The attack on the teaching of evolution in elementary and secondary schools
has resurfaced in 2005 in Kansas, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states across
the country. Recent local and national headlines describe efforts to limit the
teaching of evolution by explicitly warning students that evolution is a theory
or by adding alternative ideas, such as “intelligent design,” to the
science curriculum.
Many dismayed educators, parents, scientists, legislators and judges had hoped
that the attack on teaching evolution in science classes in public schools had
been resolved by the reversal of the Kansas Board of Education’s 1999 decision
to eliminate the teaching of evolution. Unfortunately, a brief history of the
creationism movement over the past 80 years suggests that the debate has not
been resolved, but rather the movements in Kansas and elsewhere are subtly changing
tactics to try to gain the same objective.
The Scopes trial in 1925 ensured that classroom teaching and state laws regarding
curriculum would be part of a national debate about the differences between
the science of evolution and the belief in creationism. A year after the case
was dismissed on a technicality, 12 states had proposed bills prohibiting the
teaching of evolution, all of which failed.
Decades later, the space race renewed interest in science, and in 1968, the
Supreme Court ruled that laws banning the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional.
This ruling should have settled the debate; however, in 1980, President Reagan
endorsed the teaching of creationism. Seven years later, the Supreme Court stepped
in again, ruling that a Louisiana law requiring the teaching of creationism
whenever evolution was taught to be unconstitutional. The court indicated that
creationism was a form of religious advocacy and thus violated the Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
This decision helped to bring intelligent design to the forefront of the creationism
movement because intelligent design tries to remove any connotation of religion.
Intelligent design is a belief that an “intelligent designer” must
have created life because life is too complex to have been created in any other
way (see Geologic Column). Faith-based groups have latched
onto intelligent design as a more constitutionally palatable form of creationism,
and some groups have reconstituted themselves as nonreligious think tanks, such
as the Discovery Institute.
Founded in 1990, the Discovery Institute has formed a nationwide network of
local groups that work to get intelligent design added to the science curriculum
and disclaimers added to the teaching of evolution. The institute also hosts
workshops for teachers to tell them about the problems of teaching biological
origins and how to introduce design concepts into the curriculum.
The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 has led many state and local
school boards to review or revise their education curriculum. The Discovery
Institute and other groups have been taking advantage of this period of review
and revision to try to get creationism — disguised as intelligent design
or more subtly as multiple hypotheses to explain historical systems — into
science education.
In Kansas, for example, five years after local groups prevailed in keeping evolution
in the curriculum, the school board again revisited such arguments. In May 2004,
26 scientists and educators were appointed to draft revisions to the Kansas
Science Standards. After developing a draft in December that included teaching
evolution without qualification, eight members of the committee proposed further
revisions with explanations in a “minority report” on Dec. 7. On Dec.
10, the Intelligent Design Network Inc. put out a press release about the report,
in which one of the committee members, Greg Lassey, stated, “We do not
believe the standards should include the teaching of intelligent design as an
objective. But, neither should it be prohibited. Teachers should use their discretion
about that scientific alternative to evolution.”
The minority report would “replace a naturalistic definition of science
with a traditional definition” because the naturalistic definition “irrefutably
assumes that cause-and-effect laws (as of physics and chemistry) are adequate
to account for all phenomena.” This assumption, they say, “can be
reasonably expected to lead one to believe in the naturalistic philosophy that
life and its diversity is the result of an unguided, purposeless natural process.”
By redefining science, they say that evolution would no longer indirectly promote
the philosophy of naturalism.
In addition to changing the definition of science and twisting evolution into
a doctrine, the report defines paleontology and earth science as historical
sciences that are different from chemistry and physics. The report requests
that students learn that “historical events,” such as the sudden burst
of increased complexity in the fossil record (the Cambrian explosion) or the
“origin of a formation of sandstone,” can be explained by multiple
hypotheses and that these hypotheses depend on circumstantial evidence and are
therefore uncertain.
The proposed revisions were open to public comment until Feb. 28, and the board
hopes to have their science standards resolved by this summer. The situation
in Kansas is only one example of the persistent and time-consuming debates that
are occurring in school boards across the country. These discussions often end
up in court, where they cost more time and a substantial amount of financial
resources.
Creationists, the intelligent design groups and other similar groups are well-organized
and often well-funded. They will continue to drain the limited resources of
schools, confuse students and confound teachers until local groups organize
to clearly support the naturalistic definition of science and the fundamental
value of evolution to our understanding of how life works. Slowly, a national
network of pro-evolution groups is forming to support these grassroots efforts.
Meanwhile, science education is reportedly suffering from poor results, fewer
students going into science and engineering, and a shrinking workforce of qualified
high-tech workers. Thus, it is detrimental to sidetrack the education of students
by spending precious time and resources to defend science from those who want
to promote a religious agenda.
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