Our Textbook Problem

The Latest Stage In the Unending Evolution Battle

SOURCE: AP/HARRY CABLUCK Some of the biology textbooks under consideration by the State Board of Education at the board meeting in 2003.

Don’t fall for the optimistic spin that some are putting out: What happened in Texas last week was bad, bad, bad for science education. That’s according to the National Center for Science Education, the leading organization defending the teaching of evolution in the U.S. (Still need to make a charitable contribution before April 15? Here’s a group that needs and deserves it!)

To recap: The Texas Board of Education was rewriting its science standards, both for Earth and Space Sciences and for Biology. In this context, the board got rid of language about teaching the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, longtime creationist code for undermining it in the classroom. That’s a win. But at the same time, other language was inserted that create new opportunities for sowing doubt about the cornerstone of biology. For instance, students are now expected to “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records.” That tortured language can serve only one purpose: Help drag misleading creationist critiques and misinformation into the curriculum.

In the case of Texas, that’s particularly dangerous: The state’s vast size allows its educational practices to significantly influence science textbook publishers. The standards could thus have an impact on other states as well. We’ll have to see how it shakes out, but we can’t feel optimistic.

Granted, in broader perspective, one might view this latest stage in our ongoing evolution conflict in the United States as presenting reasons for hope. After all, in the space of thirty years, we’ve moved from the stupendous absurdities of “creation science”—the attempt to teach students about a biblical flood having laid down the fossil record, about humans and dinosaurs living together (on the ark, among other places), and so on—to Texas’s vague, poorly written agnotology. That’s progress, if it’s to be measured merely by the substantive positions that anti-evolutionists are now forced to advocate.

However, it’s important to remember that “creation science” and “intelligent design” alike were beaten back in the courtroom, not in the court of public opinion. Legal challenges, not popular ones, have whittled down anti-evolutionism to its current lawyerly state. And unfortunately, such progress has no parallel in public surveys about evolution. There are tons of polls out there, but I’ve always preferred to rely on Gallup because, as the National Science Foundation notes, they’ve asked the same question repeatedly since 1982. And there’s no movement: 46 percent of the public agrees with the statement, “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

This is not merely anti-evolutionism; it is a specific and extreme form of creationism, the so-called “young earth” variety, which relies directly on biblical literalism. Such a stance rejects the past 200 plus years of science not just in the field of evolution, but in geology and, most assuredly, cosmology, where many of the same literalists question the Big Bang. This core anti-science swath of America wants far more than to have students “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records.” It wants its children entirely shielded from the teaching evolution, even though it has already raised them at home to doubt and disbelieve in the first place. That’s why the current, sneaky creationist language will serve its purpose: For every kid brought up to equate Darwin with a full frontal assault on religion and morality, only the slightest semblance of doubt and questioning will be seized upon and do its own work from there. Biology class won’t have any impact; the beliefs of childhood will last throughout life.

It can be overwhelming, exhausting, and deeply depressing all at once to follow each subsequent stage in the anti-evolution whack-a-mole game, as attacks pop up across the country, state by state, and we go through the same rituals over and over again—sometimes a step forward, sometimes a step back. I must confess that I occasionally tune out, for precisely this reason: I’ve heard it all before. How can we keep fighting, and fighting, and fighting?

Only some kind of seismic change could alter this societal dynamic. It could come at the hands of a great political or religious leader, who finally breaks down walls. Or perhaps it could come from either of the core camps—the scientists, the creationists—if one changed strategy entirely. (Not likely.) Or, it could come if we vastly change the localized way in which we currently determine the content of American science education. (Again, not likely.) But barring any of these things, it will continue to be the scientists against the conservative religious, with powerful feelings on each side.

“Somebody’s got to stand up to experts!” said Texas Board of Education chair Don McLeroy during the latest proceedings, according to the National Center for Science Education. Some defenders of science and reason will find this statement hilariously misinformed.

I find it deeply, painfully sad.

Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”

Tags: STEM Education

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