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EVOLUTION, EDUCATION & ECOLOGY: spotlight on Kansas
Eugenie Scott: The nice thing about evolution is that it really makes biology make sense.
Phillip Johnson: Actually, the notion of evolution is so vague as to be meaningless.
Paul Ehrlich: One of the more amusing things is to hear people say “evolution is just a theory.” Well, in scientific terms, a theory is the most certain thing you can have.
Steve Abrams: Should it be taught? Of course it should be taught … but not to teach it as a fact.
Larry Scharmann: At some point, they had determined that we had banned the teaching of evolution. That didn’t happen.
Leonard Krishtalka: There’s been more evolution taught in public schools than ever before, because people started asking “well, what is this really all about then? Why is there such a controversy over this?”
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Ralph Titus (host): An editorial in the Emporia Kansas Gazette once posed the question: What's the Matter with Kansas? Here's part of it…. "Go east and you hear them laugh at Kansas; go west and they sneer at her …. Go into any crowd of intelligent people gathered anywhere on the globe, and you will find the Kansas man on the defensive." This was written more than a century ago, but the words could apply to more recent times. William Allen White, writing in 1896, was venting his frustration at the rise of Populism in the state. But if he had been around a century later, he would have found that Kansas once again was being ridiculed as a result of a decision by the state board of education to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. This prompts us to review the status of science education in Kansas and the educational philosophy associated with the teaching of evolution.
Part One -- Science Education
Nat Sound (Biology teacher to students at microscopes): See any nuclei yet? See any mitochondria? See any chloroplast?
Brad Williamson (High School Biology teacher, Olathe, Kansas): I would like to see the public realize that science education in this state at least is pretty darned good. This state has been known as a national leader -- which, isn't that ironic when you're talking about a state with two and a half million people -- we’re a national leader in science education and have been for a number of years.
Narrator: A biology teacher at Olathe East High School in suburban Kansas City, Brad Williamson has been actively involved with the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers for many years. In 1998, the state commissioner of education invited him to join more than two dozen other Kansans on a year-long project to develop new standards for science education in Kansas, which would provide a basis for state assessment tests.
Brad Williamson: Science is both an active process in which we push the boundary of human knowledge, which is doing science; so science is a verb in that context. That is what our previous standards emphasized at all grade levels because that is the part of science that is often not covered as well in many schools. So our charge, as I saw it and as I think the writing team saw it, was to bring more content to our state standards; more specific content and guidance for the school district. What we did was try to provide some type of framework for what the content core knowledge might be ... in all fields of science, at all grade levels. So that’s what we tried to do first. And we tried to fit that into the structure that the state was using for other curriculum areas.
Steve Abrams: That's where the curriculum standards come in. They are not to decide the curriculum, but they're to give the local boards an opportunity to know what the state board thinks is important and consequently will be on the state assessment.
Narrator: Steve Abrams and several other members of the Kansas State Board of Education found problems with the proposed curriculum standards that were presented to them in April of 1999. Their concerns focused primarily on references to evolution, and they also questioned inclusion of the so-called Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.
Steve Abrams (Kansas State Board of Education, Arkansas City): The main thing was … I mean it starts with the basic precept that they believe, and they stated in the draft standards as a matter of fact, that evolution is an over-arching, unifying concept without which you cannot study biological sciences. That sounds an awful lot like a fact. And as a veterinarian, I’ve had a lot of science courses -- biological science courses -- as an undergraduate, as well as graduate courses, and not one time did we get into the origins, the big bang theory, and animals changing from one species to another species, the macroevolution part. Should it be taught? Of course it should be taught, but not to teach it as a fact.
Narrator: Rejecting the curriculum standards presented to them by the appointed committee, the board considered a revised version prepared by Steve Abrams and a small group of individuals who shared his concerns and objectives.
Steve Abrams: In May, I presented a draft of science standards … curriculum standards I should say. And in that -- the draft that I presented talked about Darwinian evolution and, in addition, it also showed some of the critiques of it -- some of those evidences that seem to point that it is not exactly as it is cracked up to be. Couldn’t get the votes for it; couldn’t get the votes for it. Therefore, the next step is to say, “Well if we can’t do that, what my first choice is, we’ll go to the second choice.” The second choice is to pull it and to de-emphasize it. I’m still not interested in teaching it as a fact.
David McDonald: The evidence is very clear that all living things on the Earth evolved from simpler forms.
Narrator: The chair of the department of biological sciences at Wichita State University, David McDonald is one of a number of science educators who was disturbed by the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to de-emphasize evolution, which was officially announced in August of 1999.
David McDonald (Chair, Biological Sciences, Wichita State University): Well, I was very disturbed, as I always am, as any scientist is I believe, when a decision is made about science education which is influenced by ideology. So I was disturbed by that; I felt that it was a clear fundamentalist world view that was brought to bear and as such, evolution was brushed aside, the fact that the earth is very old was brushed aside -- geology; so just with one vote, much of modern science was kind of pushed to the background and that’s deeply disturbing.
Steve Abrams: I thought it would stir some controversy in the state; I really kind of expected that. I had no idea that we would receive all of this notoriety outside the state.
[Excerpt from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” -- November 9, 1999]
Jim Lehrer (NewsHour host): Now the teaching of evolution -- under attack in Kansas. Betty Ann Bowser reports:
Betty Ann Bowser: It was a simple majority vote, but it sent shock waves around the world....
Narrator: The state board’s actions on this issue immediately attracted international attention and widespread ridicule. Some people thought that the media exaggerated the extent of the board's action in regard to evolution. The chair of the department of Secondary Education at Kansas State University, Larry Scharmann, made note of such tendencies.
Larry Scharmann (Chair, Secondary Education, Kansas State University): At some point they had determined that we had banned the teaching of evolution. That didn’t happen. What did happen is more subtle than that, though, and I think if somebody actually reviews that section, what you’re going to end up seeing is that it’s more the treatment of the nature of science and the nature of theories that is the real crux of where I have the biggest problem. And as a consequence, if we accept the way that they wrote the nature of a theory, then the nature of evolution as a theory … as a consequence of the state standards that follow, are going to not be acceptable.
David McDonald: It IS a theory and that’s another problem. It is a theory but the common parlance of the word ‘theory’ means that this is conjecture; this is a guess. In science, we mean something very different when we say a theory. Let me give you an example. We still call the idea that bacteria cause infectious disease, we still call that the ‘germ theory’. Does anybody have any kind of a question about that? Of course infectious disease is caused by bacteria and viruses. We still call it a theory because that’s the way we deal with a big batch of internally consistent observations. The theory of gravitation. Lots of things we scientists call theory and we know what we are talking about, but the normal population, the rest of the world outside of our laboratories, when they say ‘theory’ it’s like, well, it’s an interesting idea but that’s just conjecture. Well, that’s not what is meant by the theory of evolution.
Eugenie Scott (Executive Director, National Center for Science Education): Evolution is to biology what the periodic table is to chemistry. As the periodic table organizes the elements and their properties and you can figure out what’s going on in chemistry based on the periodic table, so does evolution do the same thing with biological variables.
Narrator: Eugenie Scott is the director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit, membership organization that serves as a clearinghouse for information on science education and the teaching of evolution. She was invited to present a public lecture at a Congregational Church in Lawrence by a newly formed group called Kansas Citizens for Science. With a doctorate in biological anthropology, she acknowledges the complexity of evolutionary theory.
Eugenie Scott: But the basic, big idea of evolution is really graspable by anyone. The basic big idea of general evolution is that the universe has had a history -- that galaxies and stars and planets and life on Earth has changed through time. That’s a historical statement. In the case of biological evolution, a specific subfield of evolution, the big idea is that living things share common ancestors -- that we are descended with modifications from common ancestors with other creatures ... and all creatures are related in this way. That is a fairly simple idea, the essence of which can be communicated clearly enough in junior high. In senior high, students deserve to know more about the details of evolution; not just what happened in the whole branching of this tree of life, but also the mechanisms and processes that scientists have been studying to try to explain how it is that this change through time -- this descent with modification -- has taken place. So there are various levels that you can approach evolution -- from the very simple, direct ones to greater levels of complexity.
Phillip Johnson (Emeritus professor of law, UC Berkeley): Actually, the notion of evolution is so vague as to be meaningless.
Narrator: This controversy also attracted University of California emeritus law professor Phillip Johnson to Kansas. The author of a number of books such as Darwin on Trial, Johnson contends that evolution is a theory in crisis.
Phillip Johnson: Yes, the crisis of evolutionary theory has to do with a mechanism and what we understand today about the enormous complexity of cellular processes, of what you might say is the software that's needed to make the life processes run. Evolution is a theory that's just about change -- this is how it is defined: it's changes in gene frequencies or whatever. And you do get a certain amount of change, so in a limited, not in a very important way, that the theory is valid. But what it doesn't do is explain the origin of the genetic information of the software -- the program that makes everything operate. That's the issue that's really leading it into a crisis.
Eugenie Scott: A lot of the anti-evolution information is directed toward the idea that evolution is somehow a theory in crisis -- that evolution is being rapidly abandoned by scientists because it’s not good science ... it’s been discovered that it’s not good science any more. That’s just nonsense. If you go to any decent college or university in this country, you will be taught evolution matter of factly. It is only a controversial topic at the kindergarten through 12th grade level.
Phillip Johnson: The right thing to do is very simple to specify -- what educators ought to do is educate. The phrase I use is "teach the controversy." You ought to teach the school children -- the high school students, college students … whatever -- what mainstream science says or believes that the reigning theory says. That's good education. But when an enormous number are doubtful about it and the evidence isn't all that conclusive, you also ought to teach the position of the skeptics fairly. You ought to teach students so they understand why there are so many skeptics. Now they're afraid to do that -- the science educators of the Darwinian poll -- because once they let the skepticism get going, it's going to get out of control, and so they are trying to keep a lid on it. But that's bad education. That's propaganda and it's indoctrination.
Brad Williamson: The fairness issue, I think, is the critical issue that needs to be addressed, and people have to understand that there’s a significant difference in the way science operates. Science doesn’t operate the way social science operates. Social science -- the way we make most of our decisions in society are by consensus, and we hope that the truth will come out by a majority opinion as we reconcile and we grapple over these issues. But in a science classroom, we don’t let the truth come out by consensus. We work at trying to tease out, using natural evidence, what the possible truth is and we develop a model for that truth … that's never quite there ... never quite there, but each ... and when we make a claim for that knowledge, we put it out on the table for every scientists to tear down or build up or find support for. And we don’t even claim it’s reasonable knowledge until we have a whole lot of support for it. And so it’s not by consensus. Science is not something you vote upon.
David McDonald: And this is why it’s a real problem when people say, “Well gosh, you know, I mean, you’re just not being accepting of our ideas. Why don’t you just hold them on an equal level and why don’t we examine them together on an equal level?” Well, they’re not on an equal level. In a science course, we must talk about what most of the evidence supports. We are obliged as science educators to look at the evidence and say, “Well, what we’re going to cover, although there may be many creation stories, what we’re going to cover is what the evidence supports.” And evolution is here to stay for the simple reason that it has a huge amount of evidence to support it, not just from biology, but geology and anthropology and all of these other natural sciences - hard sciences we refer to them - this is an internally consistent idea that serves to tie them all together.
Part Two: Intelligent Design
Host: Many of those who oppose the teaching of evolutionary theory do so because they believe it leaves no room for a Creator. Some have tried to integrate science and religion by advancing such propositions as Intelligent Design. In Kansas, one school district considered adopting a text based on that theory -- the idea being that it would supplement the standard biology text. What is Intelligent Design? And why isn't it being taught in science classrooms? Phillip Johnson is one of its most visible advocates.
Nat sound (Phillip Johnson): Intelligent Design does not carry you into those questions. You recognize intelligence, but the nature of it is not a subject that is determined that way.
Phillip Johnson: Intelligent Design just says we should follow these usual scientific guidelines and procedures without prejudice in all areas. If you apply them in biology and to the kind of complex, specified order that is found in the genetic information in biology, then you would conclude that an intelligent cause had to be involved. The reason that that is rejected in mainstream science today doesn't have to do with the evidence it has to do with the prejudice -- that the evolutionary scientists think of their job as being, by definition, to explain everything in terms of natural causes they say, which means unintelligent causes. To allow no role for an unevolved intelligence, which would have to be supernatural. So that's a prejudice. That is not a following of the evidence. So I do not call it scientific.
Brad Williamson: The basic premise of Intelligent Design is the world is so complex it must have been designed by an intelligent, supernatural creator -- that particularly when you get down to certain complexities at the molecular level and places like that … or the incredible complexities at the cosmological level, there must have been a designer that set this all in motion or has guided it. And that may be, but it's not a question that we can ask in science, because the minute you say 'that is so complex, you can't even break it down; it had to be intelligently designed,' there's no reason to ask how it got there. And if we took that approach any place in science, we would have quit asking questions a long time ago.