Ohio Expected To Rein In Class Linked To Intelligent Design

AUTHOR: Jodi Rudoren

SOURCE: New York Times

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

The legal precedent set by Judge John E. Jones' decision in the Dover case, in which "intelligent design theory" was found to be a religious theory masquerading as science, has now reached to the state of Ohio. Here's today's story in the New York Times (commentary follows):

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 13 — A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for "critical analysis" in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.

A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge's ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

A small rural school district in California last month quickly scuttled plans for a philosophy elective on intelligent design after being challenged by lawyers involved in the Pennsylvania case. Also last month, an Indiana lawmaker who said in November that he would introduce legislation to mandate teaching of intelligent design instead offered a watered-down bill requiring only "accuracy in textbooks." And just last week, two Democrats in Wisconsin proposed a ban on schools' teaching intelligent design as science, the first such proposal in the country.

Here in Ohio, pressure has been mounting on board members in recent weeks to toss out the lesson plan and the standards underpinning it. Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, called this month for a legal review of the plan, while newly revealed documents of Ohio's Department of Education linking it to treatises of the intelligent design movement have renewed threats of a lawsuit by opponents of the movement.

At the same time, a national group of evolution defenders has bombarded 5 of the 19 board members considered crucial to a vote against the lesson plan with 30,000 e-mail messages over the past week, and just Monday, the president of the National Academy of Sciences urged the board to change the lesson and the underlying curriculum guidelines to "conform to established scientific standards."

"All of that adds up to a sense of urgency and a sense of now is the time to clean up our act," said Robin C. Hovis, a stockbroker from Millersburg who is one of two board members pushing an emergency motion on Tuesday to delete the "critical analysis" language and the lesson plan. "There is an atmosphere among the board, at least a growing atmosphere, that this is a misguided policy and we better get rid of it."

Though the lesson plan is optional and never uses the words "intelligent design," its explanation of concepts like homology, the fossil record and endosymbiosis parallel those in the texts "Icons of Evolution" and "Of Pandas and People," written by proponents of intelligent design.

"All of that adds up to a sense of urgency and a sense of now is the time to clean up our act," said Robin C. Hovis, a stockbroker from Millersburg who is one of two board members pushing an emergency motion on Tuesday to delete the "critical analysis" language and the lesson plan. "There is an atmosphere among the board, at least a growing atmosphere, that this is a misguided policy and we better get rid of it."

Though the lesson plan is optional and never uses the words "intelligent design," its explanation of concepts like homology, the fossil record and endosymbiosis parallel those in the texts "Icons of Evolution" and "Of Pandas and People," written by proponents of intelligent design.

The Discovery Institute, in Seattle, the intellectual home of the design movement, had distanced itself from the Dover case but has long heralded Ohio's "critical analysis" approach as a model for the nation, and is ardently defending the lesson plan.

On Monday, the institute released a Zogby International poll it had commissioned showing that 69 percent of Ohio voters believed that scientific evidence against evolution should be included in curriculums, and 76 percent agreed that "students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life." The institute has also proffered letters from two science professors supporting Ohio's standards and model lesson plan.

John G. West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the institute, said: "This just shows the extremism of the other side. They think Dover is their wedge to try to stop any even voluntary critical analysis of Darwin's theory in the classroom. They obviously don't think they can win in the court of public opinion on the issue, and that's why they're using scare tactics."

Local supporters of the standards echoed Mr. West's confidence that, unlike the Dover curriculum, the one in Ohio could pass constitutional muster. The Pennsylvania ruling is not binding elsewhere.

"If I had the money, I'd pay for the lawsuit," said David Zanotti, president of the conservative American Policy Roundtable in Strongsville, Ohio. "They should sue or shut up."

Debate over evolution here dates to 2000, when the board began developing statewide academic standards, which do not dictate curriculum to the 613 local districts but provide a blueprint for standardized tests.

A proposal to teach intelligent design alongside evolution was rejected. Instead, the board in December 2002 unanimously adopted standards requiring that 10th graders be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory," with a parenthetical note that "this benchmark does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design."

Since then, New Mexico, Minnesota and Kansas have adopted similar standards, and Pennsylvania lists evolution among half a dozen theories to be critically analyzed. But only Ohio has a model lesson plan, adopted by a divided board in 2004, that provides teachers a practical how-to guide. It is unclear how frequently it is used.

Besides the Dover decision, the disclosure in December of documents detailing internal discussions of the lesson plan helped revive debate here. Obtained by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group considering a suit on the plan, the documents show that department scientists and outside experts condemned the lesson as "a lie," "crackpot," "religious," "creationism" and "an insult to science."

Asked whether the lesson connects skills to the real world, an external reviewer wrote: "Not the real scientific world. The real religious world, yes, the real world based on faith, yes, the real world of fringe thinking, yes!"

Patricia Princehouse, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science who has led the charge against the lesson plan, said, "Basically critical analysis is intelligent design relabeled, just as intelligent design was creationism relabeled."

Governor Taft entered the fray in early February, telling newspaper reporters and editors that the board should ask the attorney general to review the lesson; that intelligent design should not be taught or tested; and that he should have questioned candidates more vigorously on the issue before filling the eight board seats he controls.

Tuesday's expected showdown comes a month after the board voted 9 to 8 against an emergency motion to delete the lesson plan. Martha W. Wise, a board member who sponsored that motion, said that this time she would propose removing both the lesson plan and the critical analysis benchmark, while also restoring a fuller definition of science to note that its theories "while not 'believed in' through faith may be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence."

Ms. Wise said she was unsure whether she had secured 10 votes for the emergency motion, but expressed confidence that a majority would at least call for a reconsideration of the lesson plan by the board's lawyers and a committee.

But Deborah Owens Fink, the board member who originally supported the dual study of evolution and design and has been the leading defender of the standards, said, "The lesson has been in use for two years, and certainly a hole hasn't been cut in the ozone or anything."

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COMMENTARY:

It's clear to me that the governor of Ohio is concerned that his state is going to gain a reputation as "anti-science" unless their "teach the controversy" policy is rescinded. With the National Academy of Sciences weighing in on the issue, any politician not already deeply committed to the Discovery Institute's position will be scrambling to rescind it as well...unless they're up for election, in which case they will probably be paying more attention to the Zogby poll results. Which means, of course, that the outcome will be almost purely political (i.e. it will have little or nothing to do with science).

The irony of all of this is that evolutionary biologists are having to make statements about how solid their own science is, when anybody in the field (indeed, anybody in any scientific field) knows that controversy is the name of the game. To me, that's the real danger in all of this. Not that scientists will be hoodwinked in any way by the IDers, nor that there will be any lasting harm done to public school students – after all, when I went to elementary school, we were all forced to recite a daily prayer first thing in the morning. No, the real danger is that, in attempting to show a "unified front," scientists will be tempted to suppress their own disagreements with current orthodoxy. Any inhibition on the free expression of doubts and disagreements in the scientific community would be harmful to science, in a way that "intelligent design theory" generally is not.

--Allen

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ORIGINAL PUBLICATION REFERENCE:

Location Online:
New York Times
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/education/14evolution.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1139924263-e0hsLirTBn8dUuKRAs3wPw

Original posting/publication date timestamp:
Published: February 14, 2006

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