Marketing: Intelligent design organisation to blitz Australian schools with DVD's

Campus Crusade, an organisation that promotes the intelligent design theory, is set to bombard up to 3000 schools with unsolicited propaganda DVD's. Bill Hodgson, the organisations national director said schools that refused to "re-examine the basis of evolution" were engaging in "reactionary censorship".

So far 100 schools teach the theory as science along with the mandatory requirement to study evolution. These include Christian Community schools, Seventh Day Adventist and a few Anglican schools.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Minister for Education, Carmel Tebbutt, said intelligent design "can't" be taught as part of the NSW school science curriculum" because it was not scientific or based on evidence. Recently Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson, gave assurances that intelligent design should only be taught in religion or philosophy classes. That assurance was made after he enraged Australia's scientific community with ambiguous remarks at a National Press Club function.

The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O'Halloran, said the unsolicited DVD was a religious marketing exercise and "should be rejected" by schools.