I would send my child to this class.

A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.

This is where I think that Creationism should be taught. It is not schience, but it is clearly a strongly held belief which would lend itself to a religion or philosophy course.

But here is why these parents are opposed to it.

But the parents, represented by lawyers with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, contend that the teacher is advocating intelligent design and "young earth creationism" and is not examining those ideas in a neutral way alongside evolution.

In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos to be shown to students, with 23 "produced or distributed by religious organizations and assume a pro-creationist, anti-evolution stance." They said the syllabus listed two evolution experts who would speak to the class. One was a local parent and scientist who said he had already refused the speaking invitation and was now suing the district; the other was Francis H. C. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, who died in 2004.

A course description distributed to students and parents said, "This class will take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid."

Okay, now I understand why these parents might be concerned. This course most likely offers a point of view that they don't accept. But by suing the school over this they place themselves in the same category as those who oppose the teaching of Evolution in the science class room. The Fundamentalist Christian parents see evolution as a direct attack on their beliefs. The only way to demonstrate how narrow their point of view is would be to allow the students of more secular parents to take a course like this.

The whole point of learning is to experience a variety of opinions and differing theories. This could open a delightful dialogue between the parents and their children. They could talk about their point of view, how it differs from the course instructor's, and how they reached their opinion. As a parent myself the idea of having an actual conversation about school is pretty thrilling. You mostly get some mumbles and a locked door to talk through.

Like I said I would send my child to this course if she demonstrated an interest. We have to imagine that many teachers in the public school system have a different set of beliefs then we have. We cannot protect our children from opposing viewpoints and I don't believe that we should.

Now having said that it does not mean that I think Creationism should be taught in the science class room. I do not! Creationsim is not science! End of conversation!