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Georgia Takes on 'Evolution

January 30, 2004
By ANDREW JACOBS

ATLANTA, Jan. 29 - A proposed set of guidelines for middle
and high school science classes in Georgia has caused a
furor after state education officials removed the word
"evolution" and scaled back ideas about the age of Earth
and the natural selection of species.

Educators across the state said that the document, which
was released on the Internet this month, was a veiled
effort to bolster creationism and that it would leave the
state's public school graduates at a disadvantage.

"They've taken away a major component of biology and acted
as if it doesn't exist," said David Bechler, who heads the
biology department at Valdosta State University. "By doing
this, we're leaving the public shortchanged of the
knowledge they should have."

Although education officials said the final version would
not be binding on teachers, its contents will ultimately
help shape achievement exams. And in a state where
religion-based concepts of creation are widely held, many
teachers said a curriculum without mentioning "evolution"
would make it harder to broach the subject in the
classroom.

Georgia's schools superintendent, Kathy Cox, held a news
conference near the Capitol on Thursday, a day after The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article about the
proposed changes.

A handful of states already omit the word "evolution" from
their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it "a buzz
word that causes a lot of negative reaction." She added
that people often associate it with "that monkeys-to-man
sort of thing."

Still, Ms. Cox, who was elected to the post in 2002, said
the concept would be taught, as well as "emerging models of
change" that challenge Darwin's theories. "Galileo was not
considered reputable when he came out with his theory," she
said.

Much of the state's 800-page curriculum was adopted
verbatim from the "Standards for Excellence in Education,"
an academic framework produced by the Council for Basic
Education, a nonprofit group. But when it came to science,
the Georgia Education Department omitted large chunks of
material, including references to Earth's age and the
concept that all organisms on Earth are related through
common ancestry. "Evolution" was replaced with "changes
over time," and in another phrase that referred to the
"long history of the Earth," the authors removed the word
"long." Many proponents of creationism say Earth is at most
several thousand years old, based on a literal reading of
the Bible.

Sarah L. Pallas, an associate professor of biology at
Georgia State University, said, "The point of these
benchmarks is to prepare the American work force to be
scientifically competitive." She said, "By removing the
benchmarks that deal with evolutionary life, we don't have
a chance of catching up to the rest of the world."

The guidelines, which were adopted by a panel of 25
educators, will be officially adopted in 90 days, and Ms.
Cox said the public could still influence the final
document. "If the teachers and parents across the state say
this isn't what we want," she said, "then we'll change it."

In the past, Ms. Cox, has not masked her feelings on the
matter of creationism versus evolution. During her run for
office, Ms. Cox congratulated parents who wanted Christian
notions of Earth and human creation to be taught in
schools.

"I'd leave the state out of it and would make sure teachers
were well prepared to deal with competing theories," she
said at a public debate.

Educators say the current curriculum is weak in biology,
leading to a high failure rate in the sciences among high
school students across the state. Even those who do well in
high school science are not necessarily proficient in the
fundamentals of biology, astronomy and geology, say some
educators.

David Jackson, an associate professor at the University of
Georgia who trains middle school science teachers, said
about half the students entering his class each year had
little knowledge of evolutionary theory.

"In many cases, they've never been exposed to the basic
facts about fossils and the universe," he said. "I think
there's already formal and informal discouragements to
teaching evolution in public school."

The statewide dispute here follows a similar battle two
years ago in Cobb County, a fast-growing suburb north of
Atlanta. In that case, the Cobb County school board
approved a policy to allow schools to teach "disputed
views" on the origins of man, referring to creationism,
although the decision was later softened by the schools
superintendent, who instructed teachers to follow the state
curriculum.

Eric Meikle of the National Center for Science Education
said several other states currently omit the word
"evolution" from their science standards. In Alabama, the
state board of education voted in 2001 to place disclaimers
on biology textbooks to describe evolution as a
controversial theory.

"This kind of thing is happening all the time, in all parts
of the country," Mr. Meikle said.

Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, the author of a 1999 report by the
National Academy of Sciences titled "Science and
Creationism," vehemently opposes including the discussion
of alternative ideas of species evolution.

"Creation is not science, so it should not be taught in
science class," said Dr. Ayala, a professor of genetics at
the University of California at Irvine. "We don't teach
astrology instead of astronomy or witchcraft practices
instead of medicine."

But Keith Delaplane, a professor of entomology at the
University of Georgia, says the wholesale rejection of
alternative theories of evolution is unscientific.

"My opinion is that the very nature of science is openness
to alternative explanations, even if those explanations go
against the current majority," said Professor Delaplane, a
proponent of intelligent-design theory, which questions the
primacy of evolution's role in natural selection. "They
deserve at least a fair hearing in the classroom, and right
now they're being laughed out of the arena."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/education/30GEOR.html?ex=1076517804&ei=1&en=5401d5617f2eda03

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

Roy E. Plotnick
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Illinois at Chicago
845 W. Taylor St.
Chicago, Il .60607
phone: 312-996-2111 630-252-6377(May-August)
e-mail: plotnick@uic.edu
homepage: http://www.uic.edu/depts/geos/people/faculty/plotnick.html

"Those who do not know the literature are condemned to repeat it."