Kansas restores evolution theory in science lessons
By The Associated Press
02.15.01
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| Mary Bingman of Gardner, Kan., left, debates evolution with Kansas State Board of Education board member Steve Abrams, who voted yesterday against revising standards to include teaching of evolution. |
TOPEKA, Kan. — Evolution was restored yesterday as a central theory in the state's science classes, ending 18 months of debate and international ridicule over how Kansas teaches the origins of man.
The state Board of Education approved the new science standards by a 7-3 vote.
"I believe now that we have science standards that the rest of the world could look up to," board member Carol Rupe said.
The new standards will replace ones adopted in 1999 that omitted references to many evolutionary concepts as well as the big-bang theory of the creation of the universe.
Evolution, a theory developed by Charles Darwin and others, holds that the Earth is billions of years old and that all life, including humans, evolved from simple forms through a process of natural selection.
Some religious fundamentalists and others object to the teaching of evolution, saying it contradicts the biblical account of creation.
The Kansas board caused an uproar two years ago when it voted 6-4 in favor of science standards that removed evolution from its central place in the teaching of biology.
At the time, Gov. Bill Graves called the board's action "terrible, tragic, embarrassing."
The 1999 standards deleted references to macroevolution — large-scale evolutionary changes that create new species — but kept references to "microevolution," or changes within species, and natural selection, the idea that advantageous traits increase in a population over time.
Last fall, however, voters ousted two of the board members who de-emphasized evolution, including the chairwoman.