Home > News & Blogs > Science & Religion

Kansas Against Darwin: What Happened?

A brief summary of the school board's decision--and the fallout.

Gregg Easterbrook

In August 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education amended the state's public schools standards statement to remove its requirement that high school science classes teach some aspects of Darwinian theory. Furor ensued. Points worth noting about the decision:

It was non-binding. In Kansas, the State Board of Education has only an advisory role. Local boards of education remain free to teach standard evolutionary theory, and many have said they will.

It was unpopular. Kansas Governor Bill Graves, a Republican, called the Board's action an "embarrassing solution to a problem that did not exist" and said he would work to overturn the anti-Darwin rule in the state legislature.

The Kansas board acknowledged what it called "microevolution," or the fact that living things change over time, while rejecting what it called "macroevolution," the idea that life arose through a purely natural process. The terms micro- and macro-evolution are not standard in scientific circles. There is, however, a running debate within science that is close to the Kansas board's point: that natural selection tells us why birds have beaks but not why the sky has birds. Evolutionary theory capably describes changes in established species, but is silent on how life began. And it is currently unsettled on how the key developments of biology--for example, the arrival of mammals--occurred. As The Atlantic Monthly magazine has observed, biologists have "no idea what makes chemicals start living. The origin of life is perhaps the leading unknown of contemporary science."

The National Academy of Sciences condemned the Kansas decision and withdrew the board's legal permission to use NAS-written curriculum material. (In an odd twist, with the same stroke that the Kansas board took out Darwin, it inserted into state guidelines a hefty amount of pro-science material written by the National Academy of Sciences -- but with some references to evolution and the Big Bang theory altered.) Because the NAS has denied Kansas authorization to use its materials, the board must re-draft its guidelines. The upshot of this is that the board's statement is in limbo, not available for anyone to read, much less for any teacher in Kansas to use. In effect, this means that Kansas has not actually restricted the teaching of evolution -- only served notice that it plans to do so. It is not known when the Kansas board will adopt new wording.

Stephen Jay Gould, the prominent Harvard paleontologist, wrote in Time magazine that the Kansas board's decision "smacks of absurdity and only reveals ignorance about the nature of science." Gould called evolution "as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as strongly as the earth's revolution around the sun." Science magazine, the publication of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, ran an editorial suggesting that colleges could put pressure on Kansas by refusing to recognize science credits from Kansas high school students who apply for admission. Other scientists wrote to Science to protest that this would penalize students for the actions of adults.

« Prev Page | Next Page »

Page 1 | 2

Gregg Easterbrook writes frequently for Beliefnet.

Related Features

featured articles
The Kansas Decision: Pro and Con

Defending Kansas

Defending the Search for Truth

Evolutionary Theories

When Darwin Isn't Right

An Intelligent Design?

Not By Evolution Alone

Official Statements

Kansas Teachers Take a Stand

Scientists Speak Out

Politics

Candidates Avoid the Debate

Overview