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Public School Science Standards a Key Issue

Original Article

One of the hottest topics the Kansas Board of Education has tackled of late – and a key issue in the contests for the open seats on the body – is science standards for the state’s public schools.

The six conservatives on the 10-member body adopted revisions to the standards in December, inserting new critiques and question marks about evolution that they say make study of the topic more objective.

Many, however, blast the revisions as misleading and an underhanded attempt to allow creationist-friendly concepts like intelligent design into science classrooms. Intelligent design posits that some aspects of nature are so complicated that an “intelligent cause,” which critics equate with God, must have had a hand.

Broadly, John Calvert of the Shawnee Mission-based Intelligent Design Network said the revisions introduce students to apparent question marks related to random mutation and natural selection as the motors behind all biodiversity.

“That’s where the huge controversy is,” said Calvert, who backs the changes.

More specifically, the changes:

•Say extrapolating microevolution, change within a species, to explain macroevolution, the development of new species, “is controversial.”

•Say the view that all living things descended from a common ancestor “has been challenged” by molecular evidence and fossil records.

•And expose students to criticism about theories about the origin of the first specs of life.

More subtly, Calvert said the changes help dispel evolution as a stand-alone “origin story” of life bolstering nontheistic belief systems like atheism and agnosticism to the detriment of traditional theistic religions. The changes, he says, “mean we won’t be indoctrinating students one way or another.”

On the other side of the spectrum, critics decry the changes as unneeded and deceiving.

“The idea that evolution is a theory in crisis is nonsense,” said Jack Krebs of Kansas Citizens for Science, which opposes the revisions. Noting what he called overwhelming acceptance of evolution in the scientific community, he said the changes “create doubt that really isn’t out there.”

Scientists are constantly delving into the apparent question marks pointed out by the new standards, Krebs said, “but it’s not calling evolution into question, it’s deepening our understanding of evolution.” What’s more, he said the notion that evolution precludes the possibility of theistic religion is incorrect, noting the range of creeds represented by his group’s members.

More specifically, Krebs pointed to the wordage of the changes, which he said mimics intelligent design tomes, as evidence that the revisions aim to bolster that notion.

He also said the new definition of science in the revised standards paves the way to “supernatural” explanations of happenings in the world. The old definition described science as “seeking natural explanations … in the world around us” while the new one defines science as searching for “more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.”

“A small change of words has really got a great big important story behind it,” Krebs said, blasting the “slippery language” of the revisions.