On its face, the idea that teachers should expose high school and university students to controversial issues seems reasonable. Teachers frequently lament the fact that their students lack critical analytical skills that are needed for success in school and beyond in the local and global economies. Would not early exposure to controversies and to the critical methods needed to resolve such controversies be a good thing? Moreover, a mandate to teach the controversy over biological evolution seems animated by a laudable egalitarianism: Is it not fair to open the curriculum to diverse materials so that all sides of a debate are allotted equal time? Surely, one might claim, doing so is best, not only for proponents of non-evolutionary accounts of biological origins, development and diversity, who would see their hard work rewarded by its inclusion in the curriculum, but for students, who would be exposed to the issues in their fullness. Thus equipped with all the information, students could decide for themselves which account of biological origins best withstood critical scrutiny.
But describing the “teach the controversy” slogan in this way distorts what is at issue. Whatever semblance of legitimacy the “teach the controversy” slogan might possess rests on an equivocation about the word controversy. If one restricts one’s reading to the popular press, one might reasonably conclude that there is a controversy raging in the United States about evolution, intelligent design, and science curricula. And there is: Evolution, intelligent design and the contents of science curricula are indeed matters of much controversy and have been for some time. But these are cultural, political or social controversies that do not correspond to a genuine scientific controversy over biological origins, development and diversity and evolutionary theory’s ability to explain these phenomena. Were the antievolutionist slogan specified to say,
“teach the cultural (or social) controversy,” few would balk at such a suggestion, provided that certain reasonable constraints were in place (e.g., that educators refrain from presenting intelligent design as a legitimate scientific theory). Phrased in this way, the controversy and its place, if any, in the curriculum would be immediately identifiable as extra-scientific. But once the slogan takes the form of the expression, “teach the scientific controversy,” then its status as a red-herring is plain: There is no scientific controversy between evolutionary theory and intelligent design.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/?http://poynter.indiana.edu/Science%20&%20Public%20Reason.pdf
The latest tactic from the Discovery Institute, which is now being echoed by creationists across the various creationist subcultures, is that teachers should "teach the controversy" - which itself just another deceitful false premise from the creationists. In fact, when teaching about evolution - or various other areas of science - teachers do teach about various scientific controversies and arguments (though, granted, at the high school level they certainly don't go into all of them or into a lot of detail about any of them; for example, how many kids even take physics in high school?). What is bogus about this new creationist tactic is that creationists are not referring to teaching about actual scientific controversies and arguments, even while they pretend that that is what they're referring to. What they're really referring to is that they want their long-discredited religious-based anti-evolution arguments taught.
"Teach our religious anti-evolution arguments" (aka, "Teach the controversy")
With a fundamental change to the science curriculum coming into place in September this year, Mr Willams is concerned that creationism could be brought into the science classroom under the guise of 'teaching the controversy' - a tactic used in the United States. He says: "There really is no controversy among scientists about the fact of evolution. How evolution happens is debated and theories are proposed and modified, but that's just good science," says Mr Williams.