From the Chicago Tribune, lots more here:
President Bush said Monday that he thinks schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about creation. During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to detail his views on the origin of the universe. But he said students should learn about both theories. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." The theory of intelligent design says life on Earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Christian conservatives have pushed for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Scientists generally have rejected the theory as an attempt to force religion into education.
That's the whole article. One whole sentence on the scientific opinion of this scientific topic. Pharyngula has lots more say about this and the press corps' dismal record on the subject. I agree with the President that people should be exposed to different ideas. That does not include teaching them religious ideas under the guise of teaching them science. That does not include teaching science as if it was as much of a "he said, she said" enterprise as polititcs (or, currently, journalism). That this topic has taken up so much of the energy about science education in our country recently can't help but affect the scientific literacy of the next generation of Americans and does a huge disservice to the goal of educating the next generation of scientists. I'm not surprised by the President's comments, but I'm extremely dissappointed. Update: Chris Mooney makes the excellent point that Bush is directly contradicting his (physicist) science advisor, John Marberger, who told a told a group of reporters earlier in the year that "Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory."
