You Know You Shouldn’t Be A Science Teacher When...

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just live and let live?  I realize that this is tough when there is a cross burning in your yard or when a giant menorah is placed in your neighborhood roundabout to counteract the religious influences of a nativity scene is another public area, but when it comes to borderline Free Establishment issues on the internet, I become much less tolerant (pun not intended).

Here’s the deal.  The San Francisco Chronicle (a great media outlet to check out if you want to find debate over more petty local religious issues over the span of one week than my significantly larger hometown has seen in a year) reported that a schoolteacher named Jeanne Caldwell has appealed a California Supreme Court case brought against UC Berkeley to the US Supreme Court.  What could have caused her so much distress, you might ask? Was it religious affirmative action, or maybe even public sponsorship of a religious group on campus?  No.  It was a website.  A university-sponsored website explaining evolution.   I really hope Caldwell isn’t a biology teacher.

Notice that I chose not to capitalize “evolution.” Doing so would make it seem like a doctrine of sorts, like Keynesian economics or Freudian psychology, when in fact it is just science.  And not even science that is disputed by reasonable people within the scientific community; in fact I would go so far as to say that nearly all scientists would agree with the basic concept that organisms are capable of evolving.  Therefore it seems that a public university would, above all else, be entitled to disseminate proven, factual, scientific information via whatever mode of communication it pleases.

At the center of this debate is one specific page (let me clarify, this is an enormously comprehensive website with hundreds of individual pages) titled, “Misconception:  ‘Evolution and religion are incompatible.’” It goes on to explain that, while the belief that that the world was literally created in six days stands in defiance of all scientific fact, it is possible to take a slightly less hard-line approach by accepting evolution and seeing God in nature (as many people choose to do).  This site is designed to aid teachers who find themselves fielding questions from students about how these two conflicting ideas can fit together.  Caldwell challenges the right of UC Berkeley to use publicly funded web space to make the assertion that this interplay is possible.

Interestingly enough, her case does not take issue with the fact that science (read:  evolution) must be taught in schools.  She argues that “UC's government-funded assertion contradicts a religious belief that evolution and religion are incompatible and amounts to a state position on religious doctrine.” Caldwell is trying to prove that the government saying “Can’t we all just get along?” is tantamount to the establishment or endorsement of a particular religious doctrine.  What’s more, she admits to using this resource as a teaching tool.

Ultimately, though, the issue at stake is much larger than the numerous things in the public realm that this teacher must find offensive.  If the Supreme Court accepts this case, its decision will broaden the realm of Free Establishment and Exercise clauses to govern the realm of the internet.  I haven’t made up my mind yet about where exactly to draw the cyber-line, but I sincerely hope that when the time comes for the Supreme Court to start making rulings regarding not-particularly-questionable web content, it will be over an issue far less asinine that this one.