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EDITORIAL: State School Board Should Bar Religion From Science Classes

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 January 2006, 21:00 CST

By The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jan. 10--The State Board of Education is meeting in Columbus this week, and now would be the perfect time to rewrite the state science standards to remove the implication that evolution theory is questionable and that intelligent design is scientific.

After intelligent design, which is thinly disguised creationism, lost big in a Pennsylvania federal court last month, it's unclear whether Ohio's standards would pass legal muster. The circumstances surrounding any case against Ohio would be different from those in the lawsuit against the Dover, Pa., school board.

But why wait for a court challenge to find out? While not mandating the teaching of intelligent design, Ohio's current standards leave the door open for local school boards to introduce supernatural explanations into science classrooms.

It's misleading for the standards to require that Ohio students describe how "scientists today continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The not-so-subtle suggestion is that evolution is on shakier scientific ground than all other theories, when really, a theory is as close to a fact as one gets in science.

Since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, an overwhelming amount of evidence has backed up his basic premise. It's the underpinning of all biology and as much a fact as the theory of gravity and the theory that germs cause disease.

Supporters of the standards are technically right when they say that the board doesn't force the teaching of intelligent design. In fact, a disclaimer says that the state does not "mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design." But the board's mention of intelligent design has the effect of legitimizing it as an alternative explanation.

The board should do Ohio children a giant favor and, at the same time, spare taxpayers the risk of costly litigation. Drop this bogus standard and its "disclaimer."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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