Americans who question evolution are testing a new tactic in Ohio, arguing that schools should be required to discuss all controversial issues from creation to stem cell research and global warming.
In what critics Wednesday called a new attempt to bring religion into the classroom, the Ohio State Board of Education will consider a proposal next week that would oblige schools to teach critical thinking in all subjects.
The proposal, to be discussed Monday by a school board subcommittee in Columbus, is the latest gambit by those who believe Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught as only one disputed explanation for the origin of humankind.
School board President Sue Westendorf said the committee would debate but probably not vote on the proposal. It is designed to replace curriculum rescinded in February after a Pennsylvania court ruled that teaching the theory known as ”intelligent design” in that state was unconstitutional.
The debate between those who accept the theory of evolution and those who believe in the Biblical account of creation has bubbled up periodically in U.S. schools since before the Scopes ”monkey trial” in Tennessee 80 years ago.
The Pennsylvania decision handed down last December found that “intelligent design” — a theory that God must be behind evolution because life is too complex to be random — was a religious doctrine without any scientific merit.
Ohio teachers had been allowed to question evolution under a model lesson plan approved in 2004, but the school board canceled it in February after the Pennsylvania ruling.
The board, made up of religious conservatives and moderates, has been trying to replace the lesson plan ever since. Westendorf said the new proposal was aimed at broadening the disputed curriculum to require debate on topics beyond hot-button questions surrounding religion and science.
“This is about critical thinking in social studies, science, math — all of the entities, because there are controversial topics in all of those areas,” she said.
But critics said conservative Christians were simply trying to find a back-door way to teach that God created the earth.
“Ohio has always been the bellwether. Things are floated in Ohio to see if they work, and if they work, they’ll try to get them adopted elsewhere,” said Lawrence Krauss, a member of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, which opposes the teaching of religion in public schools. Krauss is a theoretical physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
John West, senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design, said the proposed new policy was “good pedagogy and good for students” because it would teach them how to sift and analyze evidence.
“Students don’t like to be told that there are some questions they don’t have the right to raise.”
