Articles

'Evolution' Back In Teaching Plan

Mary MacDonald, AJC Staff
February 6, 2004

State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said Thursday she will recommend restoring the word "evolution" to Georgia's science teaching standards and apologized for taking it out.

But she did not commit to reinstating other deleted national teaching standards in the biology curriculum, which scientists say are needed if Georgia students are to fully understand evolution.

The state's proposed revision of the middle and high school science curriculum triggered a furious backlash from scientists, parents and politicians because, among other things, it replaced "evolution" with the phrase "biological changes over time."

Scientists were further angered when Cox Ñ the state's highest elected education official Ñ seemed to advocate the teaching of "intelligent design," an idea that life came about through a planned sequence by a higher being.

The decision to strike references to the word "evolution," for which Cox took responsibility, attracted national attention and made Georgia look foolish, critics said.

On Thursday, Cox said she had misjudged the situation. "I made the decision to remove the word 'evolution' from the draft of the proposed biology curriculum in an effort to avoid controversy that would prevent people from reading the substance of the document itself," Cox said in a statement. "Instead, a greater controversy ensued."

Cox's staff estimated she had received nearly 1,000 comments about the curriculum, most of it directed at biology, and almost all critical of the proposed change.

Rebukes came from the National Science Teachers Association, Gov. Sonny Perdue and former President Jimmy Carter, who said he was embarrassed for Georgia.

'Right thing to do'

The superintendent's reversal was not prompted by any one particular critic, said spokesman Kirk Englehardt.

The governor learned of the switch Wednesday night, when Cox called him, said Derrick Dickey, a Perdue spokesman. Through Dickey, Perdue said: "It was the right thing to do."

Cox said Thursday she never intended to decree what should or should not be in the biology curriculum, which goes before the state Board of Education in May as part of an overhaul of the state's teaching standards.

Ultimately, Cox said in an interview, the controversy may do more good than harm. "If we really finally kind of settle this issue statewide, then people can be confident that this is what the state of Georgia wants us to do in our science classrooms," she said.

An advisory panel of teachers and science experts who had worked on the science standards during the past year will reconsider the biology curriculum next month. The same group already had recommended that evolution be taught thoroughly, five of the members said.

The initial recommendation sent to the superintendent included the word "evolution" and the national teaching standards prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the panelists said.

Statements deleted

Portions of the national standards that were deleted in Cox's proposal include a detailed explanation of natural selection Ñ how organisms with inherited advantages are more likely to survive and reproduce.

Other deleted statements included: "Life on Earth is thought to have begun as simple, one-celled organisms about 4 billion years ago. During the first 2 billion years, only single-cell microorganisms existed, but once cells with nuclei developed about a billion years ago, increasingly complex multicellular organisms evolved."

James Rutherford, the former director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's benchmark program, worked for the state advisory board as a consultant. Rutherford said Cox needs to follow her decision to restore evolution with also returning to the national standards, which scientists recommend so that students will understand the concept of evolution. "It gets us on the track, but it's not sufficient," Rutherford said of Cox's reversal on use of the word "evolution."

He said he spoke with Cox before the science curriculum draft was released, and had tried to persuade her to include the complete approach to evolution.

"I said, 'Kathy, I'm trying to help you. I think you now ought to do this right,'" Rutherford said. "She was saying to me, 'Well, let's see what the response is.' Well, she's had a response."

Across the state, biology professors and science teachers described Cox's change of mind as a move in the right direction. But given her earlier description of evolution as a "buzzword that causes a lot of negative reaction," professors say public school teachers will need to rely on a strong, specific curriculum.

Critics cite 'dogma'

The curriculum does not specify that Georgia teachers will discuss "intelligent design," which last week Cox called an alternative "scientific theory," or any other view of the origin of life.

But some scientists have found fault in a section of the curriculum initially approved by Cox that would seem to allow public school teachers to introduce other ideas to explain the evolution of living things.

Several professors said Thursday they remain disturbed by comments made in recent days by Perdue and Cox that seemed to back the teaching of alternatives to evolution in science classes.

"It's great that she put the word back. She needs to put the science back now and get the dogma out," said Sarah Pallas, a Georgia State University associate biology professor. "I'm referring to her and Perdue's comments about intelligent design, about balance, and alternate theories."

On Saturday, Perdue said he wanted balanced evolution instruction. "What concerns me is that many times you'll have teachers in the classroom with impressionable students who go beyond that and teach it as a proven fact, and then go beyond that and ridicule students who would believe anything other than the theory of evolution," Perdue said. "I think we need to have academic freedom, but we need academic balance as well."

Ben Freed, a lecturer in the anthropology department at Emory University, said Georgia will have a world-class science curriculum only if the state adopts the national standards.

"It wasn't just a word that was deleted," he said. "Those [national science standards] are impeccable. ... It's done with the best available science. If we're going to be competing with other states, if we want our students to flourish at the college level, we need to at least stick to those guidelines."

Staff writers Patti Ghezzi and Dana Tofig contributed to this article. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.