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This summer marked 16 years since the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional
to require public schools to teach creation science. That decision, Edwards
v. Aguilard, was a final blow to those seeking to have schoolchildren learn
the biblical story of creation in science class alongside evolutionary science
when studying the origin and development of life through time.
The court’s decision forced evolution opponents to reassess their approach
and seek alternative strategies that would not run afoul of the constitutional
wall of separation between church and state. In the intervening years, two such
strategies have emerged, and both were on full display in states across the
nation this past summer. The first is to portray evolution as scientifically
controversial and rife with weaknesses that should be openly discussed in the
classroom. An example of this strategy took place in Oklahoma this May, when
evolution opponents sought a measure requiring that anti-evolution disclaimers
— similar to those used in Alabama — appear in biology textbooks;
the state legislature narrowly defeated the measure. Having been beaten back
once, it reappeared as an amendment to a larger bill that also narrowly lost.
The second strategy promotes teaching intelligent design, or ID, as an alternative
theory to evolution. Unlike more traditional scientific theories that rely on
natural explanations for natural phenomena, ID holds that biological systems
contain irreducible complexities that are unattainable through undirected natural
selection and thus can only represent the handiwork of an intelligent designer.
Mindful of church-state separation, ID proponents are fuzzy about who the designer
is (whether big D or little d). Then is ID a form of creationism? In Michigan,
where two bills were introduced in the state legislature to promote the teaching
of ID alongside evolution, the answer would appear to be “yes.” One
bill specifies inserting “intelligent design of a Creator” wherever
evolution is mentioned in state science education standards.
Setting standards
Across the United States, state standards are one of the key vehicles for anti-evolution
activity. In part, the heightened activity this summer reflects the fact that
many states are rewriting their standards to provide the level of (testable)
specificity called for in the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In New Mexico,
the state board of education plans to vote on new state science standards at
the end of August. The standards have received high marks from the National
Academy of Sciences and educators, but ID proponents are working to defeat them.
To aid their cause, they commissioned telephone polls of several hundred New
Mexico parents and also of the state’s national laboratory and university
scientists and engineers. Despite a very low response rate and dubious methodology,
their results showed broad support for teaching ID along with the weaknesses
in “Darwinian evolution,” a phrase that is the term of choice for
evolution opponents who seek to portray modern evolutionary theory as a backwards
remnant of 19th-century thought.
In Minnesota, Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke told WCCO-TV, the Minneapolis/St.
Paul CBS affiliate, that she supports “allowing teachers to talk about
a higher power creating life alongside evolution.” A committee that will
rewrite the state science standards met for the first time on July 31. Yecke
has said that she is urging the committee to consider a provision inserted by
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) into the Senate version of the No Child Left
Behind legislation. The provision, in the form of a non-binding resolution,
singled out evolution as a controversial theory that should be taught as such.
The situation in Minnesota could turn into a reprise of what transpired the
previous summer in Ohio. The state board there passed standards that included
evolution for the first time, but not before ID proponents sought to insert
their beliefs under the rubric that federal law required the teaching of alternatives.
Their viewpoint was supported by U.S. Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the chairman
of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who inaccurately claimed
that “the Santorum language is now part of the law.” In fact, the
final version of the bill did not contain the Santorum language, which was relegated
in much-altered form to an accompanying explanatory statement. But both Ohio
and Minnesota demonstrate that the value of the Santorum language lies not in
statutory authority but in its use as a propaganda tool (Geotimes, September
2002).
Another battleground is the textbook adoption process, in which a state or local
school district decides which textbooks will be used in the coming years. In
the biology textbook adoption process in Texas, ID proponents are seeking to
have textbooks disqualified for failing to discuss the weaknesses of evolutionary
theory and controversy surrounding it (read related story).
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that underwrites
many of the leading ID proponents, produced a 41-page report giving low grades
to the biology textbooks under consideration. The state school board can reject
textbooks for failing to conform due to factual errors, physical specifications
or a lack of adherence to the curriculum. Because Texas represents one of the
largest state-wide adoptions in the country and hence one of the largest markets
for textbook publishers, its decisions have an impact on what textbook publishers
will offer nationwide.
Media strategy
Helping support the ID effort, a number of PBS stations around the country
have been airing a documentary, entitled “Unlocking the Mystery of Life,”
about ID and its proponents. The documentary is co-written by a senior scholar
at the Discovery Institute. After the documentary ran on Maryland Public Television,
a Howard University medical school professor aptly described it as an infomercial
for ID creationism.
While harsh, such a description is appropriate for ID proponents who have opted
to take their message directly to the people and thence the nation’s schools,
rather than to publish papers in scientific journals or to present their results
to other scientists at meetings. They invest their effort in unscientific polling
rather than in producing new evidence to support their theory, continuing to
rely on the same small suite of examples that have long since been refuted in
the scientific literature.
ID proponents are quick to point out that, as is often the case with revolutionary
new theories, they have been blocked by an entrenched old guard. But what they
fail to grasp is that such opposition is only part of the picture — true
scientific revolutions are characterized by a swelling flood of new data and
findings that eventually wash away the old thinking. Instead, ID offers a trickle,
and, a recirculating trickle at that.
Until an Edwards-like Supreme Court ruling settles the acceptability of ID as
classroom science, these skirmishes will continue. Meanwhile, at a time when
scientific literacy is at an ebb, this battle is not the one we should have
to be waging. Our economic security, health and vitality as a nation depend
on teaching the best science to the next generation and not hewing to a narrow
ideology being promoted outside of science.
Links:
"Textbook
battle over evolution," Geotimes, September 2003
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