New York Times covers our evolution issue

[Lisa]

Hi Everyone,

In case you haven't seen this (thanks to Joan for the cite):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/education/22texas.html?_r=1

Best, Lisa

January 22, 2009
In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — The latest round in a long-running battle over how
evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday
as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from
scientists and social conservatives on revising the science
curriculum.

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the
nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to
produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would
force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses
in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical
version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they
have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past
president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after
testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the
classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the
votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote,
in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and
intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have
gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they
enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003
for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the
state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr.
McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks
that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years
old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s
curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories,
exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to
that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please
religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to
it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the
curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to
“analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical
evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the
curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics
argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to
justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of
scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a
slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C.
Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California
group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

Already, legislators in six states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana,
Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have considered legislation
requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific
strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition
from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of
the intelligent-design movement.

Stephen C. Meyer, an expert on the history of science and a director
at the Discovery Institute, denied that the group advocated a Biblical
version of creation. Rather, Mr. Meyer said, it is fighting for
academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to
Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.

Testifying before the board, he asserted, for instance, that evolution
had trouble explaining the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid
diversification that evidence suggests began about 550 million years
ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal
forms.

Of the Texas curriculum standards, Mr. Meyer said, “This kind of
language is really important for protecting teachers who want to
address this subject with integrity in the sense of allowing students
to hear about dissenting opinions.”

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the
objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless.
The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports
Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by
scientists.

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a
misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of
biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These
are people with religious and political agendas.”

Many of the dozens of people who crowded into the hearing room,
however, seemed unimpressed with the body of scientific evidence
supporting evolution.

“Textbooks today treat it as more than a theory, even though its
evidence has been found to be stained with half-truths, deception and
hoaxes,” said Paul Berry Lively, 42, a mechanical engineer from
Houston who brought along his teenage son. “Darwinian evolution is not
a proven fact.”

Other conservative parents told board members that their children had
been intimidated and ridiculed by biology teachers when they
questioned evolution. Some asserted that they knew biology teachers
who were afraid to bring up theories about holes in Darwin’s theory.

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting
highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science
programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us
all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.