Straw Men, Red Herrings, and "God Did It"

Via the inevitable PZMyers, this article by John Timmer listing some of the genuine controversies in evolution and contrasting them with the ID idea of "controversies."

Evolution clearly has no shortage of controversies. But none of those controversies involve the basic principles of evolution, and all of them operate within a framework where random mutation and selection play a key role in creating diverse species that are related by common descent. It's clear that the Discovery Institute is trying to introduce controversies that don't exist, while ignoring those that do. That's why the academic freedom bills it's promoting are such dangerous things; while supposedly promoting intellectual analysis, they're actually an attempt to pave the way for misinformation to enter the scientific classroom.

As for "teaching the controversies," I'm with Timmer and Myers:

One other point Timmer brings up at the end: should the real scientific controversies be part of the public high school curriculum? He thinks not, and I agree — I'd rather the high schools prepared students with a general understanding of the most basic principles, rather than rushing off to pursue details with which the students won't yet be able to cope, anyway.

When the public schools can actually get the basic concepts into students' heads, it might be worth trying to investigate some of the real areas of dispute, because once kids have the basic concepts of biology firmly fixed, they'll know the creationist BS is just that.