Kansas Rejects Evolution In Science Classes

[Guest guest]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

 

Text COM:2548394 (72 lines)

Mrigendra (das) ACBSP (Attorney) (LA - USA)

12-Aug-99 04:13

NNA (News - North America) [488]

Kansas Rejects Evolution In Science Classes

---------------------------

 

News Top Stories Headlines

 

 

Wednesday August 11 3:34 PM ET

 

Kansas Rejects Evolution In Science Classes

 

Full Coverage

Religion News

 

 

By Carey Gillam

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (Reuters) - The Kansas Board of Education rejected

evolution as a scientific principle Wednesday, dealing a victory

to religious conservatives who are increasingly challenging

science education in U.S. schools.

 

The 10-member board, ignoring pleas by educators and most

scientists, voted six to four to embrace new standards for

science curricula that eliminate evolution as an underlying

principle of biology and other sciences. ``It's a step forward.

We're going to improve rather than detract from science education

in Kansas,'' said Scott Hill, a farmer and board member who

helped write the new standards.

 

``There's a liberal agenda to build up or glorify evolution in

our schools,'' Hill said, adding that evolution had been pushed

on students as a ``dogmatic fact.''

 

Individual schools can continue to teach evolution in science

classes from elementary through high school, but knowledge of

evolution will not be required and will not be needed to pass

state-sanctioned tests.

 

School board members opposed to removing evolution from the

curriculum recoiled at the change.

 

``In removing an important concept like evolution from life

sciences and biology, (students) are going to go essentially

crippled. It's like removing a leg and asking you to run a

100-yard dash,'' board member William Wagnon said.

 

Others predicted students would fail college entrance exams and

be ill-prepared for college science classes.

 

``Our children will not be prepared,'' member Val DeFever said.

``It's sad that people are attacking education.''

 

The guidelines eliminate evolution as a way to describe the

emergence of new species -- for instance the evolution of

primates into homo sapiens -- while leaving intact references to

``microevolution,'' or changes that occur within a single species.

 

The theory of evolution was developed by 19th-century British

scientist Charles Darwin. His discoveries were famously argued in

the 1925 ``Scopes Monkey Trial,'' in which the state of Tennessee

put teacher John Thomas Scopes on trial for knowingly infringing

a law banning the teaching of evolution.

 

.... Religious groups have argued that evolution cannot be proven,

and some feel that evolution is not in accordance with Biblical

teachings regarding the origins of life.

 

``It's deception,'' said Tom Willis, director of the Creation

Science Association for Mid-America, which helped write the new

standards. ``You can't go into the laboratory or the field and

make the first fish. When you tell students that science has

determined (evolution to be true), you're deceiving them.''

(Text COM:2548394) --------