ICR Graduate School Under Attac
This article is brought to you compliments of: HIS BOARD — (805) 652-1478 Sysop: Bob Harris
{CS
ICR GRADUATE SCHOOL UNDER ATTACK!
The ICR Graduate School is currently in serious danger of losing its state approval to offer graduate degrees in science because of the creationist orientation of these programs. It is the contention of California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig that science is not science unless it is taught in a framework of evolutionism, even in private Christian institutions such as ICR.
The ICR Graduate School has been offering M.S. degrees in astro/geophysics, biology, geology, and science education since its establishment as an ICR division in 1981. A total of 16 students have received degrees during that period and about 40 others are currently in the program at one level or another.
State approval is given to degree programs by the California State Department of Education when an appointed review committee visits the campus and so recommends. The ICR Graduate School had received unanimous recommendation from two previous review committees. However, a change in California’s education laws made it necessary that a new approval visit be made early this past August. This time, a 3-to-2 majority voted for approval, but two members of the five-man committee were strongly opposed to ICR, even before they came on campus. One filed a “minority report,” and Superintendent Honig then proceeded to try to get the other committee members to change their votes. He finally succeeded with one of them.
The basis for this disapproval, however, was not the quality of the programs, but that they constituted “creation science” programs and that, as such, they were religion rather than science. He offered to let ICR continue them if they were called degree programs in religion or creation, but not science.
The fact is, however, that the ICR programs are strictly science with all courses taught by highly qualified scientists, containing essentially the same materials as in other graduate science programs. It is the small amount of creationist interpretive material, however, to which Mr. Honig and other doctrinaire anti-creationists object.
This is a dangerous attack on freedom of speech and religion and even on true science, but it is strongly supported by such groups as the Committees of Correspondence and others who are firmly committed to this new “state religion” of evolutionary humanism in education. The decision by Mr. Honig to eliminate the ICR graduate degree science programs was spread far and wide through the national news media even before ICR had been officially informed of that decision on December 9th.
In order to avoid costly litigation of uncertain outcome, and yet continue to offer M.S. graduate programs in the four fields, ICR proposed a modification of the course structure in these programs, and this has been tentatively accepted by the State Education Department pending another review this coming summer. This modification would still retain the creationist interpretation of the scientific data that are given in all courses, but would separate the interpretive material from the body of “factual” data on systems, processes and methods.
If this modification should still be found unacceptable at the time of the coming summer evaluation, there is a standard process of appeal from such actions in California, and this process of appeal will be pursued, with Wendell Bird serving as lead attorney. If the appeal fails, it could then be taken to court, if necessary. The latter is undesirable from an economic standpoint, as ICR currently has no financial resources with which to wage a costly legal battle.
Nevertheless, this case involves much more than the continued existence of the ICR Graduate School. The future of Christian education may well be at stake, and Christians everywhere need to be alerted to this unprecedented encroachment of humanism, in the name of evolutionary “science,” on our traditional freedoms of speech and religion.
{PB