Georgia school board requires balance of evolution and bible. (News).

After an angry debate among parents, Georgia's second-largest school district adopted a policy this summer that requires teachers to give a "balanced education" about the origin of life, giving equal weight to evolution and biblical interpretations.

The district, Cobb County, had already come under attack this summer for attaching disclaimers to all science textbooks, saying that evolution "is a theory, not a fact," and should be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." In late August, Jeffrey Selman, the father of an elementary school pupil, and the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit demanding that the disclaimers be removed. Upon the school board's vote, the ACLU and Selman vowed to amend the suit to ask the court to reverse the new policy.

Board members said they were not restricting the teaching of evolution or encouraging the teaching of creationism. The policy, they said, was simply a reflection of the district's philosophy of teaching a wide and objective range of ideas, particularly in discussing "disputed views of academic subjects, including the origin of species."

After the vote, Gordon O'Neill, a board member, led his colleagues in a prayer.

Many parents at the board's packed meeting said the policy was a backdoor route to teaching religion in schools. They implored the board members not to adopt the policy, saying it would dilute the quality of science education and make graduates of the district the laughingstock of college admission offices.

"The loud voices of the extremist few have drowned out the voice of the moderate majority," said Adele Marticke, who has two school-age children.

Paula Jackson, an elementary school parent, said, "It's deception and indoctrination."

But others urged the board to open the classroom to religious points of view.

"To deny there is a God is to stand on a building and deny there is a building," said Russell Brock, who described himself as an insurance salesman and a minister.

The fight over how to teach the origin of life has erupted in several angry spurts since John Scopes' 1925 trial for teaching evolution.

The Kansas state school board reinstated teaching evolution last year, after striking it from the science curriculum two years earlier. Still, conservatives on the board have promised to revive the issue, and a candidate for the board who opposes the teaching of evolution won a recent primary by a wide margin.

In Ohio, the state board of education is considering a science curriculum that would teach "intelligent design," which accepts some evolutionary notions about how species develop, but argues that God or a godlike creator must have been in charge of the grand plan.