Influencing the National Curriculum
So far the BCSE has found two instances in the National Curriculum where fundamentalists seem to have opened the door for teaching creationism in science lessons in the UK. There appears to be a mole in the system pushing the fundamentalist religious agenda onto the National Curriculum.
Biology
It is common knowledge that the, "controversies in evolution" used to justify the creationist, "teach the controversy" strategy revolves around the deliberate (yes, deliberate) misinterpretation of a single badly worded sentence with the National Curriculum Key Stage 4 (KS4) so as to suggest that evolution is controversial when it is clearly not the case.
The sentence in question is:
“Pupils should be taught:
b. How scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence [for example, Darwin's theory of evolution]”
This simply does not make sense. Although scientific evidence can be interpreted in different and conflicting ways, it is obvious that the example given, i.e. Darwin's theory of evolution is neither a "scientific controversy" nor a "different way of interpreting empirical evidence".
Lenny Flank points out that there is “absolutely no doubt about that. The wording is identical to similar actions in the US. It is pure ID/creationism boilerplate.”
Apparently, the correct interpretation of this as taught in all other schools in the country apart from those run by Vardy, is that different interpretations of empirical evidence (example: the fossil record) can give rise to different & conflicting *scientific* (as opposed to someone with a lot of money, arbitrary religious opinions) theories.
And the example in this case is the controversy that arose in the 19th century between Darwinian & Lamarckian evolution. There is no such thing as the scientific theory of creationism or Intelligent Design.
How this sentence came to be so badly worded is unknown, but we believe that it is result of deliberate sabotage by someone with creationist leanings.
What is of more concern is that despite the fact that there has been concern about the wording of this one sentence stretching back years, no one has made any attempt to correct it. For example the following letter was sent to the government in March of 2002:
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1352.
No one did anything publicly about it.
(This incidentally was about a month before the creationists sent their letter to Estelle Morris, which was, presumably a very carefully considered response making careful play on the academic credentials of the signatories and avoiding mention of their involvement in the creationist movement in the UK).
It needs further investigation as to who wrote the offending wording of the National Curriculum KS4 and why the error was not corrected immediately when pointed out by the scientific establishment.
Also as the misused phraseology was of such distinctive character, it would also be worth investigating why some of the statements made by government at this time seemed to share it, because it seems to suggest that they have been getting much of their advice from creationists or their websites.
In September of this year (2006), a new National Curriculum syllabus is coming into force that, apparently, makes no mention of the offending sentence used by the creationists attempting to further their ambitions.
However, the removal off the offending wording seems to give us a potent legal weapon to use against the creationists.
Chemistry
The new 2006 KS4 syllabus for the National Curriculum appears to have opened the door for teaching creationism in science lessons. The syllabus of the AQA examination organisation at http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/pdf/AQA-4461-4462-4421-EX2-W-SW.PDF illustrates the point.
The reader is drawn to page 14 where it mentions creationism and how the evidence of the old age of the earth led to a split between science and religion in the 19th century. It also mentions Bishop Ussher.
At the time of writing, we are making further investigations into this issue.
Our preliminary view is that the statement in the syllabus (which is based on the NC) is wholly incorrect. The evidence of the old age of the earth did not lead to a split between science and religion in the 19th century. By 1855 the entire Anglican clergy accepted the old age of the earth and not a single dissenter appears before 1919. Indeed, amongst the educated in the UK, old age of the earth was accepted much early that 1855 - possibly by around 1800.
In the Christian world, the issue of a split based on the old age of the earth did not surface until the 20th century and then almost wholly amongst fundamentalists in the USA.
We are also deeply concerned that the syllabus states that there are creationists around today. This has nothing to do with science. It's advertising religious belief in a science curriculum and science lessons.
There is no such thing as the scientific theory of creationism. It's religion, pure and simple, and this has been proven as such beyond reasonable doubt repeatedly in US courts.
Moreover, we are concerned that the old age of the earth is normally an issue taught in geography, geology and physics. Bringing up the issue and linking it to creationism in chemistry seems to be a back door method of getting creationism into science lessons without anyone noticing. It's been placed where nobody expects.
Nick Cowan, the creationist head of chemistry at the Blue Coat in Liverpool, has bragged about the creationist part of the new syllabus in the Blackshadow Yahoo forum and has drawn it to our attention.
Links
Alan Bellis, a member of the BCSE, has a page on his web site about the National Curriculum. It can be found at http://www.creationism.co.uk/index.php/Main/MisrepresentationOfScienceCurriculum
