Kansas education board downplays evolution
State school board OKs standards casting doubt on Darwin
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 8:34 p.m. ET Nov. 8, 2005
TOPEKA, Kan. - Risking the kind of nationwide ridicule it faced six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools, in violation of the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion.
Story continues below ↓
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
advertisement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All six of those who voted for the new standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted no.
“This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said the decision would encourage school districts in Kansas and elsewhere to make similar moves, distracting and confusing teachers and students.
“It will be marketed by the religious right ... as a huge victory for their side,” she said. “We can expect more efforts to get creationism in.”
Supporters see academic freedom
Supporters of the new standards said they would promote academic freedom.
“This is a great day for education. This is one of the best things that we can do,” said board chairman Steve Abrams. Another board member who voted in favor of the standards, John Bacon, said the move “gets rid of a lot of dogma that’s being taught in the classroom today.”
John Calvert, a retired attorney who helped found the Intelligent Design Network, said changes probably would come to classrooms gradually, with some teachers feeling freer to discuss criticisms of evolution. “These changes are not targeted at changing the hearts and minds of the Darwin fundamentalists,” Calvert said.
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports challenges to Darwinian evolutionary theory, praised the Kansas effort. “Students will learn more about evolution, not less as some Darwinists have falsely claimed,” institute spokesman Casey Luskin said in a written statement.
Science redefined
The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.
