The scientific community hasn’t wavered on the issue of evolution in the last eight years ““ but one Midwest state has flip-flopped four times in that period, deciding Tuesday that evolution does indeed occur in Kansas.
The Kansas Board of Education voted in 2005 to enact curriculum requirements for public schools that question the theory of evolution. Now the board has voted to rescind those requirements.
It’s clear to us ““ and mainstream science ““ that Kansas has finally, once again, landed on the truth. Evolution is established and proven science, and it is our education system’s duty to teach our children about it.
Opponents have argued that evolution is taught in a way that doesn’t allow for criticism of the theory.
We argue that opponents have no knowledge of science.
Science is always open to disproof and revision. But when a theory like evolution forms the basis of biology and has stood up to study after study, it has earned a good amount of validity.
Intelligent design and other competing theories don’t need to be taught in school because they have a far shorter and less successful track record in scientific inquiry.
Intelligent design is the argument that the complexity and function of the universe and its living organisms is best explained by an intelligent creator.
Aside from being pseudo-science, intelligent design also violates another responsibility of public schooling: the separation of church and state. Religious education should be kept strictly separate from public schools, and this clearly crosses the line.
These arguments ought to be enough to convince skeptics that, no matter what personal beliefs are held by Kansans (or the Kansans who sit on the Board of Education), Kansas schools have a duty to teach evolution truthfully. That is, a duty to teach it as established scientific knowledge.
Instead, proponents of intelligent design have said specifically that they intend to continue their fight to discredit evolution in schools.
“This issue is never going to go away,” John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, told the Kansas City Star. “You can’t keep science in a box.”
This brings up another major problem the debate has created in Kansas: The state’s children must be so confused by now that they do not know what to believe.
If elementary schools, middle schools and high schools have all told children alternating theories about the origins of life, they’re going to come out with a few doubts. They may go so far as to doubt the veracity of everything else school has taught them.
More likely, they’ll just give undue weight to the pseudo-theory of intelligent design.
Parents and school administrators ought to take it upon themselves to hold this debate outside the classroom.
If one must call evolution into question, that’s not damaging. When the debate alters school curriculum four times in eight years, that is problematic.
Hopefully, evolution will stick around in Kansas this time.
But if the state must continue its debate about whether science or religion should rule their children’s heads, at least come to a solid conclusion before changing the school system.