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Intelligent Design Creating a Debate ; Maine Educators Watch As Other States Consider Plans to Teach More Than the Theory of Evolution.

Posted on: Monday, 19 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

Ask high school students rushing out of school at the end of the day to describe evolutionary theory, and you will get a lot of hemming and hawing.

Ask what intelligent design theory is, and you get a lot of blank looks.

Only one of six juniors and seniors in an informal poll in the hallways of Cheverus High School in Portland was familiar with intelligent design, or ID, as it is popularly nicknamed.

"The world is designed by some intelligent entity," said Ben LaVerriere, 15, a junior from Biddeford, the sole randomly selected student who could identify what is the center of a debate now raging in other parts of the country.

While ID has yet to surface on the Maine political landscape, more than 20 states are considering proposals that would make room for more than evolutionary theory in public school science classrooms.

The Dover, Pa., school district is now in court for directing earlier this year that intelligent design be taught to its students. President Bush endorsed the idea of teaching intelligent design last month. This infuriated scientists who say intelligent design, unlike evolutionary theory, is not a tested scientific theory but a new angle on the effort of some religious fundamentalists to introduce biblical creationism into public schools.

According to evolutionary theory, species of plants and animals develop from other species by acquiring and passing on novel traits from generation to generation. Unlike creationists, who believe that the world was created in six days 10,000 years ago, proponents of intelligent design believe that living organisms are so complex they can be accounted for only by a supernatural designer.

In Maine, science teachers say they are watching the national debate and continue to grapple with the issue every day in their own classrooms. They take different approaches in dealing with religious beliefs that may conflict with the science they teach. Some make a point of raising that point in the classrooms, while others say they avoid it.

Mark Smith, a biology teacher at the private Catholic Cheverus High School, says he does discuss creationism in his classes, that it is based on the Bible and faith. "And it is not scientific theory," Smith said.

Garry Fox, a science teacher at Portland High, says science teachers at his school stage annual debates, with students assigned to take the position of creationists and others of scientists. "Our position is you can believe whatever you want," he said, but personal belief does not excuse a student from learning evolutionary theory.

Others take a different approach. George Powers, treasurer for the Maine Science Teachers Association, says creationism is kept out of the classroom at Old Town High School, where he teaches chemistry. But in the science class he teaches at Husson College, he presents different theories of the origins of life, including evolution, creationism, that life might have arrived from outer space, and even the theory that extraterrestrials created life on Earth.

A 2000 Fordham Foundation report that graded states on how well they teach evolution named Maine as one of 13 states to receive a failing grade. That did not surprise some science educators, including Page Keeley, a senior program director at the Maine Math and Science Alliance, an Augusta-based organization working to improve math and science education in Maine schools.

Keeley says the Maine Learning Results standards for science education largely omit the word "evolution" and instead refer to "change over time." She says science standards in other states are more explicit in their backing of evolutionary theory.

Maine's science standards are due for some changes in the coming year as the first-ever review of Maine's learning standards continues.

Deputy Education Commissioner Patrick Phillips says it is likely that the question of whether there is a role for intelligent design in science curriculums will come up during that process. "We will have to be prepared," he said.

Intelligent design has yet to emerge as an issue on the state's political scene. There have been no ID-related proposals filed in the State House, nor have any local school districts dealt with the issue.

Nor is the topic on the agenda of the state's largest Christian lobbying group, the Christian Civic League of Maine. Executive Director Michael Heath says his group is putting all of its resources toward passage of a referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot that would repeal the gay-rights law enacted by the Legislature last spring.

"It does not surprise me that Maine is not there yet," said Richard Hagerstrom, a junior high teacher and former head of the Ossipee Valley Christian School in Cornish. "We are one of the most secular states in the country."

Hagerstrom says he would like to see the Christian Civic League focus on intelligent design.

Mainers are too moderate to embrace intelligent design, says Marvin Druker, who teaches political science at the University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn College.

Those states in the midst of debates over whether to add intelligent design to science curriculums have elected state education boards, he points out. Elected boards can quickly become battlegrounds between creationists and non-creationists. Maine's state education board is appointed.

Zachary Heiden, staff lawyer for the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation, says Mainers are too distrustful of government to accept creationism in schools.

"Maine has a tradition of really valuing education as well as a tradition of respecting people's personal beliefs," he said.

Heiden says the Legislature has consistently refused to allow public money to be used to fund religious education and efforts to have the courts force the Legislature to do that have failed.

But some State House observers say the issue could surface in the Legislature. "It will come up eventually," said Robert Emrich, chief of staff for Senate Republicans and a Baptist minister.

Research analyst Patrick Murphy of Strategic Marketing Services, which publishes a quarterly Maine opinion poll, says he would not be surprised if the state's fundamentalist Christian community turns its focus on intelligent design once the November referendum is decided.

Maine high school students appear divided on the issue. Two Cheverus students, including the randomly selected LaVerriere and science whiz Chris Romeo, 18, of Cape Elizabeth, selected by his teacher to be interviewed, did not agree when asked if intelligent design should be taught in science class.

LaVerriere was all for teaching both evolution and intelligent design. "It is possible to believe in both," he said.

Romeo was against. "The idea that (living things) progress with divine force is still extremely unprovable," he said.

Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

bquimby@pressherald.com

Source: Portland Press Herald

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