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Is Texas destined to become the next Kansas,
where bitter evolution politics produced three changes in the
science curriculum standards in six years? At one point,
religious conservatives forced the study of evolution out of
Kansas public schools. Outrage, ridicule and state school board
elections got evolution back into the curriculum, but the fight
continues.
Texas can ill afford that kind of high-profile battle over
established science. But there is a good chance it will happen
here because Texas is now ground zero in the battle over
teaching evolution in public school science classes.
Now is the time for Gov. Rick Perry to step up and halt the
bloodletting before it does serious harm to the state’s
reputation, economy and future.
Last month, the science curriculum director for the Texas
Education Agency, Chris Comer, was ousted after she passed along
an e-mail about a lecture criticizing intelligent design, the
latest assault on evolution. It was an unmistakable signal of
the clash looming for Education Commissioner Robert Scott, a
Perry appointee.
This month, an institute that teaches — we should rightly say
preaches — the biblical account of the creation is seeking state
approval to offer master’s degrees in science education. The
Bible-based Institute for Creation Research moved to Dallas last
year from California and is seeking approval from the Higher
Education Coordinating Board.
Raymund Paredes, Texas’ higher education commissioner, said he
is evaluating the report from the team that recommended
approving the science course. He’s not happy with it and is
actively gathering more information ahead of next month’s board
meeting.
Paredes wants the head of the institute’s science program to
reconcile the appropriate teaching of science with the
institute’s mission to teach the creation account revealed in
Genesis.
The solution, Paredes said, is to have the institute call the
course what it is — creation studies — not science. There would
be little objection to that, he said. All this is happening as
teams from Scott’s Texas Education Agency prepare to update the
science curriculum for public schools. That review begins next
month, though a final decision on curriculum won’t be made by
the State Board of Education until the summer or later.
That leaves a lot of time to fight over how to present evolution
in science classes. Unfortunately for Texas, the chairman of the
state board, Bryan dentist Don McLeroy, is a creationist who
wants evolution challenged in science classes. Perry named him
chairman of the board earlier this year.
Challenges to teaching evolution themselves have evolved.
Intelligent design, not the biblical account, is now the
accepted alternative.
But intelligent design is based in religion, too.
Ever since Kansas reaped such a whirlwind when it banned the
teaching of evolution, the new tactic is to push for criticism
of evolution to be taught alongside the accepted theory.
That’s a clever move to get intelligent design into science
classes. Anti-Darwinists label evolution as “dogma” and argue
that there should be alternative viewpoints. The problem is that
intelligent design is a religious belief, not science.
As the debate unfolds, there is a lot at stake for Texas. Texas
is investing billions of dollars in high-tech and biotech
ventures, and state voters last month agreed to spend $3 billion
on a cancer research program designed to make Texas a leader in
that field.
If Texas becomes the new Kansas and is viewed as retreating from
teaching evolution as science, top scientists will not want to
live and work here. Major companies will not want to invest in a
state where religious doctrine is inculcated into public school
science classes.
A curriculum that uses religious doctrine to criticize evolution
would ruin this state’s efforts to provide quality education.
And it could wreck the drive to make Texas a leader in
scientific and medical research.
Perry should not sit idly by while this potentially devastating
issue unfolds in national headlines. He appointed Scott and
McLeroy, and he should derail any efforts to downgrade evolution
in Texas schools.
Americans who recoiled at Kansas’ decision to go backward in
education will be watching how Perry and Texas manage the crisis
here. |
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