurate information to readers.
Update (11/11/2005): Fixed the link to my previous look at the Dover policy.
Labels: intelligent design
posted by Doc at 12:55 PM
2 Comments:
The Dover policy required teachers to read, in biology class, an intentionally misleading statement conflating "fact" and "theory" and positing intelligent design as a legitimate scientific theory.
A debate about teaching evolution and fake science together is as much an argument about "teaching science in science class" as is a dispute about not teaching evolution.
I see absolutely nothing incorrect or misleading in what I wrote.
The Dover policy required teachers to read a short statement indicating that there is a belief held by some called intelligent design, and that evolution is a theory. Both statements are accurate. Intelligent design is not called science. In fact, the wording is such that it is distinguished from science. The teachers are not called on to teach intelligent design, merely to acknowledge its existence and that some people do in believe in it. The only thing that is taught in class is evolution.
What you wrote is true for Kansas, not for Dover.
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