The Issue:Why does Rick Santorum want to leave teaching a world-class science curriculum behind?
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Why does Rick Santorum want to leave teaching a world-class science curriculum behind?
In January 2002, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, touted by the White House as “the most sweeping reform of federal education policy in a generation.” Though the bill and its implementation has been subject to legitimate criticism from those in and outside of public education, its stated goal was laudable enough: to ensure “that testing, accountability and high standards will join with new funding to help ensure educational excellence for every child.”
Unfortunately, Rick Santorum seems to have had an agenda other than “high standards” and “educational excellence.” Of more than 300 substantive amendments offered by both Republican and Democratic Senators, Rick Santorum offered this gem: requiring teachers to help students distinguish “testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science.”
In an opinion piece written for The Morning Call in Allentown, Santorum said that the “philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science” might include Charles Darwin’s long-accepted theory of biological evolution:
“For one, biological evolution, the theory that all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor, relies heavily on the sensitive philosophical belief that evolutionary change can give rise to new species, and can explain the origin of all living things.”
In short, of the hundreds of possible improvements he might have suggested to the “No Child Left Behind” bill Santorum decided that the important thing was to force extreme, anti-scientific theories like “intelligent design” into America’s classrooms as an equally valid alternative to the theory of evolution.
A prominent supporter of “intelligent design,” Phillip Johnson, actually took credit for drafting the language of Santorum’s amendment, which “intelligent design” supporters later cited in their effort to require that Ohio schools give “intelligent design” equal time with Darwinian evolution in biology classes.
The House-Senate Conference Committee on the “No Child Left Behind Act” wisely removed the Santorum amendment before final passage, but he hasn’t given up this ideologically-driven, anti-scientific part of his education agenda. This past December, Santorum gave a legislative update during a New York seminar sponsored by the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association. Here’s how the Philadelphia Inquirer reported it:
[Santorum] urged the group to keep an open mind about what he saw as a rising debate in schools over the teaching not just of evolution but also of alternatives, such as “intelligent design,” a theory holding that the complexity of the natural world offers overwhelming evidence of a supernatural force at work. Dover Area High School in York County recently became the first district in the country to offer the curriculum. Santorum said schools should teach about the controversy surrounding evolution.
"It is going to pit the forces of the popular media and university intelligentsia saying that we will be intolerant of any different points of view, any criticisms of evolution. We watched it in Kansas. We watched it in Ohio," Santorum said in an interview after his speech, referring to other states that have had similar debates. "Now it’s Pennsylvania’s turn, and it is going to be bigger here. . . .”
He later wrote an article praising rural south-central Pennsylvania’s Dover Area School District – reportedly the first in the nation to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” – for “taking a stand and refusing to ignore the controversy.” Santorum wrote:
Well Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but at a time when American students are increasingly outranked in science education by their peers in other countries, Rick Santorum wants to make sure that America’s schools take a big step backwards. It’s his right to apply that kind of extreme, ideological view of what should be in a world-class science curriculum on his own children – but what right does he have to impose his personal views on what our children can learn?"Because there is a real scientific dispute, federal education policy calls on schools to "teach the controversy." In 2001, I offered report language ultimately attached to the No Child Left Behind Act that states, "Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society."