Kansas Voting On The Origins of Life

http://www.usatoday.com/life/dcovwed.htm

Evolution's next step in Kansas: Ballot box
By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

JOHNSON COUNTY, Kan. — Following Board of Education elections in these parts is usually about as exciting as watching corn grow, voters in this suburban Kansas City area say. But when the state board approved science-teaching standards in August that dropped references to evolution, this year's election season was destined to be lively.

Until this issue arose, "I didn't even know there was a school board," says Paul Rothberg of Overland Park, who has two kids in the Blue Valley Unified School District here. Now he's noticing candidates' yard signs, the mention of evolution by congressional candidates and the headlines in the papers.

Not since the Scopes Monkey Trial, argued 75 years ago this week on the lawn of a Tennessee courthouse, has the public debate over Charles Darwin's theory of evolution been so hot. There have been other attacks, including the Alabama Board of Education's adoption in 1995 of a disclaimer for biology textbooks that says evolution is unproven and the removal of the word "evolution" from Nebraska's science guidelines in 1999.

But it was the Kansas Board of Education's 6-4 vote to drop evolution as an area of required science instruction that captured the world's attention, inspiring campaign-trail questions for presidential candidates, Land of Oz jokes on late-night TV, and scathing criticism from the National Academy of Sciences and other science and education groups.

Kansas board chairwoman Linda Holloway, who voted for the standards, says the media blew the thing way out of proportion. "People criticize us -- me -- saying, 'You give the state a bad name.' But the first word that went out on the wire was wrong — that Kansas banned evolution."

Indeed, it remains legal to teach evolution in public schools. But the standards changed the state's guidance on teaching it . For example, one eighth-grade standard says children should learn that "over time, genetic variation acted upon by natural selection has brought variations in populations. This is termed microevolution."

A draft prepared by a state committee originally said: "Biological evolution, gradual changes of characteristics of organisms over many generations, has brought variations in populations."

One critical group says the board's use of "microevolution" acknowledges that aspects of evolution can occur over short periods but leaves out any reference to evolution over longer periods, which can lead to new species.

And because references to evolution are left out, the subject won't appear on state assessment tests, creating a disincentive for teachers to cover it and an opportunity to introduce alternative viewpoints. While several districts vow to keep the subject in the curriculum, many educators and parents worry that the de-emphasis will erode the quality of science education.

Conservative Christians and other supporters of the de-emphasis on evolution view the board's action as a victory for academic freedom and local control of schools. "It's like being on the cutting edge," says parent Celtie Johnson of Prairie Village. Kansas "is brave enough to seek the truth."

So important is the issue to Johnson, who has never before been involved in politics, that she is campaigning for Holloway's re-election .

Holloway says she is optimistic about the outcome of her Aug. 1 Republican primary. But of the 10 seats on the board, five are on the ballot, and three of them belong to incumbents who voted for the standards. So evolution activists are counting on voter turnout to change the board's ideological mix to one that would adopt an earlier draft of the standards that emphasized the importance of evolution.

A coalition of organizations supporting evolution went all out last week , sponsoring a statewide array of events culminating in a re-enactment of the Scopes trial featuring actors Ed Asner and Shirley Knight, both Kansas natives, among others. And because Republican primaries typically decide elections in this conservative state, those supporting evolution are urging Democrats to switch parties to boost their chances of winning. Says Caroline McKnight, head of a group trying to oust the anti-evolutionists: "Democracy got us into this, and democracy will get us out."

Even so, the long-simmering national debate remains far from resolved. Any discussion of the subject quickly grows emotional, raising issues of morality, ethical responsibility and other implications for the meaning and purpose of life. Consider Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who last summer ventured that tragedies like the Columbine High School shootings would continue as long as "our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud."

That same idea was central to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which teacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law when he discussed evolution in a high school biology class. As Scopes' famed defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, propounded: "Scopes isn't on trial. Civilization is on trial!"

But unlike the Scopes trial, which pitted religion against science, the Kansas standards mention neither God nor creationism, which holds that God created humans whole, according to Genesis.

Many evolution skeptics are trying to recast the controversy as a matter of good vs. bad science, promoting a concept they call "intelligent design" as a better explanation for human existence.

Much of the work of intelligent-design researchers aims to refute Darwin's ideas about biological evolution and natural selection. They suggest that some aspects of nature are so complex and improbable that they could come only from an intelligent source.

Proponents don't identify the agent but also don't rule out God. And they note that creationism is consistent with intelligent design — a point that might raise philosophical problems among theorists but isn't necessarily relevant in citizen efforts to keep evolution from dominating the biology curriculum .

From the intelligent-design movement, advanced by scholars at respected universities, is emerging what could become a battle in science research.

The anti-evolutionist ideas are routinely slammed by the overwhelming majority of scientists, who argue — emphatically — that evolution theory is so well documented as to be an observable fact.

The intelligent-design premise "is like suggesting the stork theory as an alternative medical explanation for how babies are born," says Leonard Krishtalka, director of the University of Kansas' natural-history museum in Lawrence. Faculty members at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, were so incensed this year when they learned a center to study intelligent design had been set up on the Baptist campus that they voted to shut it down. (The center is scheduled to be reviewed by a committee of peers.)

Though there is little consensus in the debate, both sides agree that biology education in public schools is inadequate. They base that on recent polls suggesting that 50% to 80% of the U.S. (and Canadian, in some cases) population think it's OK to teach kids both literal creationism and organic evolution.

But just as they can look at a dinosaur bone and reach different conclusions, those who are comfortable with evolution and those who aren't interpret the survey results differently.

Anti-evolutionists tend to see the numbers as proof that schools ought to be able to teach alternatives to Darwin if parents want them to. And evolutionists see the numbers as evidence that they haven't explained the science thoroughly enough.

There's one other meeting of the minds in all the fuss: a sense that democracy will be better off for having had the evolution debate, however heated.

"We Americans, we're a disputational group, but we tend to abide by the majority rule," says Kansas school board member Bill Wagnon, a Democrat from Topeka who voted against the standards and will face a Republican in the general election. Whatever the outcome, he says, "we're going to have to live with the consequences


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"Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right"-Bob Marley

[This message has been edited by BobFinn* (edited July 19, 2000).]

 

Even if there was scientific proof of evolution, there would still be people that wouldn't believe it.

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"Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right"-Bob Marley

 

Why are there so many different types of monkey's? Chimpanzee, apes, gorilla, orangutan, to name but a few. Why are humans born with a tail bone? Did we (humans) at one time have a tail?

Oh by the way, I like George Carlin too

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"Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right"-Bob Marley