School system treats intelligent design unintelligently

I wrote something, something that I expected to induce angry letters, hate mail, pissy phone… I wrote something, something that I expected to induce angry letters, hate mail, pissy phone calls or, at least, someone shouting obscenities at me on the street. OK, that last one happens every time I try to walk around Oakland, but that’s less newspaper related and more Oakland-has-drunk-people related.

What did I write that made me expect such fallout? Last week, in an editorial — that unsigned thingy next to the columns, whose words I’m sometimes responsible for — I wrote that intelligent design is bunk.

And never content to leave the sleeping dog of controversy unkicked, I’ll write it again. Intelligent design, at least the way it’s being taught in a small town in York County, is bunk of the highest order.

But, Sydney, you might ask, why kick this poor, abused puppy of a controversy when there are bigger metaphorical dogs in need of a good steel-toed boot to the ribs? Because we live in Pennsylvania, and as such, the biggest intelligent design case is so at our doorsteps that it’s drooling on the welcome mat.

If you’ve avoided hearing about the Dover Area High School case, consider yourself one lucky ostrich. Like its Scopes-monkey-trial predecessor 80 years ago, the Dover case has brought out those once-latent small-town hostilities that journalist, cynic and hottie H.L. Mencken so fondly ridiculed in his reports from Tennessee.

So here’s the basic scoop on Dover: The school board ordered that intelligent design — the idea that life is too complex to have evolved and therefore must have been created by some unnamed, but super-intelligent force — should be taught alongside evolution in high school biology classes.

And they implemented this by having school administrators read a statement saying that there are gaps in evolutionary theory, that intelligent design is an alternative explanation and if the students wanted more information they could consult their school library, which houses “Of Pandas and People,” an intelligent design textbook.

That statement, if ever there were one, is a camel built by a horse-making committee. It’s a non-explanation explanation, and a waste of both the administration’s and the kids’ time. Furthermore, the York Daily Record, the local newspaper, reported that, following that statement, some students couldn’t explain intelligent design. And the statement had other students incensed because the administrators — those pinnacles of educational know-how — didn’t stick around long enough to answer questions.

All this happened back in January. Why, then, is it relevant to us, college students who’ve escaped the tormenting tiled halls of high school for the glorious poured-concrete ones of university?

Politics, as they say, is local. And as Dover gears up for its next school board election, there’s already the kind of schoolyard hair pulling that makes small town politics so like Shakespeare the way it’s really meant to be done.

In this case, the town bigwigs are at each other’s throats. According to “Nightline,” during a routine interview for board candidacy, the board member whose criticism of the high school’s bio textbook started this whole mess asked one of the parents running for board if the parent had ever been accused of abusing a child. He hadn’t, and the questioning moved on from there.

Now that’s the kind of useless, baseless accusation that makes politics so great. I’m not sure whether to buy popcorn or cry. If any of you are registered to vote in York County — and according to the Pitt 2004 Fact Book, there are 381 York County people here — I suggest you get thee to the polls when the time comes.

For the rest of us, those who have to sit and watch the media devour this the way bull sharks devour so much tasty chum, we can’t do much, and that’s the real pain of it. Commentators can comment, and talking heads can talk, and angry letter-writers can write angry letters — or not, as the case may be. But, for the most part, we’ve got to sit by and watch what will probably be the Supreme Court’s test case for teaching intelligent design evolve from a limp, small-time hassle to a charging Godzilla of a case.

Well, we are not so powerless. We have these hands, by hook or by crook, and there’s no use sitting on them. Politics is local, and while local politics might seem especially provincial, these are the sorts of things that do affect our lives.

Pittsburgh’s mayoral primary is coming up, and like the Dover school board election, it looks to be a humdinger of a good time.

So, in short, get involved. Even if you’re a Pa.-newbie, there’s no time like the present to witness local politics at its most puerile. I’ll bring the popcorn if you bring the Kleenex. Or we could try to do something, right?

Sydney Bergman admires the York Daily Record’s excellent coverage of the case. Check it out at ydr.com. E-mail Sydney at sbergman@pittnews.com.