Serbia reversed an order to ban Darwin’s theory of evolution from schools on Thursday, after its education minister drew national ridicule for ruling in favor of Old Testament “creationism.”
“I have come here to confirm Charles Darwin is still alive,” a pained deputy education minister, Milan Brdar, told a news conference in Belgrade.
The government “has decided to return the theory of evolution to the curriculum of the eighth grade,” he added.
Brdar said his boss, Education Minister Ljiljana Colic, was “away on business” and it “fell to me” to announce the reversal of her edict.
Deluge of protest
Colic triggered a deluge of protest this week with her apparently casual word to a newspaper that she had ordered Darwinism no longer be taught to teens, until creationism could be given equal classroom time next year.
The evolution chapter would not be torn out of textbooks, she said. Teachers would simply be told not to teach it.
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, battling with a range of intractable issues, said on Wednesday that the ensuing furor was “overblown.” But Thursday’s newspaper headlines may have changed his mind.
The decision to cancel the directive, Brdar said, was reached on Thursday when Kostunica and Colic had a meeting about “the great public attention provoked by her decision in connection with Charles Darwin.”
Lampoons abound
Political parties, social help groups, teachers, university deans and non-government agencies had angrily challenged Colic and lampooned her proud claim that all ministers leave a mark on their portfolio and “this is my mark.”
The Social Democratic Union youth party said she should be fired for ordering a step that “takes us centuries back by putting an equal sign between the scientifically founded Darwin theory and church dogma.”
A cartoon by Corax, Serbia’s favorite, depicted Colic kicking a white-haired Darwin down the stairs, along with his sad-looking ape, as the black cassock of a priest disappeared through the doors into Serbia’s primary school system.
One of the minister’s opponents, Belgrade biology lecturer Nikola Tucic, said the U.S. National Center for Science Education had immediately e-mailed him offering to help overturn the creationist curriculum coup.
“They offered us help. They did the same when creationists tried to kick evolution out of school curriculum in Italy,” he said.
Creationism, drawing from the Christian Bible’s Book of Genesis, says God created the universe and made Adam and Eve, the beginning of mankind.
Charles Darwin said life evolved from microbes over billions of years through natural selection, from apes up to man.
“Both theories exist in parallel and legitimately in the rest of the world,” Colic asserted on Tuesday, but she cited no examples.
