'Teach the controversy': an intelligently designed ruse

In their quest to have Intelligent Design theory included in educational curricula, proponents have rallied behind a specious strategy, exhorting school boards to "teach the scientific controversy" surrounding the issue of evolution.

**********

When two groups of experts disagree about a controversial subject that intersects the public school curriculum, students should learn about both perspectives (Meyer 2001).

This is the first line of Stephen Meyer's "Teach the Controversy, an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer on March 20, 2001. On its face, this appears to be a reasonable, even desirable, approach to pedagogical practice. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, spoke at a meeting of the Ohio State Board of Education and wrote this piece in support of the inclusion of "Intelligent Design Theory" in the state's biology curriculum. Meyer expands upon his opening sentence with the following: "In such cases teachers should not teach as true only one competing view, just the Republican or Democratic view of the New Deal in a history class, for example. Instead, teachers should describe competing views to students and explain the arguments for and against these views as made by their chief proponents. Educators call this 'teaching the controversy.'"

Meyer is but one of many individuals employing this particular rhetoric in support of teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in public schools. Another, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson had this to say regarding a school board vote in Ohio: "This vote is a significant breakthrough in a major state towards official recognition that there is a scientific as well as a public controversy over the theory of evolution, and that the contested issues ought to be taught rather than suppressed" (Johnson 2003). And there is this from one of the leading lights of ID, William Dembski: "The clarion call of the Intelligent Design movement is to 'teach the controversy.' There is a very real controversy centering on how properly to account for biological complexity (cf. the ongoing events in Kansas), and it is a scientific controversy" (Dembski 2001).

The ID movement even goes so far as to enlist the help of a man whose name is lent to the body of work they challenge. To buttress their argument, several have quoted this line from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question" (Darwin 1859).

It is obvious that there is a concerted effort being made--Dembski says as much above--within the Intelligent Design movement to work the "controversy" angle, and again, at first glance, these arguments appear to be an appeal to rationality and compromise. To be sure, it's possible that Meyer, Dembski, and Johnson believe they are being rational when they apply these arguments to the broad spectrum of biological origins. However, the assertion that there is a "scientific" controversy to be taught is at best misguided and at worst disingenuous.

Exploiting Fair-mindedness

Individuals who push the "it's only fair to teach both sides" tactic count on those estimable intellectual qualities one finds in critical thinkers to tip the balance of opinion in their favor. These qualities, including fair-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, and openness not only allow for but indeed urge that all sides of an issue be aired. But I submit that ID proponents hope that those who employ these attributes will not scrutinize the "scientific controversy" assertion too deeply. A closer examination of these arguments in general, and Meyer's fortuitous analogy in particular, shows that the metaphor breaks down, and the so-called scientific controversy is little more than a political ploy. What Dembski et al. are offering, looked at from the perspective of science, is not controversial. And examined in the broader political context, this dispute, while perhaps rising to the level of controversy, is demonstrably not scientific.

A look at Meyer's metaphor is useful. Likely all will agree that competing political views of the New Deal not only deserve to be taught but in fact must be taught to properly cover the scope of the subject. And it is not surprising to find that there are differing, perhaps even diametrically opposed, perspectives regarding a particular aspect of a sub-discipline (modern American history) of the overarching rubric of history itself. It is through exploration of these opposing perspectives that teaching takes place. Meyer's example could perhaps reasonably be referred to as a historical controversy by virtue of the fact that there is a source of dispute marked by expression of opposing views among historians discussing history. The point here is that there is a broad gulf of difference between a controversy and a historical controversy. Addition of the modifier implies a dispute as to detail or process between those who share a common epistemological and empirical foundation. This debate can proceed using common references, terminology, and accepted evidence. Within this context, viewed at this scale, what may seem an overblown dispute over arcane minutiae to those outside the discipline could properly be deemed a controversy.