What exactly is this "controversy" that the creationists want to be taught in schools?

I would put the problem slightly differently: the theory of evolution is science, and science is what we teach in science classes.

Intelligent Design is not science, because it avoids the scientific method entirely.

Those who push ID use the same "evidence" used by the evolutionist but reach a different conclusion. It is not the existence of evidence for either that is in question for that very reason. It is the extrapolations or conclusions reached that are in question.

The problem is that about 2% of the educated people in the world use evolution in a discussion of theology and because that 2% seem to think they are the only right ones in the world the other 98% think they should have to be aware of the validity of the counter argument on the subject.

It would not be a problem if that 2% of the population just stayed out of theology discussions.

Basically creationists can not get their ideas accepted by the scientific community because they have no scientific merit. The peer review process would utterly destroy their arguments through logic and reason and by showing that the evidence does not support any of it. For 150 years they have been trying to discredit the theory of evolution and have not made a single dent.They are desperately trying to get the general public to believe that their ideas and science are on equal footing in regards to explaining how the universe works by either demoting science (particularly evolution) to a religion, tell people that it is "only a theory" or elevate their superstitious religious dogma to what they term 'creation science' or confuse people by falsely splitting science into 'observational science' and 'historical science'. Creationists are trying to bypass scientific inquiry and peer review and teach their ideas directly to primary and high school students who don't know any better.

The proper forum to decide what is correct to teach to school students is academia where their are people who fully understand the subject. Educators have a responsibility to teach students the truth and proper science, not unsubstantiated nonsense. You do not let students decide what should be taught just like you don't let them decide what laws a country should adopt because they are not qualified to judge.

It also amounts to religious discrimination because creationists don't want all proposed alternative explanations of the creation of the universe, Earth, life on Earth and the diversity of life on Earth to be taught in schools, they just want THEIRS.

There is no controversy. Evolution is a fact and a theory. Creationism/Intelligent Design is neither....

Watchman: People can have their own opinions. That does not change facts. If there was a controversy about evolution biologists across the world would not be unanimously accepting it. The mechanics of evolution might be up for discussion, but not the question of IF evolution happens...

Creationism is the rebranded idea that man is messing around in god's private business, ie:scientific discovery. The idea that we should not understand how anything works has the Genesis story at it's root, the apple=knowledge! gaining knowledge made god mad! continuing down that path will only make him angrier! Therefore, the only road back to god being happy is to refuse to understand the evidence all around us and return to the belief in god's hidden magic ( in other words, lack of knowledge) Interestingly enough, one of the major creationist arguments is to attempt to claim that science invokes magic as the source of the universe, when I fact it simply says "we don't know...yet."

Evolution doesn't disprove god.I'm in 11th grade and currently studying biology.We do have a whole chapter on evolution in our book.Endosymbiont hypothesis,membrane invagination hypothesis etc we have studied all of those theories in detail :/.Don't know about Western education system though

School is for education not indoctrination!

It was not too long back when schools taught comparative religions giving a fair appraisal of many religions and at that time prayer was also used. Then the Christians demanded that only Christianity be taught and as everyone knows that is against the constitution so religion and prayer were removed!

BC/AD has been replaced worldwide by BCE/CE because of the false claims by Christians!

Christians know that the attitudes, false claims and silly demands of BAD Christians are doing tremendous damage to Christianity!

The controversy is that teaching evolution in school makes kids ask annoying questions about whether the book of Genesis is really true. And questions are bad when you are trying to brainwash someone.

Because there is no observable evidence for macro evolution (changes of kinds e.g. fish to bird). Because it cannot be observed and therefore tested it is not scientific which places it on the same level as creationism. In this way both creationism and evolution are equal so they both should be taught in schools.

Some people think that if something is secret, or controversial, then it must be real and true, and it's an authoritarian conspiracy preventing people from learning the real truth....

More often than not, these things are just stupid, and have no basis in fact.