Controversy Continues Over Teaching Evolution
By Martha McCarthy, Ph.D.

More than 75 years after John Scopes was convicted for teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee law, such instruction remains controversial. Indeed, about 20 states considered anti-evolution measures in the 1920s and in the 1990s!

After the Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law barring instruction in evolution in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), some proponents of the Genesis account pursued different strategies. They pressed for disclaimers in texts and curriculum guides, stipulating that evolution is a theory and cannot be taught as fact, and they had some success in this regard. Also, they argued that the Biblical account deserves equal treatment whenever evolution is taught, as both are theories. The Supreme Court addressed this argument in 1987, striking down a Louisiana “equal-time” statute in Edwards v. Aguillard. The Court reasoned that the intent of the law was to advance religious doctrine in science classes and not to protect academic freedom as asserted.

Given the Supreme Court’s position, those challenging evolution have recently focused on political remedies. The Kansas State Board of Education attracted national attention in 1999 when it rejected proposed science standards emphasizing evolution and adopted an alternative set eliminating the requirement that local school districts teach or test students about evolution. The standards removed any references to evolution or the earth being billions of years old, but did not actually ban teaching evolution, and most Kansas school districts continued to teach this subject.

Developments in Kansas received the most publicity, but the Kentucky Education Department deleted the word “evolution” from the state science curriculum and replaced it with the phrase “change over time.” Other states, such as Alabama and Nebraska, changed their policies to allow for discussion of theories that challenge evolution. But the New Mexico State Board in 1999 voted to endorse the teaching of evolution as the only approach to the origin of life in the statewide science curriculum, which was a direct response to the contrary action in Kansas.

And success of anti-evolution forces in Kansas was short lived. In the 2000 state board election, there was a shift in power to create a moderate majority that approved new science standards reinstating the study of evolution. More recently, a Colorado local board of education voted that a charter school had breached its contract when it adopted a policy prohibiting teaching human evolution. Also, the Supreme Court declined to review a Minnesota court’s decision that teachers cannot refrain from teaching evolution simply because they have religious objections.

The newest argument is that instruction in evolution should be augmented by the theory of “intelligent design,” which denies natural selection but recognizes that the earth is older than stipulated in the Bible. The Ohio State Board of Education is considering the claim that the state science standards should include intelligent design, but critics view this as another ploy to insert theism in public schools. Although current policies favor evolution, controversies over this topic are likely to continue, and possibly the issue will still be unresolved a century after the famous Scopes “monkey trial.”#

Martha McCarthy, Ph.D. is the Chancellor Professor, School of Education, Indiana Univ.

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