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IN 2004, IN A RURAL ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL
CAFETERIA decorated with murals of dancing milk cartons, members
of Pennsylvania's Dover Area School Board shocked local
constituents and the national scientific community with a small
but significant change in its biology curriculum, requiring
students to be made aware of "intelligent design."
At the time, I was a reporter working at the local newspaper.
Seeking comment on the curriculum change, I faxed a copy of the
Dover news article to the Oakland, California, offices of the
National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization
that defends the teaching of evolutionary theory in public
schools. Eugenie Scott, the center's unflappable executive
director, read the story I'd faxed her and called me with her
astounded response.
"You're it, kiddo," she said.
What Scott was saying was that this was the first time an
American public school district had required the teaching, in
science class, of so-called intelligent design—the unscientific
concept that the creation of life required a guiding hand from
the Almighty.
The details of what followed have been recounted many times. The
board's decision triggered a series of events that led to the
first constitutional test of intelligent design. At the end of a
six-week trial in 2005, Judge John E. Jones III handed down his
decision. In a 139-page opinion, Jones concluded that not only
was intelligent design not science, it was a religious
proposition. Jones wrote that when its supporters spoke of "the
designer," they were speaking of a specific deity: "The writings
of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by
their argument is the God of Christianity." Intelligent design
proponents derided Jones as "an activist judge" and insisted
that they weren't dead yet.
They're not. Last month, Christine Castillo Comer, the science
education director of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was
forced to resign. Normally the resignation of a state bureaucrat
isn't reported in the New York Times, which editorialized on the
issue on December 4. Comer's forced resignation appears to be
part of something bigger that could affect the education of
children across the country.
Defenders of sound science in public schools, such as Steve
Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science, believe the TEA
forced Comer out of her job to prepare for an anticipated 2008
battle over revision of science-education standards in the Texas
Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).
The review will influence the writing of science textbooks, and
publishers are watching the process closely. With almost $30
million in the budget for textbooks, Texas is second only to
California in the bulk purchase of such books. It's also a
single-adoption state, approving and buying books for all the
state's school districts. Publishers edit and revise textbooks
in response to the specific demands of members of the Texas
State Board of Education. And what's adopted in Texas is adopted
in many other states.
ATTACK OF THE TEXAS ED. DEPARTMENT—As seen from central
Pennsylvania, the drama unfolding in Texas seems like the
beginning of something familiar.
Comer is fifty-five years old and a tenth-generation Texan. She
served as the Texas Education Agency's director of science for
nine years and had previously worked as a middle-school science
teacher for twenty-seven years. She was forced to resign from
her position because she used her agency e-mail account to
forward a message from the NCSE, under the subject heading
"FYI."
The e-mail informed its recipients of a speech by Barbara
Forrest, a philosopher of science who is one of the
creationists' most hated enemies. Forrest wrote, along with her
co-author Paul R. Gross, Creationism's Trojan Horse, a damning
and carefully documented account of "intelligent design's"
creationist links. In the Dover trial, Forrest testified about
the Wedge Document, an internal memo in which the Seattle-based
Discovery Institute, the nation's leading proponent of
intelligent design, outlined a public-relations strategy to
destroy "scientific materialism" and affirm the idea that human
beings are created in the image of God. The document reads:
"Alongside a focus on influential opinion makers, we also seek
to build up a popular base of support among our natural
constituency, namely Christians."
It's a telling point that forwarding an e-mail that publicized a
talk by Barbara Forrest was cause for dismissal of an employee
of a state institution.
Comer's dismissal began with a demand from Lizzette Reynolds, a
recent TEA hire who worked in the U.S. Department of Education
after serving as an adviser to George W. Bush while he was
governor of Texas. A follow-up letter from Comer's superior
recommending her dismissal explained that creationism and
evolution are subjects "on which the agency must remain
neutral." The letter hinted at what many science educators say
is the heart of the issue—politics. "It is essential that Ms.
Comer support the integrity of the upcoming TEKS development and
revision process and ensure that it does not appear in any way
that she is advocating for any given position or stance," it
read.
"I realize my work is very unpopular with some influential
people in Texas," Forrest said. "But there was some reason they
used this particular incident. They don't want her there
protecting the scientific integrity."
"They wanted her out so they could sabotage the standards,"
Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science said.
The teaching of evolution isn't threatened only by a former Bush
adviser. In July, Texas governor Rick Perry appointed Don
McLeroy chair of the state's elected Board of Education. Perry
supports the teaching of intelligent design.
As a board member for nine years, McLeroy, along with three
other board members, had been a persistent critic of the
teaching of evolution in the state's public school science
classes. The dentist from College Station, a conservative
university town, is a Young Earth Creationist, subscribing to
the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Yet
he reassured the Dallas Morning News following his appointment
as chairman that he has no intention of instituting intelligent
design into the science teaching. The newspaper interviewed
eleven of the fifteen members elected to the state board. With
one exception, all said they did not support writing intelligent
design into biology curriculums.
"Creationism and intelligent design don't belong in our science
classes," McLeroy told the paper. "Anything taught in science
has to have consensus in the science community—and intelligent
design does not."
Some educators breathed a sign of relief, thinking that Texas
science classes might be spared religious controversy. Yet
buried in the TEKS existing standards is the reason that Texas
could be the center of evolution's next big battle: Section 3a
reads: "The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique
scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as
to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and
information." (Italics added.)
As Witold "Vic" Walczak, the American Civil Liberties Union
attorney who represented Dover's plaintiffs, warned on a PBS
documentary about the trial, "The issue is certainly not over.
One of the things that we've learned is that the opponents of
evolution are persistent and resilient. And they're still out
there." Or as Eugenie Scott of the NCSE often says,
"Creationists are proof of evolution."
Scott said the board members may be eyeing the general
standards' "strengths and weaknesses" in order to insert wording
into the section of the TEKS that outlines content. They could
push to add a sentence such as, "The student will be expected to
explain why the Cambrian explosion is a serious problem for
evolution."
AN EVOLVING CODE—In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the
teaching of creation science in science classes in public
schools was unconstitutional and unacceptable. Creation science
adapted and evolved into intelligent design, which was declared
unconstitutional in Dover. The orchestrated attack on evolution
has morphed again.
This time, intelligent design proponents intend to take
advantage of the wording "strengths and weaknesses" in Section
3a of the Texas regulations. The phrase was inserted in the
science standards during the late '80s to appease creationists.
The "strengths and weaknesses" strategy is sometimes referred to
as a way to "teach the controversy."
"They've adopted the code language," Forrest said. And just as
Dover's board members denied ever speaking publicly of
creationism—they dishonestly accused local newspaper reporters
of making up their published remarks—Texas state board members
deny advocating intelligent design.
Why shouldn't kids learn about both the strengths and weaknesses
of evolutionary theory? For Americans raised on democratic
principles, to "teach the strengths and weaknesses" of a subject
seems reasonable and fair. "To me, that's just good science
education," McLeroy said.
Eugenie Scott disagrees. "There is nothing fair about teaching
kids about bad science. There is nothing fair about giving kids
nineteenth-century science in a twenty-first-century classroom."
Leaving the constitutional legal matter of such a maneuver
aside, what aspects of evolution does McLeroy consider
controversial? He cites the principle of common descent, in
particular the idea that humans and apes evolved from a common
ancestor, as one debatable issue. Yet in the science community,
there is no controversy over the idea that all living organisms
are descended from a shared ancestor. The mapping of the genetic
code in recent years has only confirmed anew scientific support
for life's universal connection.
Still, McLeroy says he isn't interested in pushing creationism.
"I resent the notion that I'm speaking in code," he said. But in
Texas, just as in Dover and in other earlier battles in Kansas
and Ohio, the scientific arguments of evolution's critics are
intertwined with their religious views.
In a talk McLeroy gave to his church congregation in 2004, he
recited the anti-evolution talking points that Forrest outlines
in her book. McLeroy spoke of Phillip Johnson, the father of the
intelligent design movement, and his Big Tent strategy in which
all Christians, except those who embrace evolution, should unite
to defeat material naturalism. As McLeroy told the group, "So
what do we do about our Bible in the intelligent design
movement? . . . Johnson states, 'it's vital . . . to keep the
discussion strictly on the scientific evidence and the
philosophical assumptions. This is not to say that the biblical
issues aren't important; the point is, the time to address them
will be after we have separated materialistic prejudice from
scientific fact.'"
When I asked McLeroy about the talk he gave, he said the purpose
of it was to teach Christians how to defend their faith—that it
was not given as a way to help push those views on
schoolchildren. He said he finds that many of the people who
defend evolution are intolerant of other views.
McLeroy isn't the only official who seems little able to
separate the religious aspects of this fight from the scientific
ones, even though they may speak of wanting to do so.
On December 9, TEA Commissioner Robert Scott told the Dallas
Morning News about Comer's forced resignation, "I don't think
the impression was that we were taking a position in favor of
evolution. . . . It's part of our curriculum. But you can be in
favor of science without bashing people's faith, too."
Dan Quinn, the communications director of the Texas Freedom
Network, which monitors the work of the Christian right,
complained that such talk shuts down the conversation. "How can
you have a rational debate if every time you say 'it's not
science,' they say 'you're bashing religion'?" Quinn asked.
THE GOOD BOOK VS. GOOD SCIENCE—In the meantime, science
educators say that publishers are paying close attention.
Eugenie Scott notes that if science prevails in the standards
revision process, a nasty battle could send a message to
publishers to tread carefully on their treatment of evolution
and perhaps water down the coverage.
"It's always a worry that book publishers will be intimidated,"
Scott said. For instance, despite what the standards say, board
members in Texas argue that students should only be learning
"abstinence until marriage" values in health classes. Publishers
have taken heed, and contraception is now unmentioned in the
students' textbooks.
"Their goal is if they can damage evolution instruction, this
makes students suspicious," Schafersman said. "They'll think
'Maybe evolution isn't as strong as I was told; maybe it isn't
as strong as the idea of Earth's revolution around the sun,' or
as much as gravity." Their arguments are based on what
Schafersman describes as "bogus weaknesses." Science, he says,
has a better understanding of the processes of evolution than it
does of gravity.
Justice William J. Brennan wrote in the Edwards v. Aguillard
decision, handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, that
science's secular purpose must be "sincere and not a sham."
Eighteen years later, Judge Jones echoed that language from the
federal bench.
Looking forward in his decision, Judge Jones addressed
intelligent design's fallback—the "teach the controversy"
strategy—and determined that it was, indeed, also a sham. "ID's
backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we
have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that
the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science
class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a
canard. The goal of the ID [movement] is not to encourage
critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would
supplant evolutionary theory with ID."
As both sides wait to see how this will play out, Christine
Comer is adjusting to caring for her disabled father and paying
her bills on a pension that provides less than the salary she
lost. "But I feel like this is my contribution," she said. "This
is my time to draw my line in the sand for science."
She had watched what took place in Dover and remembers being
outraged at the time. "But I guess I wasn't outraged enough,"
she said. Because she never did anything about it.
Now, teachers she knows in small towns across Texas have come to
her to say they've been forced to teach creationism in science
class for years. She asked them why they didn't do anything
about it. "Come on," they told her. "What can I do? It's Texas."
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