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# GUEST COMMENTARY BY TIBOR MACHAN Teaching intelligent design poses a serious problem
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/guest-commentary-by-tibor-machan-teaching-intelligent-design-poses-a-serious-problem/
- Published: 2006-11-14T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T22:07:42.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Tibor Machan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.*

Whenever a controversy arises in government-funded and -administered educational institutions, no one in the mainstream media mentions the real source of the problem. Whether the controversy is over making the study of sex, environment or currently, intelligent design,mandatory,the real issue is systematically avoided — whether there ought to be government education in a free society at all.

It is widely recognized that there should not be a government newspaper to which everyone must subscribe and which must be read by all. For good reason. The press must be free from entanglement with the government, with an agency that has as its sole job in a free country to protect individual rights.

So in a free society there are likely to be a wide variety of approaches to news coverage, not to mention to editorializing. Government must adhere to the rule of law, which is supposed to be the same for all. It is naturally a one-size-fits-all undertaking.

Sadly, the fact that education should be in exactly the same position as the press within a human community simply hasn’t gotten recognized, probably because once some profession has gained the government’s support, it isn’t likely to give it up, no matter how many problems arise.

Public elementary and high school education administrators and teachers are no different. They have a government-protected monopoly, have jobs with tenure possibilities, and are in no danger of falling prey to the volatilities of free markets. Sure, millions of people are not finding work in these government-run institutions because those who are there have managed to achieve job security. Sure, many subjects do not receive any attention from the teachers because giving them attention would reveal the malpractice perpetrated. History courses are virtually all taught with blatant bias, as are public finance courses, those in civics, and so forth. But never mind, the faculty has a guaranteed position and hardly any elementary and high school (or even state college or university) ever goes out of business the way private businesses routinely do. And what cannot be seen, isn’t missed much.

Now we have this hoopla about intelligent design — whether public schools should or should not teach it, make mention of it in biology courses, and all the rest. A case is pending in Kansas, and if the judge rules in favor of public schools having to include mention of it, the issue may end up in the highest court.

In a free country, however, there would be no such problem. Within a given school, college or university, the matter could surface, just as it could now at various private schools, colleges and universities. But the matter would be decided by their administrators and faculty independently of government, just as is the content of newspapers. It could not become a national political issue.

It is because governments run schools that these matters become so politicized and must be dealt with by legislatures and courts. Even the private entertainment sector may be faced with government intervention — legislators in Washington are threatening to regulate cable and dish television content!

Surely, if the press, which may exert some influence upon an adult for less than one hour per day, is not to be government run, then schools where our children may be immersed for seven hours per day for 12 of their most impressionable years should not be controlled by the government.

Having what for most practical purposes amounts to a monopoly in education only serves to heighten tensions over what the public school curriculum teaches. Intelligent design and other controversial issues would be much less contentious if government was not effectively the sole provider of a one-size-fits-all K-through-12 educational system in California.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 14, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/111406.pdf?ref=smdp.com)