As a biology teacher I am disappointed by the action of the Kansas
Board of Education, but I would suggest that we should be careful not to
overreact to this action, and not exaggerate its importance.

As I understand their action, they have decided that evolution is
not a subject that will be included on their state-wide tests. They have
not said that evolution cannot be taught. Any knowledgable biology
teacher in high school will continue to include evolution as part of the
biology courses, since you really can't teach biology without reference to
it. I would suspect that any teacher who uses the KBE action as an excuse
to drop evolution will have been doing such a bad job of teaching it
anyhow that they may have been doing more harm than good.

The high school students today are well aware that evolution is
accepted. They may not know the details about evolution, but I doubt if
you could find many HS students who believed that humans and dinosaurs
existed at the same time, as required by the creation theory. They
recognize that humans arose from something, even if they have no idea how
that occurred. I wouldn't worry about the effect this KBE action will
have on Kansas HS students. I have a lot of faith in their ability to
find out the facts.

************************
Robert Cleland

Professor, Botany Dept. Box 355325
Univ. of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-5325
Phone (206) 543-6105; FAX (206) 685-1728