"When learning is supported, nurtured, and inspired rather than coerced, students and teachers alike achieve at levels that no state or district could ever mandate."
—Gloria Pipkin (At the Schoolhouse Gate: Lessons in Intellectual Freedom)
This is cool! I always thought Bush was a bit of a dogmatist (and one backing the wrong dog at that), but here he comes right out and says it's good to teach kids various alternative ideas:
EDUCATION -- BUSH HAS DESIGNS FOR AMERICA'S SCHOOLS: At a roundtable interview with five Texas reporters yesterday, President Bush threw his support behind teaching intelligent design, or ID, a controversial theory which maintains that life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and suggests that higher powers must have played a role. While Bush declined to state his personal opinion of ID, he made clear his support for including it in curriculum. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." The Kansas Board of Education is currently considering changes that would allow intelligent design to be taught in its schools.
from
The Progress Report
Does this mean he favors teaching kids about safe sex? about homosexuality (without demonizing it)? about alternatives to war for solving international conflict? about alternatives to mining natural resources?
This is a side of Bush we haven't seen!