Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what her policy is on the teaching of creationism as a subject in schools; and if she will make a statement. [49613] (Feb 27) Jacqui Smith: Neither creationism nor intelligent design is taught as a subject in schools. The national curriculum programme of study for science at key stage 4 covers evolution. It sets out that pupils should be taught "that the fossil record is evidence for evolution" and also "how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction". Pupils should however be taught about "how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence". Also, the biblical view of creation can be taught in RE lessons, where pupils are taught to consider opposing theories and come to their own, reasoned conclusions. Therefore, although creationism and intelligent design are not part of the national curriculum, they could be covered in these contexts.
Comment: It is bad enough having the creationists wilfully misinterpreting the NC key stage 4 science to support their idiotic claim that creationism/intelligent design should be taught in science classes, without the government jumping on the bandwagon as well. Creationism & intelligent design are NOT theories; the former is a religious belief & the latter a religious based conjecture. Both have had their claims to be rivals to the theory of evolution comprehensibly refuted by the scientific community & it is totally wrong to suggest to impressionable schoolchildren that they are considered to be alternative explanations to evolution. In fact, to do so is to teach creationism. The theory of evolution is not considered by the experts in the field to be controversial & to teach otherwise is again teaching the beliefs of creationists. Here we are, 150 years after the publication of, The Origins of Species, nearly 40 years after the first moon landing, the human genome has been sequenced & a gigabyte of memory fits on a key ring. Yet the government of one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth believes it is okay to teach the discredited tenets of creationism to impressionable schoolchildren who it seems are going to be left to make up their own minds somehow, about two contradictory worldviews – one of which just happened to go out of fashion in the dark ages.
Jacqui Smith was later ask by the BHA to clarify these comments:
Six-day wonder (02 May 06) "only last week, the education minister Jacqui Smith was forced to affirm the government's opposition to creationism, and its American half-brother "intelligent design", to the British Humanist Association after appearing to have condoned it in a parliamentary answer she gave on February 17, in which she stated both could be taught in school science lessons"
BHA contact Jacqui Smith - Letter to DfES on creationism in the national curriculum, 06/03/06
BHA press release on Jacqui Smith's reply - Jacqui Smith: Creationism and ID not science, cannot be taught in science