Darwin on Trial Ch. 11: Darwinist Education
In chapter 11, Johnson brings his readers to the means by which Darwinists hope to indoctrinate the masses with their view of the world. Museums present exhibits that have the effect of cementing the ideas of evolutionary origins of life into the minds of the general public without question. In this, science serves as an authority whose view the public must accept. Science once enjoyed the vaulted position of questioning the authority of religion; scientists now expect people to accept the claims of Darwinism without empirical evidence but instead based purely on their authority. How ironic.
Leaders in education systems write policy statements that make distinctions between believing and understanding and necessarily that draws a line between science and religion that effectively communicates a distinction between reality and fantasy. When religious claims are not within the realm of verifiability they are irrelevant and deemed inappropriate for consideration in classrooms and textbooks. Educators continue by distinguishing knowledge from belief as though they are two separate and unrelated concepts. If one does not accept the claims of evolution then this is due to ignorance of the facts. An individual in such a position must be educated and, in effect, must be persuaded to “believe”. Johnson believes this strategy of Darwinists to place the content of evolutionary theory in public classrooms to be a misstep. When knowledge is presented in the public forum it can be debated, questioned, even opposed. Johnson believes that an attempt at forced indoctrination at the public level is not enough to corrupt a thinking public.
It seems, however, that Johnson’s contention depends on the willingness of the public to engage these supposed scientific ideas. In the nineteen years since the first edition of his book such engagement has occurred too infrequently and in largely unconstructive ways. The “misstep” as Johnson sees it is only such when one assumes the public cares a great deal about the information that is passively delivered to it in newspapers, textbooks, museum exhibits, movies, television programs and even in the classrooms of their first graders. The misstep is no such thing when one remembers the vivid fact that the public is largely apathetic to ideas about which it knows very little, and the implications of which it cannot see.
