Did we mention that Dover is clueless?

HARRISBURG — Before I resurrect my effort to get the Dover Area schools to teach the theory that cows think in Spanish, let’s take a look at exactly how that particular school district decides what to teach its kids.

OK, maybe not teach. Mention. All right, not mention. Make aware.

Or whatever it is they do up there in Dover. It’s really hard to tell what they’re doing because, as testimony in the Dover Panda Trial has demonstrated, we’re learning that the people in charge of Dover schools really don’t know either.

That’s not just some flip remark.

They really don’t know what they’re doing.

Let’s consider the issue at hand — intelligent design, the latest incarnation of creationism.

Now, when the school board decided to adopt it as part of the biology curriculum, it could have done a few things. It could have checked it out to see what it was all about. Board members could have read some books. They could have had one of the pushers of this stuff come to Dover and tell them about it.

They could have done a lot of things.

But they didn’t.

You want proof?

Here’s school board President Sheila Harkins.

“I still don’t have a firm explanation� of what intelligent design is, she testified Wednesday.

She knows that the two words exist — intelligent and design — and they are sometimes placed next to each other, but that seems to be about it. She can’t define it. She really has no idea what it is.

But she thought it was a good idea to teach it to the kids.

OK, not teach. She said they weren’t teaching it; they were merely mentioning it. Or making kids aware of it. Or whatever they’re doing up there.

Making people aware of things by mentioning them, isn’t that what teachers do?

Oh, never mind.

It really doesn’t matter because Harkins really doesn’t know what it is that teachers are, or are not, teaching. Actually, teachers aren’t going anywhere near intelligent design and have forced administrators to take the leash of this sick puppy — something that Harkins said made her “sad.� I don’t know why. She just said it made her “sad.�

Not sick puppies. The other thing, the one she doesn’t know about.

She did do some research on intelligent design. She Googled it and learned, well, she didn’t learn much of anything because she’s still not sure exactly what intelligent design is. She looked at “Of Pandas and People,� one of intelligent design’s holy texts. She didn’t actually read it. She looked at it and concluded it was science, apparently because it has a picture of a panda on the cover and we all know that all your best science books have pandas on the cover.

That was it.

Of course, checking intelligent design out thoroughly would have defeated the board’s whole purpose. Board members would have discovered that intelligent design is merely the latest mutation of creationism and as such, would have to stay 500 yards away from public schools. And since their original intent was to get creationism into the curriculum, they couldn’t have let a little knowledge get in the way.

OK, it’s one thing for a member of the school board to be clueless and it’s another for a member of the administration.

Meet Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa.

“The only information I have on intelligent design is what I gleaned from reading ‘Of Pandas and People,’¤� he testified.

He said he “would rely on the science teachers and the scientific community� to determine whether intelligent design is a scientific theory.

The science teachers, of course, said it wasn’t and called it creationism, and the scientific community thinks intelligent design is neither intelligent nor designed particularly well. And the people who accept and promote intelligent design can only call it a scientific theory if, as its leading saint Michael Behe testified, they redefine science, a change that would promote astrology to science.

Baksa, to his credit, thinks the school district shouldn’t have put intelligent design in the biology curriculum.

Still, it did, and the administration still refers students to “Of Pandas and People,� even though the science teachers told the administration that the book contained bad science, was outdated and was poorly written.

But it has that nice picture of the sad panda on the cover.

So returning, for a moment, to the theory that cows think in Spanish. It has as much support in the mainstream (read: sane) scientific community as intelligent design. It has been the topic of just as many peer reviewed articles in scientific journals.

And it clearly meets the strict criteria set by the Dover schools for what can get into the curriculum.

There’s already a controversy regarding it. A reader e-mailed to inform me that cows may think in French. His evidence was a Pepe Le Pew cartoon in which a French cow says, “Le meaux.� My reply, of course, is thinking and speaking are separate issues.

So if cows thinking in Spanish is too outside the box, maybe I can get Dover to teach the controversy.

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.