A couple of weeks ago Post education writer Jay Mathews wrote a piece which he thought was a fair and balanced look at the push by some über conservatives to teach "intelligent design" along side evolution in American classrooms. Of course, he was taken in by the ID folks who want to pretend they are scientists but whose concepts are nothing more than myths and mysticism.

My inspiration was a front-page story by The Post’s Chicago bureau chief, Peter Slevin. He described the Intelligent Design movement, a group of apparently serious scientists who are doing research on what they see as flaws in standard evolutionary theory.

"Apparently serious scientists"? From there it got a whole lot worse.

In his online column this week Mathews presents some of the avalanche of email he received in response to that mess which gave far too much credence to this crap. Unfortunately, Mathews still has some doubts that a group of people with no scientific credentials and even less evidence don’t deserve a place in the classroom.

I have received very few e-mails from actual high school biology teachers who have ever tried introducing the debate to their classes. I suspect some are doing this quietly to avoid the kind of religious eruption that readers told me was inevitable.

Is there anyone out there trusting their high school students to handle these contradictions and using them to better explain how science works? Tell me about it. I still have a lot to learn.

You certainly do.