Moderates win latest battle on teaching evolution

Published on Thursday 3 August 2006 01:03

CONSERVATIVE Republicans who pushed for criticism of the theory of evolution in Kansas classrooms lost control of the state school board as moderates scored a narrow victory in an election this week.

The shake-up came after the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 in November to approve new standards that science groups said were a product of religious zealotry because they challenged Darwin's theory.

The Kansas standards, meant to be guidelines for teachers across the state, were seen as a victory for the "intelligent design" movement, which holds that the world is so complex that a higher authority - God - must have created it.

Teachers and scientists joined with moderate and liberal political action groups to campaign against the conservatives and return to teaching what they consider conventional science.

With more than 90 per cent of the votes counted early yesterday, moderates had gained two seats and secured a third on the ten-member board, pushing conservatives - two held their seats - into the minority. "We're going to have a new majority on the school board," said Boo Tyson, the executive director of the MAINstream Coalition, which helped to fund the campaign against the conservatives.

"The people of Kansas have said they want their school board focused on something else than this hot-button issue."

The Kansas vote is the latest development in the renewed debate in the United States over evolution, which has been simmering since the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Tennessee 80 years ago, in which John Scopes was convicted for teaching the theory of evolution. His conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

The Kansas standards say there is a lack of evidence or natural explanation for the genetic code, charge that fossil records are inconsistent with evolutionary theory and say certain evolutionary explanations "often reflect ... inferences from indirect or circumstantial evidence".

The Kansas school board has shifted repeatedly on the issue, with the conservatives regaining power last year and pushing through the anti- evolution standards.