A story in the American Family Association Journal, if true, makes one wonder how much sense some public school teachers really have. In October of 2002 an Emmaus High School student by the name of Samuel Chen began organizing a lecture by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. Behe has lectured all over the United States after having written a book titled Darwin's Black Box which lays out a compelling argument for rejecting any purely materialistic explanation for the origin and evolution of life. The article states that:
Then the offal hit the fan. The science department head, one John Hnatow, began a campaign to prevent Behe's appearance at the Allentown, PA school. He and a colleague, Carl Smartschan, asked the principal to cancel the lecture. When the principal refused, Smartschan
This is an astonishing attempt to censor student enquiry by people who are de facto agents of the state. The lecture, which attracted 500 listeners and was considered a success, took place after school and was sponsored by a student organization, not the school district. Behe is a scientist, but the theory he advocates, Intelligent Design, is not incompatible with any scientific theory. It is, however, incompatible with the philosophical assumptions of Darwinian naturalism. Naturalism states that natural processes and forces are adequate to account for all living things, whereas ID asserts the causal inadequacy of such processes in producing highly complex biological structures with high information content. ID theorists claim that only intelligence can provide a sufficient explanation for the intricate, complex and highly patterned structures we find in living things.
What the students were planning to do after school was not the business of these faculty bullies who should have been delighted that these young had the intellectual curiosity and initiative to take it upon themselves to invite someone of Behe's stature to come to their school to explain his ideas to them. These teachers, whether they agree with Behe or not, should have seized on this as an opportunity to stress the importance of considering all sides of a controversial issue instead of doing whatever they could to thwart these young people. So much for academic freedom and the search for truth, at least among the thought-police in the Emmaus High School science department.
John Stuart Mill wrote that "...the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
Unfortunately, it is doubtful that Mr. Hnatow and Mr. Smartschan have ever read Mill. It is much likelier that these men have been teaching orthodox materialistic Darwinism throughout their careers and are loath to have their students hear Behe's presentation because they fear it will make them look silly. Rather than suffer professional embarrassment of that sort they'd rather interfere where they have no right to deny their students a wonderful learning opportunity. It's no wonder that so many parents are suspicious of public education and opt out of it when they can.
The article goes on to describe the toll that the conflict has taken on Chen's health and is worth reading in its entirety.
