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Anna Harvey, a bright, straight-A sophomore in Lawrence, Kansas, raised her hand in biology class one day in early 1999. "Mr. Roth, when are we going to learn about creationism?"Stan Roth exploded. "When are you going to stop believing that crap your parents teach you?" Anna was stunned, and within five months Roth was removed from the classroom. Some say the irascible high-school teacher was about to be fired anyway; others wonder if it was mere coincidence that, three months after he was forced to retire, the Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to de-emphasize the speculative aspects of evolution& amp;mdash;a move that sparked a national debate.Other states reacted swiftly. In Kentucky, education officials replaced the word evolution, which had been added to the guidelines for the first time last spring, with an earlier locution: change over time. The New Mexico Board of Education went the other way, revoking 1996 standards requiring teachers to "present the evidence for and against" evolution, and reverting to a one-sided presentation. Oklahoma's State Textbook Committee inserted a disclaimer into science books stating that evolution is controversial (identical to a disclaimer in Alabama textbooks)& amp;mdash;a decision later struck down by the attorney general. Kanawha County, West Virginia, voted down a resolution permitting teachers to present "theories for and against the theories of evolution." Similar brushfires continue burning in other states. Small wonder that the Associated Press voted the Kansas controversy the state's top story of 1999.Oddly, similar controversies had erupted in several other places not long before& amp;mdash;California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington. Yet these rarely appeared in the national media. Why was Kansas different? Why did scathing editorials appear in big-city newspapers across the country, and even overseas? Why did national organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) target Kansas?The answer is that the debate has escalated to new levels on both sides, and Kansas was a microcosm of those counterforces at work. A closer examination of the Kansas controversy gives a good picture of the debate as it stands today.

Consider, for example, the way events began. Overheated headlines suggest it all started when Bible-thumping creationists tried to "foist [their] own religious beliefs on the secular educational system of an entire state" (to quote syndicated columnist Lars-Erik Nelson). But in fact, the initiative came from the other side.Events began in 1995, when the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued national standards calling for "dramatic changes" in the way public schools teach science. The Kansas Commissioner of Education and the Board of Education appointed a committee to bring state guidelines into conformity with the standards, as many other states had already done. The new guidelines greatly increased classroom coverage of evolution, even elevating it from a theory to a "Unifying Concept" of science (along with such things as "measurement" and "evidence").That was too much for some members of the state board of education. They were willing to increase the teaching of microevolution& amp;mdash;testable, observable variations caused by adaptation, natural selection, and genetic drift. But macroevolution& amp;mdash;the "particles-to-people" variety& amp;mdash;they regarded as speculative. The board voted to remove macroevolution from state tests, giving local school districts the freedom to set their own standards for teaching the subject.In short, the board did not forbid the teaching of anything. On the contrary, it actually increased coverage of topics related to evolution, though it did not go as far as the scientific establishment wished. For that minor act of intellectual independence, board members were castigated mercilessly. A Washington Post article called them "pinheads," certain to be "eliminated through natural selection." In the London Evening Standard, A. N. Wilson fumed about the "stupidity and insularity" of America's heartland. Science published a letter proposing that universities refuse to accept credits from Kansas high school biology courses. John Rennie, editor in chief of Scientific American, urged college admissions officials to "make it clear that. & amp;#hellip; the qualifications of any students applying from that state in the future will have to be considered very carefully." In other words, punish parents by excluding their children.Three national groups (the AAAS, the NAS, and the National Science Teachers Association) revoked permission to use copyright materials, forcing the board to tinker with the standards' wording to avoid copyright infringements. On the cultural front, the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City swiftly revised its schedule to run Inherit the Wind, the famous play that continues to shape the way most Americans view the creation-evolution controversy.

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May 22 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6