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Kansas schools can teach 'intelligent design'
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
The Kansas Board of Education approved new science standards for teachers in public schools Tuesday that question Charles Darwin's teachings on evolution and hand a victory to advocates of "intelligent design."

Erin Passman laughs as Allison Hughes puts on a chimp mask at a museum in Lawrence, Kan.
By Scott McClurg, Lawrence (Kan.) Journal World

The board's 6-4 vote reverses a 2001 decision that affirmed Darwin's theory of natural selection. That vote came two years after most references to the theory were removed from state standards, making Kansas the butt of jokes by scientists and late-night comedians.

Advocates for intelligent design (ID) helped write the new standards, which challenge Darwin's 1859 theory. Scientists have long considered the theory — which explains how species evolve through survival of the fittest, passing new and better traits to their offspring — as proven reality. But ID advocates say the world is so complex that new species can be explained only as the product of an intelligent creator or designer.

Scientists dismiss that as a quasi-religious argument.

The Kansas standards don't overtly promote intelligent design, but they challenge Darwin and change the state's definition of "science," no longer limiting it to a search for natural explanations of phenomena.

"It's a shame," says Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, "because if these standards are actually introduced into the curriculum and shape how biology students will be trained for the next several years, those kids are in for a big shock when they go to college, because they're going to learn that what they had been taught by their teachers in high schools is a lot of rubbish."

Kansas board member John Bacon says the change "gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom." Other supporters say they are simply trying to get students to be skeptical of Darwin's ideas.

The standards, broad guidelines that school districts use to write their own curricula, don't force school boards to change what they're doing, and likely won't affect what teachers in many large school districts teach. But critics say the changes will encourage activists in small, rural districts to push for more overtly religious science lessons.

"It's all the little places where it only takes one teacher, one board member, one parent to turn things around," says Jack Krebs, a Kansas science teacher and vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

School boards in Minnesota, New Mexico and Ohio have adopted similar standards, and one school district in Pennsylvania has gone to court to defend its right to challenge evolution.

Attorneys delivered closing arguments Friday in a trial that grew out of a lawsuit by parents who challenged a school board policy in Dover, Pa., requiring that students learn about intelligent design. A judge is expected to rule on the case by the end of the year.

Pa. voters oust school board that backed intelligent design
DOVER, Pa. (AP) — Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who ordered a statement on intelligent design read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.
The election unfolded amid a landmark federal trial involving the Dover public schools and the question of whether intelligent design promotes the Bible's view of creation. Eight Dover families sued, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. (Related story: Kansas can teach intelligent design)

Dover's school board adopted a policy in October 2004 that requires ninth-graders to hear a prepared statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology class.

Eight of the nine school board members were up for election Tuesday. They were challenged by a slate of Democrats who argued that science class was not the appropriate forum for teaching intelligent design. (Related story: What would Darwin think?)

"My kids believe in God. I believe in God. But I don't think it belongs in the science curriculum the way the school district is presenting it," said Jill Reiter, 41, a bank teller who joined a group of high school students waving signs supporting the challengers Tuesday.

A spokesman for the winning slate of candidates has said they wouldn't act hastily and would consider the outcome of the court case. The judge expects to rule by January; the new school board members will be sworn in Dec. 5.

School board member David Napierskie, who lost Tuesday, said the vote wasn't just about ideology.

"Some people felt intelligent design shouldn't be taught and others were concerned about having tax money spent on the lawsuit," he said.

Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some kind of higher force. The statement read to students says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."

A similar controversy has erupted in Kansas, where the state Board of Education on Tuesday approved science standards for public schools that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. The 6-4 vote was a victory for intelligent design advocates who helped draft the standards.