Spencer, Iowa school officials and religious leaders are planning to introduce 2 new religion-based classes to the curriculum, but first want to implement a new policy designed to protect religious liberty and head off church-state disputes.
The plan calls for elective classes such as "Critic of Darwinism," which includes arguments against the theory of evolution, and "The Bible in History and Literature."
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Spencer Superintendent Greg Ebeling said most public educators who fear lawsuits go too far to exclude religion from schools.
The policy (Word Doc) covers much of the same ground as the Education Department's guidelines on religion in public schools. Many of the items would not be controversial, and are already protected by current law. They do add a few gems, like allowing the senior class to vote on whether to have a student-led prayer during graduation.
While a new policy may be superfluous, at best. The big trouble here looks to be the curriculum additions. The Bible in History class would use the highly controversial National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (famously championed by that church-state legal scholar Chuck Norris). Even worse, an entire class devoted to questioning evolution? The proposed textbook, Darwin's Black Box, "presents… a scientific argument for the existence of God" by laying out the case for "intelligent design."
Even if intelligent design had been found a constitutional topic for the public school science curriculum – and it was in fact ruled unconstitutional – students would still get, what, a few weeks of evolution in a standard Biology class, and then an entire semester devoted to tearing it down with a religious argument? And they think that approach does not amount to an improper promotion of religion?
[UPDATE: An editorial in the Des Moines Register (7/09/09) applauds the goal of teaching about the world's major religions, but sounds concerned like I am about Spenser's proposed religion-based courses.]
