re: "the spectre of superstition"
It seems rather silly to be all worked up about some educational text, which not provided in these news article, leaving little chance of making a reasonable judgements concerning it.
Here is an example mentioning Intelligent design:
http://www.bede.org.uk/Evolution.htm#introduction
If something similar to this was in these 9th grade material, I don't see why you should be all worked up about it.
