One-Third of States Resist Teaching Children About Evolution

Virtually alone among the people of the developed world, Americans fall far short of accepting evolution as an organizing principle for all the historical sciences.

According to a report issued on 26 September, more than one-third of American states are doing a bad job in developing acceptable standards for teaching evolution.“The United States is exceptional in this regard,” writes Lawrence S. Lerner in Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States, a 51-page report that offers the first comprehensive analysis of how each state handles evolution in its science standards for the public schools. “In much of this country, the teaching to K-12 students of evolution as scientists see it -- particularly biological evolution -- evokes bitter controversy.”

The report was released at a symposium on 26 September entitled “The Teaching of Evolution in U.S. Schools: Where Politics, Religion and Science Converge,” which was cosponsored by AAAS and by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Lerner is a physicist and Professor Emeritus in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University, Long Beach.

Lerner, who graded each state on its teaching of evolution, argues that the debate on the issue takes place outside the realm of science, and in the worlds of religion and politics.

“Politics is all important to this debate,” Lerner said in a recent interview. “There is no scientific issue here. It is entirely political. All working scientists, all those who are currently contributing to scientific progress, support evolution because it is indispensable to their work.”

As for opponents, including some who boast scientific credentials, Lerner says, “If you make a nonsensical argument often enough, some people are going to believe it.”

Lerner notes that even among the 31 states that did at least an adequate job of teaching evolution, only nine dealt explicitly with human evolution; nine did so by implication; and the rest did not mention it at all. Lerner’s particular concern is that the teaching of science without evolution deprives children of a context for anything else they are taught, and reduces science “to a bewildering compilation of facts.”

“Those who object to the teaching of evolution often assert that evolution has not taken place, that scientists are profoundly misguided in the picture of the universe that they have developed over the past two centuries, that it is ‘only fair’ to present creationist views to students in tandem with evolution, and that teaching evolution will lead children into immoral lives,” writes Lerner in the report.

In Lerner’s review of standards in all 50 states, he reported finding two ways in particular that states seemed to resist teaching evolution:

• The concepts and facts of evolution are covered, but the term evolution “is carefully avoided.”
• Evolution and any concepts associated with it are not mentioned at all.

“Sometimes the treatment of evolution is bad because the treatment of all science is bad -- standards are sketchy, not well written,” says Lerner. “But often it is pressure from a very vocal minority of religious groups [that results in schools not teaching evolution}. Nine states, for instance, just won't use the word ‘evolution.’ You get an idea of what kind of pressure that comes from. As is often the case in a democracy, what happens very much depends on who gets up and yells the loudest.” Asked what his findings might accomplish, Lerner said that he hoped that by publicizing his results, he could encourage states with poor grades to make necessary changes.

“Comparisons tend to be useful,” Lerner said. “States that didn't do very well will look at neighboring states that did well and say, ‘What do we need to do to improve?’ Already, as a result of my report, states are asking what they are doing wrong.”

Lerner noted that contrary to expectations, not all the “Bible Belt” states had low grades, and that some other states might have received lower grades than expected, given their “progressive” politics. “I'm pointing out that North Carolina and South Carolina did very well, and Louisiana did okay, while Maine and New Hampshire, whom you might expect to fare well, are not doing well at all,” Lerner said.

A copy of Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States is available at the following Web site: http://www.edexcellence.net/