Ohio—first US state to teach ‘intelligent design’?

8 March, 2002

Ohio may become the first US state to include ‘intelligent design’ in its science standards.  A lot depends on the outcome of a meeting on 11 March 2002.

A panel of experts will be discussing the merits of including intelligent design in Ohio’s state standards.  (Intelligent design is the belief that the ‘irreducible complexity’ of certain biological features, such as the human eye, is evidence for a designer and against blind naturalistic processes.[1])  The panel discussion, scheduled for 11 March, is sponsored by the standards committee of the Ohio board of education.[2] 

Theatrics on 2 March—a portent of things to come

Not surprisingly, evolutionists are gathering their forces.  On 2 March they invited in two of their most formidable combatants—Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University and Kenneth Miller of Brown University.  Cleveland’s prestigious Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) sponsored the public presentation, called ‘Evolution and God: why design theory isn’t science.’

The purpose of the meeting was not an open debate weighing the merits of intelligent design, but a one-sided excoriation of the view, preparing the troops for a new campaign of creationist-bashing.  Gould was sick and could not come, but Miller—joined by physicist Lawrence Krauss of CWRU—tossed enough barbs at creationists to please their followers in the audience. ‘There is nothing to debate,’ said Dr Krauss.  He let the crowd know that it was ‘an incredible waste of [his] time to talk about things that are obvious.’[3] 

Stay tuned for the ‘great non-debate’ on 11 March

The CWRU meeting was a prelude to the upcoming panel discussion sponsored by the Ohio board of education.  The topic: ‘Should intelligent design be included in Ohio's draft science academic content standards?’  (For background on Ohio’s science standards, see Creationism battle heats up again in US public schools; the unbending, pro-evolution slant of Ohio’s first draft, released in December 2001, sparked a firestorm and calls for revision.)   

The meeting will not be a debate.  Four panelists will address a series of questions, prepared ahead of time by the standards committee.  The public is allowed to watch the proceedings, but no questions are permitted.

The proposed panel includes two leading evolutionists and two advocates of intelligent design.  The evolutionists are—do these names sound familiar?—Dr Kenneth Miller and Dr Lawrence Krauss. 

Kenneth Miller is a rising star in the fight against creationism.  When it comes to debates, evolutionists like to trot him out because, unlike sharp-tongued humanists like Richard Dawkins, Dr Miller says that he is a Christian.  His suave manner and eloquent words make him ‘the most superficially convincing protagonist against creationism’ that Dr Henry Morris has ever debated.[4]  Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution was a hit in many circles.  (See AiG’s recent review, Miller’s mangled arguments).

Dr Krauss is a widely published author.  His most recent work Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth . . . and Beyond is being converted into a five-segment Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) national TV series.

The two panelists who will defend intelligent design are Dr Stephen C. Meyer, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College (Washington), and Dr Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.  Wells is the author of Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong.

Expect a media circus

The 11 March panel discussion will take place at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, 300 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio, 8:30–11:00 am.[5]  The crowd is expected to be quite large, including a number of journalists.  Two opposing citizens groups most likely will be there.  On one side is Science Excellence for All Ohioans (SEAO), calling for ‘fair, reasonable, and unbiased standards.’  This group has proposed a series of changes to mollify the problem areas in Ohio’s proposed science standards.[6]  On the other side is the recently formed group Ohio Citizens for Science (OCS), a parallel organization to Kansas Citizens for Science, which curbed the efforts to change science standards in Kansas.

Opponents of intelligent design have apparently settled on their strategy.  Like the scientists who met on 2 March at CWRU, they will repeat the mantra ‘this isn’t a debate about science.’  They also will resort to scare tactics, warning of ‘another Kansas’ (a reference to the media attacks that Kansas endured in 1999 when its board of education tried to mildly de-emphasize evolution in its science standards).  Critics warn that any compromise with intelligent design will convert Ohio into a backwater state, scaring away potential business and qualified scientists.[7]

This whole debate is a sad testimony about America’s departure from its Christian roots.  Who would have ever imagined that giving teachers liberty to question evolution—and to offer alternatives—would generate such controversy?  While Answers in Genesis believes that teachers should have the freedom and encouragement to critique evolution, we recognize the danger of making it compulsory for teachers to present alternative theories (imagine the potential mockery of the Biblical position). 

Christian teachers once had the freedom to speak openly about the true history, geology and biology proclaimed in Genesis.  Now they can’t even question evolution in school.  The battle to get ‘intelligent design’ into Ohio’s standards may weaken the evolutionists’ strangle-hold on public education, but it’s a far cry from giving students the true picture of two worldviews in conflict.

[7] The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) sent around a notice to its members in Ohio, asking them to attend the 2 March meeting at CWRU and to ‘circulate it to friends, colleagues, and students.’  The notice warned that ‘the forces of anti-evolution are afoot once again in Ohio’ and so ‘the ASCB is trying to prevent those who would demean the value of an Ohio science education, making it more difficult to attract scientists and scientific enterprises from other parts of the world’ (see http://www.ascb.org/newsroom/evolution.html).  In his speech on 2 March, Dr Krauss warned that the controversy threatened Ohio’s economic survival, pointing out that several corporations reconsidered relocating to Kansas as a result of the controversy there.

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Creationism battle heats up again in US schools

By Mike Matthews, AiG-US

February 8, 2002

Skirmishes continue to break out in the US over science education in public schools. The latest struggles focus on state education standards for the teaching of science. Boards of education across the nation are now ‘looking over their shoulders,’ watching to see what happens to the next state that gets in the creation/evolution limelight. The spotlight is now on Ohio.

Ohio, a relatively quiet Midwestern state far from the previous battlegrounds of Louisiana,¹ Kansas² and Minnesota,³ is host to the next round in the creation/evolution debate. Pro-evolutionists have squared off against advocates of ‘intelligent design’–the latter argue that students need to be taught the weaknesses of evolutionary theory and understand alternative explanations of the facts (e.g. the complexity of life shows intelligent design).

Background

The buildup to these recent confrontations goes back to the Reagan Administration’s explosive report Nation at Risk (1983), which revealed the appalling condition of public education in the United States. In the aftermath, educators began scrambling to make academic improvements. Their proposals centered on raising the standards that students are expected to achieve. (Critics of this approach argue–with some justification–that raising test standards does little to improve the quality of actual classroom instruction; put another way, instructors ‘teach to the test’).

Although Presidents Bush and Clinton tried to impose national standards on all public school students, their efforts were blocked; and the war over standards defaulted to the fifty states.

Science standards are among the prickliest issues. To educate what they would call first-class students, many of the nation’s influential educators argue that well-informed students must be able to explain the world from an evolutionary framework. Yet, unlike all other Western nations, the United States has a large majority of citizens who reject this anti-Christian framework (see Teaching Creation and Evolution in Public Schools). Many parents resent bureaucrats forcing their children to accept evolution and to answer test questions accordingly.

Some states have tried to avoid the issue altogether, either by keeping the word ‘evolution’ out of their standards or by talking around the topic (see Evolution out of the curriculum, but in the tests). To combat these compromise tactics, secular humanists produced a condemning ‘report card’ on the states, ranking them based on the evolutionary content in their standards⁴ (see AiG’s interpretation of this pseudo-study in Who’s really pushing ‘bad science’?). Thirteen states flunked the test, encouraging red-faced legislators to initiate changes in the standards.

Surely not in Ohio

That’s where the story picks up in Ohio.

Ohio was one of the states that flunked the report card. A bill, passed in 2000 without any popular support, was designed to restructure the Ohio board of education and, among other things, push through a pro-evolution agenda in the state’s science standards.

A move to develop new science content standards had already begun in 1997 under the direction of the Ohio board of education. The writing team first met in June 2001, with plans to allow public comments in the spring of 2002, followed by final revisions and official adoption of the standards by the state board in December 2002.

A number of creationists in Ohio, however, were upset when they discovered that the first draft of the standards was filled with evolutionary content, without any allowance for alternative explanations of life’s origins or even a questioning of evolution. In the uproar, the state board held a special meeting on 4 February 2002 to investigate the process that the writing team (and advisory committee) used to draft the science standards.

The next draft, to be open to public comments, is set to be released this April.

Meanwhile, as educators were tackling this issue, Ohio legislators entered the fray, proposing a couple of education bills in the state House. One would give the state’s House and Senate an opportunity to review the science standards and make changes.⁵ The other bill would require (reasonably, we might add) that instructional programs ‘encourage the presentation of scientific evidence objectively and disclose the historical nature of origins of life science and any material assumptions on which the explanation is based.’⁶ It goes on to say,

(You can download the most current draft of Ohio’s science standards at http://webapp1.ode.state.oh.us/science_comment/ )

AiG encourages all Ohioans to voice their concerns, as appropriate. Yet every Christian–nationally and internationally–must recognize the significance of this debate. The issues are the same everywhere, and bad precedents are sure to be widely imitated and then set in stone as law.

As the origins debate continues to rage, Christians need to see the significant drawbacks to forcing public-school instructors to teach creation. AiG has been clear about its position: ‘While we don’t support compulsion to teach the creation position (imagine how unbelieving teachers would distort our position), it would be good if teachers had the legislative freedom and encouragement to present critiques of evolution and discuss alternatives’ (from a commentary on the failed effort to include a ‘balanced treatment’ clause in the new US federal education bill, titled Honest science ‘left behind’ in US education bill).

Such a position would provide true academic freedom in a public education system that currently and exclusively indoctrinates young people in the worldview of evolution.

References

1. Louisiana tried to put a disclaimer in textbooks about evolution, and other states wanted to follow suit. But the US Supreme Court ruled against the state. See US Supreme Court’s evolution ruling reveals hostility toward Christianity.
2. Kansas’ board of education decided to limit references to evolution in its science standards (but not to limit its teaching in the classroom). The media’s campaign of disinformation led to the ouster of the board and revision of the standards. Confusion in Kansas–evolution not outlawed! and Kansas to can controversial curriculum!
3. A biology teacher in Minnesota simply tried to teach his students some of the common errors in evolution, without trying to teach creation. But the school district demoted him to a basic science class, and the US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. Supreme Court: Don’t teach evolution difficulties!
4. The September 2000 report Good Science, bad science: Teaching evolution in the states is posted on the Web.
5. Ohio House Bill 484, Regular Session 2001-2002.
6. For the full text, click here.