State Board Creating Path for Creationism

By Sam Fulwood III

Knuckle-dragging creationists - a.k.a. proponents of "intelligent design" - are trying to crawl back into Ohio's public schools.

They reject Darwin's theory of evolution and insist that their religious beliefs are a form of science deserving serious academic study.

After much debate and international attention, the State Board of Education made clear in 2002 that state science curriculum standards were not to "mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design."

But intelligent design proponents don't listen or learn. They packed the 19-member state school board with people sympathetic to their junk science.

In September, the state school board approved a draft of the science curriculum for field-testing and public comment. That draft requires that every facet of teaching about evolution be challenged point by point - a clear invitation to talk about creationism.

If allowed to stand, this curriculum loophole would be a back-door pass for intelligent design to enter the schoolhouse.

In true Ohio tradition, the board shielded the draft from public scrutiny. Their efforts might have gone unnoticed if some eagle-eyed scientists hadn't been on watch for the creationists to pull a stunt like this.

On Tuesday, the State Board of Education is scheduled to vote on science standards that accompany grade-by-grade lesson plans.

If the board goes along with the draft curriculum, it will be a retreat from its previous decision to keep intelligent design out of the schools. It will also encourage the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based "think-tank" to continue their state-by-state jihad against real science.

The institute believes it's on a mission from God, but what it's doing is putting ideology on par with real and accepted science. The group's ultimate goal is to discredit evolution and enshrine religious instruction in public schools.

Agents for this pseudo-science are everywhere, crusading and - thank God - losing more often than they succeed. State school boards in Texas, West Virginia and Georgia have rejected recent efforts to put strange science in the classroom or on standardized tests.

But it requires vigilance to keep them at bay. If former President Jimmy Carter hadn't spoken out against it, Georgia schools Superintendent Kathy Cox might have allowed creationists to win a sneaky little victory.

Cox wanted to remove the word "evolution" from all textbooks and materials distributed in the state. She justified her reasoning for this backward move as trying to eliminate "a controversial buzzword" from the classroom.

Carter slapped her down.

"As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by . . . Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students," Carter said in a written statement. "There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat earth in order to defend our religious faith."

Ohio doesn't have a Jimmy Carter to make the flat-earth forces retreat. But that shouldn't stop concerned citizens from letting their views be known.

Ohioans - including God-fearing people like me - ought to be intelligent enough to know that it's not a sin to keep real science in the schools.

File Date: 2.7.04

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