Minnesota teacher wants to debunk evolution in science classes

The Associated Press

10.18.99

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	Rodney LeVake, science teacher and football coach at Faribault (Minn.) Senior High School, leads players in a moment of silence before game Oct. 14. LeVake has sued school district for stopping him from teaching a course in which he would point out scientific evidence against evolution.

FARIBAULT, Minn. — Rodney LeVake, science teacher, says believing in evolution is as absurd as thinking the Earth is the center of the universe.

LeVake is speaking over apple pie in a restaurant in this quiet southern Minnesota town of 20,000 that has become the scene of the latest flare-up in the debate over teaching evolution in high school.

"I'd like an evolutionist to look me in the eye," he said, "and tell me one thing about evolution that is true."

Though LeVake calls evolution a godless philosophy, he told local school officials that he wanted to teach the subject, anyway, to 10th-graders in biology class at Faribault Senior High School. Without conveying his own religious views of creation, he said, he hoped to point out what he calls overwhelming scientific evidence against evolution.

He was assigned instead to teach freshman science, which does not study the theory. LeVake said he felt this was a deliberate move that violated his right to religious freedom, and the American Center for Law and Justice, a religious-rights advocacy group, agreed to represent him in a civil lawsuit against the school district.

The dispute grew from there. Earlier this month, Jay Sekulow, the group's chief legal counsel, charged at the Christian Coalition's annual meeting in Washington that LeVake had been a victim of "educational McCarthyism."

What the school views as a curriculum issue, LeVake is calling a fight to protect his freedom of religion, conscience and expression, as well as his academic freedom.

The question becomes: How much leeway does a teacher have to express controversial views in the classroom? And how far do the school board's rights extend in setting the district's academic agenda?

States take up the issue
LeVake sees himself not as a renegade, but as part of a movement of educators skeptical of evolution. This summer the Kansas Board of Education passed new testing standards, minimizing the importance of evolution. And earlier this month, Kentucky's Education Department deleted the word "evolution" from its standards, replacing it with "change over time."

The New Mexico Board of Education went the opposite way when it said teachers may no longer teach creationism alongside evolution. The state education standards had required teachers to "present the evidence for and against" evolution.

Other recent disputes have arisen in Iowa, Illinois, Washington, California, Nebraska, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado.

In the past, critics of evolution focused on getting equal time for creationism in the classroom — a strategy the Supreme Court rejected in the 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard, when it struck down a Louisiana statute that barred public schools from teaching evolution theory unless accompanied by instruction in "creation science."

Now the goal is to debunk evolution as a baseless theory, says Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which supports teaching evolution and has provided material to the Faribault school district.

The courts have made it hard to teach creation science, Scott says, so "If you can't ban evolution, you can present the evidence against evolution."

The Faribault case, Scott says, is significant because it's the first time "evidence against evolution" has been directly addressed in a court case.

LeVake says his strategy was all his own.

"It was my dream to be a biology teacher," said the teacher who has a master's degree in science education and also coaches football at the high school. He realized that dream two years ago, he said, when he was hired to replace retiring biology teacher Virgil Luehrs.

But teaching evolution would be tricky, he thought. Personally, he believed that God created the world in six days, and that accepting Charles Darwin's view of species' gradual change meant ruling out God. But Luehrs, he said, reassured him.

"There were about three chapters on evolution, and Virgil said: 'Well you don't have to teach them. I don't.'," LeVake recalled.

Luehrs remembers it differently. "I taught it as it was in the book," he said. "I didn't spend a lot of time on it."

LeVake said in his complaint that he had planned to cover evolution his first year teaching biology, and ran out of time because of a shortened school term.

But Sandy Ellison, a former student who remembers the class fondly, said that LeVake announced the first day that he would not teach evolution.

"I don't know if he gave a reason," she said. She remembers that he read without comment passages on evolution throughout the book.

"He glossed over it," she said.

Ann Goering, a lawyer representing the school district, said school administrators were unaware of his religious views, but LeVake said he didn't hide his faith and feelings about evolution from his colleagues.

"He was openly professing his Christianity," said Charles Madson, a retired English teacher who says LeVake was well-regarded by colleagues. "He would argue things from a fundamentalist point of view."

Making a case against evolution
School officials mentioned LeVake's attitude toward evolution for the first time in an April meeting with the curriculum director and science teachers, according to LeVake.

Goering says school officials cannot comment on the meeting or LeVake's performance as a teacher unless he signs a release. Although his lawyer approved doing so, LeVake did not immediately sign.

LeVake remembers being asked at the meeting how he could question evolution. "The curriculum director asked me if I'd ever mentioned God or the Bible in class. And she said, 'Do your students know you're a Christian?' I said, 'I would think they would know because of the way I act.'"

In an effort to explain how he would teach evolution, LeVake drew up a six-page document which, he said, relied heavily on biochemist Michael Denton's book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.

LeVake wrote: "The process of evolution itself is not only impossible from a biochemical, anatomical, and physiological standpoint, but the theory of evolution has no evidence to show it actually occurred."

Goering says the board cannot comment on the contents. Scott, of the science education center, calls it bad science.

"It's anomaly-mongering. He takes a bunch of observations out of context, and he gets a lot of them wrong," Scott said. "He misstates the implications and uses this as evidence that evolution is all washed up. He completely ignores an enormous number of observations that can be explained only by inference of common ancestry.

"If kids get a curriculum like this and think it represents scholarly consensus, they're in for a major shock when they learn that evolution is the organizing principle of biology and at the college level is completely noncontroversial."

Bob Shaw, president of the Minnesota Science Teachers Association, agrees: "If most biologists feel evolution is a solid fundamental concept throughout biology, why would you want to refute it if you teach science?"

After the school assigned LeVake to teach freshman science, he filed suit, seeking more than $50,000 in damages. That troubled some faculty members, said Madson, the retired English teacher. "You wonder if outside influences were pushing the issue," he said.

What did students think? "Most kids thought Mr. LeVake was right," said Ryan Cort, 15, outside the sprawling, yellow-brick high school.

"Most kids don't even care," said his friend Mimi Hurd, 14.

"He wanted to teach evolution as a theory and creationism as a theory or fact," said 10th-grader Nate Paquette. "I think he wanted to teach it as fact."

Officials with the Center for Law and Justice say they have turned down many cases involving creationism. But lawyer Francis Manion thought LeVake's case was different.

"I was satisfied that what we were dealing with was a clear case of discrimination based on religion," Manion said. "They should not have assumed that because he didn't believe in a theory he couldn't teach it."

LeVake deserves a chance to prove he can do the subject justice, he says.

Goering, the school board's lawyer, denies religious freedom is at issue, saying instead the case is about whether a teacher has the power to override the schools board's decision in setting the curriculum and making evolution the unifying theme of 10th-grade biology.

In an interview, LeVake hesitated when asked whether, before a classroom, he could make the case for evolution as supported by leading scientists.

"I don't know," he said. "There isn't a whole lot of evidence that supports the theory."

LeVake said that while he would not teach creationism, he wasn't sure whether he'd answer students who asked what he believes.

Not answering would send a clear message, said Shaw. "When kids ask you a question and you don't answer it," he said, "you've answered it."