"Recent" News on the Anti-Evolution Front
 

Dear Students,

Boards of education frequently deal with the teaching of evolution is school.  Although the stories below are several years old they accurately reflect the issues brought before boards of education.  Ultimately, the Kansas ban was quickly overturned after anti-evolution board members were voted out of office.   Below are links to the leading pro and anti evolution sites.

Click here to visit the Creation Research Society (anti-evolution) Home Page
Click here to visit Talk Origins (pro-evolution) Home Page


 

 

Kansas Board of Education on Evolution and Other Theories Believed by Some to Conflict with the Bible

          The Kansas Board of Education voted on 11 August 1999 to delete virtually any mention of evolution from the state's science curriculum, in one of the most far-reaching efforts by creationists in recent years to challenge the teaching of evolution in schools.  While the move does not prevent the teaching of evolution, it will not be included in the state assessment tests that evaluate students' performance in various grades, which may discourage school districts from spending time on the subject.  This issue is being widely discussed across the United States and recently made the cover to Time magazine.

 

Two Articles

 

 

 

SCIENCE ARTICLE

Kansas Dumps Darwin, Raises Alarm Across the United States

Science Volume 285, Number 5431 Issue of 20 Aug 1999, pp. 1186 - 1187
©1999 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science

By Constance Holden

Kansas Governor Bill Graves, a Republican, called it "a terrible, tragic, embarrassing solution to a problem that did not exist." Six Kansas college and university presidents and chancellors warned that it "will set Kansas back a century and give hard-to-find science teachers no choice but to pursue other career fields." Science educator Steven Case of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, says: "There's statewide outrage over what they did." And the outrage was not confined to Kansas. National organizations last week joined the chorus of protests over the Kansas Board of Education's vote to eliminate not only evolution but anything hinting at the great age of Earth, and even some cosmological theories, from statewide standards for science teaching.

In the first evolution-related uproar to go nationwide in the 4 years since Alabama required biology textbooks to carry disclaimers labeling evolution an unproven theory, the board voted on 11 August to remove evolution from a draft of the state standards. By 6 to 4, the board adopted standards* in which the word "macroevolution" has been deleted. (Microevolution, which refers to genetic changes within a species, is still allowed.) The "big bang" is gone, along with other hints of geologic time scales such as radioisotope dating. Mount St. Helens is supplied as an example of how some radical geologic changes can occur rapidly. The changes "are more extensive than what we've seen before" in states where evolution battles have raged, says Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in El Cerrito, California, which monitors evolution debates around the country. "I think this is the first time that the big bang has bothered anybody," observes retired physicist Jack Davidson, a member of the Lawrence school board.

The standards promote what Case labels "bizarro" hints for how to think scientifically. For example, the 27-member committee of scientists and educators assigned to write the document submitted a standard for 8th graders on the "history and nature of science" that reads: "Display open-mindedness to new ideas. Example: Share interpretations that differ from currently held explanations on topics such as global warming and dietary claims. ..." But the board substituted the following: "Learn about falsification. Example: How many times would we have to prove the theory [that all cars are black] is wrong to know that it is wrong? Answer: One car of any color but black and only one time. ..." Says Matsumura: "There's tremendous emphasis on direct observation in the present. ... All it takes is one pair of 'contemporaneous' human and dinosaur footprints to falsify current conclusions that dinosaurs preexisted humans by millions of years." As Case notes, "Creationists like to limit the nature of science to falsifiability. ... Disproving one thing proves the other."

The standards are supposed to be guidelines, based on national ones put out by the National Academy of Sciences, for teachers in Kansas public schools. They are not mandatory, but once they are tidied up by the board, a process that was still going on early this week, they will form the basis for statewide achievement tests starting in 2001. Observers expect that they will have their largest impact in small communities where, according to Case, 80% of Kansas's science teachers teach. And Case and others are predicting that Kansas students will show "significant declines in college entrance test scores" as a result. What's more, says Matsumura, there are "some expectations that science teachers will be taught in a manner to prepare them to be in accordance with state standards."

The national uproar came swiftly. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way are making noises about suing. NCSE has received a "blizzard of phone calls," says Matsumura. And several scientific societies have registered alarm. The American Geophysical Union's president, Fred Spilhaus, sent out a call for scientists to get more involved in local politics. And the American Physical Society is plotting ways of letting the state know that dumping Darwin is bad for its economy. It can point to one concrete example already: Broadcast Software International in Eugene, Oregon, has already let it be known that it's crossing Kansas off its short list for a new service center.

Education board members who voted in the majority have suggested that public response is overblown. "I have no problem with the teaching of evolution," board chair Linda Holloway told the Associated Press. The main moving force behind the action is said to be Steve Abrams, a veterinarian from Arkansas City and former Republican state chair, who got a fundamentalist group to draft an alternate set of standards which he then presented to the board. The version that is being finalized now is represented by the board as a "compromise," says Case. Abrams, who did not return several phone calls from Science, said in a statement on Monday that the board's vote "shows a respect for diversity of opinion and ... expands the learning opportunity of the children of Kansas rather than narrowing it."

But the board could find that its vote will come back to haunt it. The governor and legislators are talking about a constitutional amendment to bring the education board--which ironically was set up as an elected body to insulate it from politics--back under the control of the legislature. What's more, Case says educators have formed a group called Citizens for Science, which plans to supply local school districts with good standards. And, says Matsumura, "Each event like this makes more scientists become actively concerned. ... There are more concerned scientists now than there were before Wednesday."
 
 

WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE 

 Kansas Board Targets Darwin 
  By Hanna Rosin
  Washington Post Staff Writer 
  Sunday, August 8, 1999; Page A1
    For biology teacher Al Frisby, teaching evolution to the many students who take the Bible 
    literally is like "banging his face against a brick wall." More than a third of the students at his 
    suburban high school in Shawnee Mission, Kan., wrote in a final evaluation last year that they 
    did not believe a thing their teacher had to say on the subject.
    The challenge Frisby faces is apt to get tougher next year. On Wednesday, a majority of the 
    Kansas Board of Education may vote to pass a new statewide science curriculum for 
    kindergarten through 12th grade that wipes out virtually all mention of evolution and related 
    concepts: natural selection, common ancestors and the origins of the universe.
    The new curriculum will not explicitly prohibit the teaching of evolution. But its exclusion will 
    severely undermine such efforts when they come under attack from students, parents, 
    principals or local school boards in a state where fights over evolution are as commonplace as 
    cornfields. And because all public schools in the state are tested yearly according to the 
    curriculum, teachers will be pressured to follow the new curriculum.
    If the conservative majority on the school board prevails as expected, it will mark the most 
    decisive victory in recent years for the creationist movement: Christians who read the book of 
    Genesis literally and believe that God created human beings and animals fully formed.
    "This is the most explicit censorship of evolution I have ever seen," said Molleen Matsumura 
    of the National Center for Science Education.
    In the past two decades, creationists have undergone their own process of evolution. After a 
    series of court decisions from 1968 to 1987 barred the movement's efforts to have biblical 
    creationism taught in the schools, activists changed their strategy. They began to focus instead 
    on attacking evolution as an unproven theory, picking apart such basic building blocks as fossil 
    records and geological dating.
    National organizations dedicated to "scientific creationism" published books and videos and 
    magazines designed to educate students on how to resist what they described as the 
    "conspiracy" of evolution. School creation clubs opened across the South and Midwest, 
    meeting after school to trade the latest discoveries intended to debunk evolution.
    The movement's success has been evident in the past five years. In dozens of states, religious 
    conservatives on school boards and legislatures have been chipping away at what scientists 
    consider a bedrock concept of biology:
    In the last four years, school boards in at least seven states – Arizona, Alabama, Illinois, New 
    Mexico, Texas, Kansas and Nebraska – have tried to remove evolution from state science 
    standards or water down the concepts, with varying degrees of success.
    State legislatures in both Georgia and Ohio have bills pending that require all educators who 
    teach evolution to also teach evidence inconsistent with it.
    In 1995, Alabama passed a law mandating that all biology books used in public schools bear 
    a sticker describing evolution as a "controversial theory. . . . No one was present when life 
    first appeared. Therefore any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory and 
    not a fact."
    In 1996, the legislature in Tennessee, home of the famous 1925 Scopes trial over the teaching 
    of evolution, considered (though ultimately rejected) a bill allowing public school teachers to 
    be fired if they taught evolution as "fact" rather than "theory."
    In 1997, the Texas Board of Education proposed replacing all biology books in the state with 
    new ones that did not mention evolution. The move was considered to signal a national trend 
    because Texas is the second-largest purchaser of textbooks after California. The proposal 
    failed by a slim majority.
    The movement's recent success may in part be a reflection of the fairly widespread sympathy 
    for some of its basic principles. According to Gallup polls, about 44 percent of Americans 
    believe in a biblical creationist view, that "God created man pretty much in his present form at 
    one time within the last 10,000 years." About 40 percent believe in "theistic evolution," the 
    idea that God oversaw and guided the millions of years of evolution that culminated with 
    humankind. Only one in 10 of those surveyed held a strict, secular evolutionist perspective.
    While the movement's incremental tactics are new, what's at stake for fundamentalist 
    Christians has not changed much since the first time they encountered Charles Darwin.
    "Teaching evolution in public schools and telling children they are just products of a survival of 
    the fittest, just animals struggling to survive, leaves many students with a sense of 
    purposelessness and hopelessness," said Mark Looy of Answers in Genesis, one of the 
    groups that provides students materials. "What meaning is there to life?"
    For biologists, the battle is equally deep-seated: In evolution, they believe, lies the answer to 
    who we are as a post-Enlightenment, scientifically literate society.
    The century-old debate erupted again, ironically, in part out of a push to improve science 
    education. About five years ago, a craze for national standards and accountability in every 
    subject swept American classrooms. In response, national groups of science educators wrote 
    benchmarks for scientific literacy to serve as models for states. The idea was to replace blind 
    memorization of facts and figures with broad central concepts.
    With evolution, the results were not what scientists had predicted. Religious conservatives 
    tapped into skepticism from inside and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, 
    seizing on routine disagreements among scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a 
    theory.
    Although the timetables of evolution shift as new fossils are discovered, most scientists 
    generally believe the first scraps of genetic material appeared about 4 billion years ago. From 
    that humble common ancestor evolved all other species. The earliest Homo sapiens – the 
    cave-painting, tool-making precursors to modern humans – appeared about 50,000 years 
    ago.
    Scientists acknowledge that evolution cannot be witnessed or even re-created in a lab. But 
    they note that this is true of many accepted scientific phenomena, such as atoms or electrons. 
    Instead, scientists rely on fossil records and geological data to piece together the species 
    record.
    It is that imperfect process creationists are attacking. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 
    in Edwards v. Aguillard that Louisiana could not mandate that schools give equal time to 
    teaching creation science, activists shifted their focus to their current tactic. Tomes by 
    amateurs and PhD scientists alike now parse through the fossil record, scanning for missing 
    links or spotty evidence.
    Some creationists offer what they consider to be positive scientific evidence for biblical 
    explanations of the origins of life. Creationists generally believe the Earth can be no older than 
    10,000 years – a number arrived at by adding biblical "begats." To prove Earth's relative 
    youth, they search, for example, for evidence that dinosaurs lived far more recently than the 
    millions of years ago cited by paleontologists.
    "One of our staff members went to Alaska recently and found dinosaur bones that were not 
    yet fossilized," said Looy, of Answers in Genesis. "If dinosaurs perished 65 million years ago, 
    how could one have been around in the last few hundred years? That matches with what the 
    Bible teaches – that dinosaurs lived recently."
    In Kansas, the latest effort to end the teaching of evolution has been driven by Steven 
    Abrams, a school board member, veterinarian and former head of the Republican Party. Like 
    many of the neo-creationists, Abrams prefers to debate the science, not the Bible.
    "Kids should be studying science, basic facts that can be measured and observed," said 
    Abrams. "Evolution is not good science, and shouldn't be taught in the schools."
    It's a message Abrams and five allies on the 10-member school board want to introduce into 
    the curriculum. First, the group wiped out almost all of the paragraphs on evolutionary ideas – 
    including descriptions of cosmological "evolution," the development of stars and the solar 
    system.
    The board members then went a step further, adding subtle but unmistakable references to 
    creationist science into their proposal. As a general principle, they wrote that "no evidence 
    contradicting a current scientific theory shall be censored."
    They then included examples anyone familiar with the debate would recognize as favorites of 
    creationists, such as the volcanic explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980, a catastrophe they 
    say proves Earth can undergo monumental changes in short periods of time.
    "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and now students will get such an incomplete 
    picture," said Ken Bingman, a Kansas biology teacher for 37 years who helped write a 
    rejected draft curriculum that included evolution. "It's a travesty, and it really worries me that 
    children will miss out on this."
    Frisby has spent many of his 27 years teaching trying to fend off assaults on evolution. Last 
    year, he said, was the worst yet. First, students complained about an art mural in the hallway 
    showing an apelike creature evolving into modern man.
    Then one of the smartest girls in the class, the daughter of a popular minister, began 
    challenging him regularly, insisting, for example, that there were human and dinosaur footprints 
    from the same age.
    At the end of the year, Frisby was crushed to see the results of the student evaluation of the 
    class showing a large proportion of the students ignored what he said about evolution.
    "I will not compromise," said Frisby. "If the school board tells me I don't have the option to 
    teach evolution I will teach it nonetheless. And if they still insist I'll take them to court for 
    academic freedom."
    John Wachholz is not so strident. Wachholz has been teaching biology at Salina Central High 
    School in central Kansas since 1972 and every year warns students he will not teach religion 
    in science class. If they want to talk creationism they can meet him at his Lutheran church, 
    where he is a regular member.
    But the complaints are getting more frequent, and bolder, and if the new standards pass next 
    week, Wachholz thinks he might retire early.
    "This thing will drive me out of teaching," he said. "I'm a science teacher. If I teach biology 
    without evolution I'd be doing an injustice to students, and to myself." 
                       © 1999 The Washington Post Company

New Anti-Evolution Legislation Introduced in Washington Senate

On January 18, 2002 a new anti-evolution bill was introduced in the Washington State Senate and referred to the Education Committee. According to the bill's digest, SB 6500: "Finds that the teaching of the theory of evolution in the common schools of the state of Washington is repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and thereby unconstitutional and unlawful. Provides that all textbooks and curriculum that teach the theory of evolution shall be removed from the public schools forthwith and replaced with textbooks and curriculum that teach the self-evident truth of creation."

The sponsor of this bill also introduced SB 6058, calling for an Alabama-style evolution disclaimer in textbooks, in 2001. That bill has not yet been taken up by the Education Committee, as of this date.

Full text of the bill available at:
http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/2001-02/Senate/6500-6524/6500_01182002.txt