Parents

The primary responsibility for educating children lies with their parents. Generally, though, we sub-contract this responsibility to the education services of our country and trust them to be responsible, balanced and objective in the way they teach our youth.

Until recently in Britain we have not needed to give this much thought. But there is now an uneasy feeling that our education system is being high-jacked to provide indoctrination in a secular worldview.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the teaching about origins, both in science classes and more generally across the curriculum. Darwinism has become the secular creed and is taught as if it underpins not only scientific theories, but also wider in human and social experiences.

We do not object to Darwinism being taught in schools. It is, after all, a long-standing scientific theory and pupils should be aware of its basis. But we feel strongly that its limitations and deficiencies should also be explored, particularly as an increasing number of scientists are admitting that traditional Darwinian Theory is not sustainable scientifically.

We argue that he design hypothesis should also be explored in science lessons and across the curriculum. It is, after all, the position which gave us science in the West, and the theism it implies lies at the heart of our historic Christian culture.

The articles in this section have important messages for parents who care about their children’s future and want to ensure that they receive an objective rather than a dogmatic education in the science of origins.

It is salutary that, in one devastating line in a recent Supreme Court judgement against the Scottish Government’s proposal to introduce a ‘State Guardian’ or ‘Named Person’ for every child in Scotland, with a remit that threatened the privacy of family life, the Supreme Court Justices observed:

Parents everywhere need to be alert to the potential of the education system to shape our children’s worldview, and particularly through science.