Creation in Schools
Q: Tell us something about Australia. What's happening in the creationist movement there? What success have you had in getting creation accepted in public schools?
A: The situation in public schools varies from state to state. In Queensland, for instance, the Minister of Education has publicly announced that he wants creation taught in the high schools. What's interesting is that the Minister is a Christian, and came to one of our seminars many years ago before he became Minister. He retained his interest in creation, and is now in a position to give approval to teaching creation in the classroom.
As a result, we are negotiating with Education Departments to arrange for materials for schools, seminars for teachers, and so on (with varying degrees of success depending on the attitudes of local officials). Of course, the Minister is catching a lot of flak for his stance. The full wrath of anti-creationists in government, in academia, and in the press has been poured down on him. But he's stood his ground and hasn't given in.
Ironically, some Christian schools are now scrambling to catch up with the public schools! Five years ago, I went to a big church school system in Queensland and encouraged them to teach creation, but they were teaching evolution at the time and weren't interested. After the law was passed allowing public schools to teach creation, I approached the Board again and said, "Look, now that the state schools are going to teach creation, don't you think it's time the Christian schools did?"
What's worse, they didn't even see the irony in that. But at any rate, they are now planning to teach creation in their schools as well.
Q: Is the situation similar all through Australia?
A: No, not at all. In New South Wales, we have exactly the opposite situation: there creation has been banned from science classrooms by law. In Victoria, they have withdrawn evolution as a topic until the final year of high school.
In South Australia, if you want to teach about the origin of life, you must teach evolution, and if you do, you may also teach creation; on the other hand, if you teach creation at all, you must teach evolution.
The response to teaching creation has been largely determined by the extent of Christian influence in and on the government. In New South Wales, where creation is banned from the science classroom, it is because the government is strongly humanist: it is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, and generally hostile to the Christian faith. After we ran a major seminar on creation at the university in Sydney, the state capital, certain people in the government mounted a concerted effort to have creation banned from the classroom.
Interestingly, one of the local television stations tried to make us look silly by running a phone-in poll and asking people, "Do you want creation in six days taught in high schools?" To their surprise, 30,000 people phoned in and a full 20,000 said, “Yes we do want creation taught in schools.” A week later, the Minister of Education said, “No you don't,” and proceeded to pass legislation banning it.
Q: What do you do when creation is banned outright like that?
A: We've simply switched to different tactics in that state. For instance, recently Dr. Gary Parker and I went to a large high school in that state to take part in a debate on creation - but we didn't go to science classes, we went to ancient history classes. The debate was organised by the ancient history department. Of course, all the science classes received permission to come hear it too. It lasted two hours and was broadcast on local television and was all completely legal - there wasn't a thing the Ministry of Education could do to intervene.
The lesson is this: when the government closes one door, you simply look for another door. We gave exactly the same arguments for creation that we give in science classes, but we called it ancient history. And there's nothing deceptive about that: creation and evolution are both ancient history. They're philosophy too. In fact, theories of origin have implications for virtually every field, from English to history to ethics. They are complete world views. So technically you could introduce creation / evolution anywhere in the curriculum.
Q: What actually happens when creation is permitted in the schools? One of my fears is that if hostile teachers are required to teach creation, they can actually do more harm than good.
A: Right. When teaching creation is approved, one of the main results we see is that Christians are encouraged to speak up. Christian teachers who wanted to teach creation are now free to do so. It is crucial that they have access to good materials. So one of my own tasks over the past few years has been to develop materials appropriate for use in the public schools.
The problem is, even Christian teachers don't always know very much about creation - including those who teach in Christian schools. As a result, I have designed a series of units that are self-teaching. The student can follow it through on his own; the teacher doesn't have to be involved except as a resource.
By designing independent units this way, we also avoid the problem of the non-Christian teacher who is hostile to creation. A teacher using our materials doesn't have to try to give a fair presentation of something he may passionately disagree with. We have found, however, that many non-Christians are quite willing to teach creation, they just didn't know what to teach.
Q: Are these materials available now?
A: Not yet, but they will be in the near future. We will certainly let readers of the Bible-Science Newsletter know when the materials are ready.
Source: 'Bible Science Newsletter', August 1987
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