Designing policy

The Ohio school board is the latest to separate church and state in the teaching of science.

The Ohio Board of Education has joined with Pennsylvania in dropping any requirement that students be taught about alternatives to the theory of evolution. We can hope this seeps through to Kansas and that November elections will alter the makeup of the Kansas Board of Education, which has supported the teaching of evolution options such as intelligent design.

Boards in Kansas, New Mexico and Minnesota currently are opposing the process of teaching evolution on its own and leaving religious philosophies to other venues. South Carolina and Michigan also are considering such an approach.

But three years after it first encouraged science teachers to raise doubts about the core values of evolution, the Ohio board recently voted 11-4 to reverse that stand. Since 2002, Ohio’s 10th-graders have been required to learn how “scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” Oddly, the concept of evolution was the only scientific discipline specified for critical study and analysis.

Ohio judges had noted a federal judge’s pro-evolution ruling in December in Dover, Pa. The Dover judge declared it was illegal for the school board to require teachers to introduce intelligent design, described as the concept that life is too complex to have evolved by random mutation. Ohioans condemned one lesson plan slated to train 10th-graders to critically analyze evolution. Several experts said the lesson plan was grounded in religious accounts of the world’s creation rather than in science.

Clearly, Ohio’s board has taken steps to rectify what it sees as a bad decision for its schools. No similar reversal is being considered by the six-person majority on the Kansas Board of Education.

If Kansas residents disagree with that judgment they will have an opportunity to express that opinion at the ballot box later this year. Four members of the Kansas board’s conservative majority are up for re-election; most already have announced opposition. It’s up to voters to examine the candidates and make their wishes known.