ID vs. Evolution

There is a huge debate nation wide about how science should be taught in schools. Should we teach creation as another theory or not? Should we let kids know that evolution is a theory that has not been proven and has weaknesses? I was very lucky growing up to have some really good science teachers who were honest about the science of our earth. I was taught out of our text book about the theory of evolution but then shown that there were many things that have not been proven and some things that have even been shown to not be very accurate. For example, one of the pieces of evidence still in textbooks today is the chart drawn by Ernst Haeckel, a German scientist. The chart depicts a few different embryos varying from from a fish to a human showing their development through the early stages. The point he was trying to make was that all of the embryos followed similar paths up to a certain point proving that we all evolved into different species but from the same origin. However this chart was shown not to be an accurate depiction of this process at all. I am not saying that evolution should not be taught and I am not even saying that creation should be taught. What I am saying is just that we need to take a look at our textbooks and make sure that what we are teaching is still theory and has not been proven wrong. We also we need to let kids know that this is just a theory and that we don't have it figured out. I know that I belived what my teachers told me when I was a kid and I just want to make sure we are doing our kids the justice they deserve.

On the issue of intelligent design (ID) I am not sure what to do. I guess creationism is another theory but at first glance it doesn't seem science based. However some would argue that accepting evolutions theory is only done by faith as well. I don't personally have a problem with ID being taught I think that it just offers another idea for kids to think about. Truth will win out someday but for now the reality is that we don't know for sure how everything happened. The board of education in Dallas has been meeting over the last weeks discussing and weighing the proposed changes to the curriculum. The board appointed a panel of six experts to review the curriculum. The changes would be as follows,"A new version of the proposed curriculum released this week effectively reintroduced the requirement to teach the weaknesses of scientific theories by mandating that students "analyze and evaluate strengths and limitations" of scientific explanations." In March some schools will be adopting the teaching of the weaknesses of evolution. They also say that by 2012 they will have new text books ready for the classrooms. I think it is a great compromise for now. We will just teach evolution as theory shedding light on its strengths and weaknesses letting the kids do some thinking for themselves.