Intelligent Choice
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Liberals and secularists are trying desperately to make a mountain out of the molehill of President Bush’s recent remarks on “intelligent design.” Such histrionics demonstrate only the flaws of a state-centric education system.
By our lights, the offending isn’t in and of itself offensive. The president sat down with some reporters from Texas earlier this week for a wide-ranging interview. At one point, he was asked about his views on the conflict between proponents of evolution and of intelligent design. His reply: “Both sides ought to be properly taught … so people can understand what the debate is about. Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. … You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”
What an intelligent view, by design or not, even if the president’s remarks are vague on how he thinks the different ideas should be taught. But the issue that catches our attention is why anyone would care about a president’s views of what schoolchildren ought to be taught in the first place.
Right now, Americans can’t help but care because by default most students are trapped in a state-run monopoly school system that puts curricula and instructional methods in the hands of politicians. As a result, a president’s two-sentence remark about a scientific and philosophical and religious debate sends liberals to their smelling salts. Our own view is that parents are the ones to decide these kinds of questions. The system that would permit them to do so is vouchers.
The logic of all this was underscored most dramatically a few weeks ago, when Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate, and his wife Rose were in town to mark the 50th anniversary of the idea of vouchers, of which Mr. Friedman is the progenitor. One of the things we were struck with during the evening in the Friedmans honor — and in our conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Friedman — is their enduring optimism in this struggle and their understanding of how the tension and frustration and even anger would be drained from our education debate were a proper market in education to be opened up by a system of vouchers.
