California Dreamin'

In 1989 the California State Board of Education put out a policy statement that was the result of many years of pressure applied by science educators to establish clear ground rules about how scientific subjects such as evolution were to be approached in the classroom. The statement doesn't actually refer to evolution specifically; the idea was to talk about science education in broader terms. Phillip Johnson wrote:

On its face, the Policy Statement is reasonable and broad-minded. It begins by saying that science is concerned with observable facts and testable hypotheses about the natural world, and not with divine creation, ultimate purposes, or ultimate causes. These non-scientific subjects are relegated to the literature and social studies curricula. The Policy Statement emphasizes that neither science nor anything else should be taught dogmatically, because "Compelling beliefs is inconsistent with the goal of education," which is to encourage understanding. The Policy Statement even repeats this important distinction between believing and understanding: "To be fully informed citizens, students do not have to accept everything that is taught in the natural sciences curriculum, but they have to understand the major strands of scientific thought, including its methods, facts, hypotheses, theories, and laws."

The Policy Statement goes on to explain that scientific facts, theories, and hypotheses are subject to testing and rejection; this feature distinguishes them from beliefs and dogmas, which do not meet the criterion of testability and are therefore inappropriate for consideration in science class. Science teachers are professionally obligated to stick to science, and should respectfully encourage students to discuss matters outside the domain of science with their families and clergy.

By now, readers should readily recognize the subtle but emphatic assertion of the fact-value divide made in the Policy Statement. Far from actually being fair, the statement is intended to provide justification for teaching naturalistic evolution as "fact" in an educational system that is ostensibly neutral toward matters of metaphysics. Educators may not compel "beliefs" but may certainly compel "knowledge," for the whole purpose of education is to make people more knowledgable. So long as naturalistic evolution is considered "knowledge" to be imparted without debate resistance to it is deemed to stem from ignorance.