Education: Royal Society's Director of Education steps down over creationist remarks

Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 months 2 weeks (www.nature.com)

The Royal Society's Director of Education seems to have been forced to step down. Michael Reiss, who is both a professor at England's Institute of Education and an Anglican priest, stepped down the other day after a speech in which he advocated "engage in dialogue with the creationist views some children express in science classes" [Nature's words] re-raised old questions about whether priests should be appointed to such positions at all.

Frankly, I think it is perfectly possible for a priest to serve in such a capacity. The question, which the article does address, is whether this particular priest should. Education is a great tradition in the Catholic Church and I have heard nothing that suggests that the Church of England is any less invested. However, such a preist would also have to be deeply committed to the idea that only observable science should be taught in science classes and that religion should be saved for religion classes.

But there is some question as to what Reiss meant by "engage" (the matter is complicated by those being Nature writer Daniel Cressey's words and not his own). In my high school biology class, I was taught, "Here is what creationism is. Some people believe that the world was created by an intelligent being. This is not a scientific belief for these reasons. That doesn't mean that it's wrong, just that it's not scientific." The rest of our course treated evolution as the grand unifying theory of biological science. I find that perfectly appropriate.

Keywords: science education science and religion science and culture politics education creationism evolution intelligent design