I shouldn't have been surprised by all the hype concerning the
action of the Kansas Board of Education, but all the same, I was
surprised. The PI this morning headlined it's article "Kansas bans
teaching of evolution...". If my information is correct, what KBE did was
to decide, against the advice of their advisory committee, that evolution
would not be included on their state-wide tests. I doubt that this will
actually have any major impact.

With state tests, what counts is what IS included, not what is
left out, since they don't begin to cover the totality of the subject. If
they had decreed that "creation science" would be included on the tests,
it would have had a huge impact!

High school biology courses are not standardized, and vary
greatly, from teacher to teacher, depending on the teacher's interests,
and the general guidelines set by the state boards of education. No one
teaches everything on the state guidelines, nor restricts themselves to
just those topics included in the guidelines.

What really does make a difference is the textbooks, since so many
HS science teachers really don't know very much biology, but get a lot of
their information, and even their teaching outline from the textbook. Two
states, Texas and California, determine what HS biology texts there will
be, and what will be in them. No publisher will publish a biology text
that doesn't pass muster by these two states. The real battle is making
certain that neither of these two states requires that evolution be
eliminated from the textbooks. If either did that, it would really change
HS biology! There have been battles about evolution in biology texts in
both states, and so far, evolution has won.

I would take with some caution the figures on the percent of the
public that does not believe in evolution. It is my experience that some
of these people simply don't know what "evolution" is, and when asked more
specific questions (e.g. did birds come from flying dinosaurs?) they often
will give an evolutionary answer.

The fascination of kids with dinosaurs, and their interest in the
dinosaur to bird development is something we should exploit to bring home
to them that change is possible.

Incidentally, having grown up in southern Indiana, and having a
grandfather who was a fundamentalist preacher, I have some feeling for how
deep this belief is in the bible.

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

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