Remember the Kansas School Board decision to delete evolution from the state science curriculum? Here’s an old CNN story on the decision, and here’s a CBS News story from 2005 on it’s second act, after the state revised the decision in the wake of national denunciation and ridicule.
Anybody who thinks that the battle ended there should look at what’s going on in Texas. Here’s a story from today’s Wall Street Journal, entitled “Texas School Board Set to Vote on Challenge to Evolution.” The Board plans to vote this week on a revised science curriculum, with the status of the theory of evolution the central issue. The debate has been brewing for several months, as this New York Times story from January indicates. Although social conservatives on the Board didn’t get all they wanted that day, this one looks like a toss-up.
The person leading the social-conservative position, which doubts evolutionary theory, is Dr. Don McLeroy. The WSJ story relates his position on the science:
“Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago.”
Dr. McLeroy is a dentist.
On Wednesday, the Board will begin taking public testimony for three days on the issue, and one can expect that Intelligent Design theorists will be in line. Back in May 2005 in Kansas, scientists refused to participate in public hearings on the issue (see here). The WSJ story doesn’t mention any plans by the scientific community, but if they don’t appear, it may affect the outcome. Right now, the 15-member Texas board has seven social conservatives on it. “They are opposed by a bipartisan group of seven,” the story says, “often joined by an eighth board member considered a swing vote, that support teaching evolution without caveats.”
The pressures are rising. There are three Republicans in the bipartisan faction, and the Republican Party in Texas has passed a resolution pushing them to change sides. “One of the three,” the story continues, “former social-studies teacher Pat Hardy, said she has received thousands of impassioned calls and emails.” She pledges to stand firm, but doesn’t know how her two colleagues will hold up.
