Kansas cuts evolution from curriculum.

In a dramatic revision of science education in the state, the Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 last Wednesday to remove almost all mention of evolution from its required curriculum. If the decision stands, one of science's central concepts will be cut from state assessment tests at all grade levels. It will become optional for teachers to cover the origins and history of life on Earth, as well as principles that require Earth to be older than creationists believe. These would include theories of the Big Bang, geologic time, and plate tectonics.

Although other states, including Nebraska, New Mexico, Alabama, and Arizona, have taken steps to curtail the teaching of evolution in recent years, none has gone as far as Kansas, says Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education in El Cerrito, Calif.

"These are some of the most thorough changes we've seen, across multiple curriculum areas," Matsumura says. Although a 27-member science committee wrote a draft curriculum containing evolution, the Kansas board established the new policy when it removed "pages and pages of material" that the committee had recommended for statewide science tests, she adds.

According to Tom E Willis of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America in Cleveland, Mo., which helped the board change the curriculum, because evolution cannot be reproduced in a laboratory, it should not be taught "as though it is the only theory believed by sane individuals." He adds, "I absolutely feel that [the new curriculum] would improve science and would improve the honesty with which it is taught."

"We are talking about a complete misunderstanding of how the sciences are integrated," University of California, Berkeley paleontologist Kevin Padian says of the board's action. "It's so absurd to pretend that you can rope off one part of science--especially one such as evolution, which is the central organizing theory of biology--and think that it won't have ramifications."

Many scientists fear that without being required to teach evolution, teachers may bow to local pressures to skip it, leaving students ill prepared for college. "In a lot of small, rural Kansas towns, the science teacher is the most trained person there, so it's just that one person against an entire community, sometimes," says Brad Williamson, a high school biology teacher in Olathe, Kan.

The new curriculum may be short-lived, however. Four of the board members who voted against evolution will be up for reelection in November. Many scientists hope that voters will oust the four and elect a new board to restore evolution to the curriculum.

"There's a great outrage in the state right now," says biologist Helen M. Alexander of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. "The governor came out against [the new curriculum]. The presidents of the universities came out against it. In the long run, I would be surprised if it stayed." Even so, she says, if teachers skirt the subject of evolution, "the net effect is that children won't be exposed to it, and the decision will have long-term effects on science education."

Following the decision, the American Geophysical Union called for scientists to become more involved in their local school districts. Matsumura agrees that scientists are often best equipped to fight efforts to pull evolution out of the classroom. She says, "People talk about the truth winning out in the end, but truth does not win all by itself. It wins with committed exponents."