DavoMan
21st August 2005, 12:04 AM
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3384352a11,00.html
A Christian lobby group has sent 500 kits about intelligent design - the idea that a higher being created life - to NZ state schools, sparking debate about whether schools should teach creationism.
The Focus on the Family group says Intelligent Design is a quality teaching resource aimed at encouraging healthy debate. But a critic says the group is trying to introduce the Bible's teachings by stealth into education.
"It is alarming. People are presenting it as another valid theory . . . it is not scientifically based, it is just a theory they formed on their religious beliefs," said NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists secretary Paul Litterick.
About 500 schools were sent the DVD and workbook resource. Focus on the Family director Wayne Mulqueen said it did not want "to set the world on fire". "We do not want to push the whole creationist debate. We are doing it in a low-key way, putting the stuff out there for use. Schools may choose to bin it . . . we just want to say there is another theory."
In the Sunday Star-Times' Great Morality Debate, three out of four respondents said they would be happy with religious instruction in schools.
Burnside High principal Ron Noordijk said it had received the intelligent design kit. Its science head had not evaluated it so no decision had been made on its usefulness. Pakuranga College principal Bali Haque knew nothing of the kit, and said it would be kept in the library if it had arrived. "It has no place in the classroom."
Science Educators association president Bev Cooper said the intent of science and biology curricula was to present information supported by science. "(Intelligent design) is not science and therefore has no place in the compulsory school curriculum."
A Christian lobby group has sent 500 kits about intelligent design - the idea that a higher being created life - to NZ state schools, sparking debate about whether schools should teach creationism.
The Focus on the Family group says Intelligent Design is a quality teaching resource aimed at encouraging healthy debate. But a critic says the group is trying to introduce the Bible's teachings by stealth into education.
"It is alarming. People are presenting it as another valid theory . . . it is not scientifically based, it is just a theory they formed on their religious beliefs," said NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists secretary Paul Litterick.
About 500 schools were sent the DVD and workbook resource. Focus on the Family director Wayne Mulqueen said it did not want "to set the world on fire". "We do not want to push the whole creationist debate. We are doing it in a low-key way, putting the stuff out there for use. Schools may choose to bin it . . . we just want to say there is another theory."
In the Sunday Star-Times' Great Morality Debate, three out of four respondents said they would be happy with religious instruction in schools.
Burnside High principal Ron Noordijk said it had received the intelligent design kit. Its science head had not evaluated it so no decision had been made on its usefulness. Pakuranga College principal Bali Haque knew nothing of the kit, and said it would be kept in the library if it had arrived. "It has no place in the classroom."
Science Educators association president Bev Cooper said the intent of science and biology curricula was to present information supported by science. "(Intelligent design) is not science and therefore has no place in the compulsory school curriculum."