Suit Challenging Philosophy Course On Intelligent Design Settled

A settlement has been reached in the suit filed last week by parents against the El Tejon Unified School District challenging its intersession course in Philosophy of Design. (See prior posting.) The course at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, California had originally been defended as a philosophy class meant to introduce students to both Intelligent Design and evolution. It turns out, however, that the course, taught by a minister's wife, was one-sided, almost all about Biblical creationism, and not about intelligent design. The Associated Press reported yesterday on the settlement (full text) in which the school district agreed it would not in the future offer any "course that promotes or endorses creationism, creation science, or intelligent design." Teacher Sharon Lemburg who had developed the course defended it in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, Mountain Enterprise, writing "I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach." Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has issued a release on the case, represented the parents in the litigation.