.
Intimidation widespread to censor evolution 
teaching. God needs help, I guess.
==========================================
February 1, 2005 NEW YORK TIMES

Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes
By CORNELIA DEAN 

  Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was 
at a dinner for teachers in Birmingham, Ala.,
recently when he met a young woman who had 
just begun work as a biology teacher in a
small school district in the state. Their 
conversation turned to evolution.

"She confided that she simply ignored evolution 
because she knew she'd get in trouble with the
principal if word got about that she was teaching 
it," he recalled. "She told me other teachers
were doing the same thing."

Though the teaching of evolution makes the news 
when officials propose, as they did in Georgia,
that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science 
textbooks, or that creationism be taught along
with evolution in biology classes, stories like 
the one Dr. Frandsen tells are more common. 

In districts around the country, even when evolu-
tion is in the curriculum it may not be in the
classroom, according to researchers who follow 
the issue.

Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the 
approval of biologists, but superintendents or
principals discourage teachers from discussing 
it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing
protests from fundamentalists in their communities.

"The most common remark I've heard from 
teachers was that the chapter on evolution was
assigned as reading but that virtually no discussion 
in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy,
a climatologist at the University of Alabama at 
Huntsville, an evangelical Christian and a
member of Alabama's curriculum review board who 
advocates the teaching of evolution.

Teachers are afraid to raise the issue, he said 
in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to discuss
the issue in public.

Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee 
on science and public policy of the Alabama
Academy of Science, said in an interview that 
this fear made it impossible to say precisely how
many teachers avoid the topic.

"You're not going to hear about it," he said. 
"And for political reasons nobody will do a survey
among randomly selected public school children 
and parents to ask just what is being taught in
science classes." 

But he said he believed the practice of avoiding 
the topic was widespread, particularly in districts
where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths.

"You can imagine how difficult it would be to 
teach evolution as the standards prescribe in ever
so many little towns, not only in Alabama but 
in the rest of the South, the Midwest - all over,"
Dr. Frandsen said.

Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the 
National Center for Science Education, said she
heard "all the time" from teachers who did not 
teach evolution "because it's just too much
trouble."

"Or their principals tell them, 'We just don't 
have time to teach everything so let's leave out the
things that will cause us problems,' " she said.

Sometimes, Dr. Scott said, parents will ask that 
their children be allowed to "opt out" of any
discussion of evolution and principals lean on 
teachers to agree.

Even where evolution is taught, teachers may be 
hesitant to give it full weight. Ron Bier, a
biology teacher at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, 
Ohio, said that evolution underlies many of
the central ideas of biology and that it is 
crucial for students to understand it. But he avoids
controversy, he said, by teaching it not as "a 
unit," but by introducing the concept here and there
throughout the year. "I put out my little bits 
and pieces wherever I can," he said. 

He noted that his high school, in a college 
town, has many students whose parents are
professors who have no problem with the teaching 
of evolution. But many other students come
from families that may not accept the idea, 
he said, "and that holds me back to some extent."

"I don't force things," Mr. Bier added. "I don't 
argue with students about it."

In this, he is typical of many science teachers, 
according to a report by the Fordham Foundation,
which studies educational issues and backs programs 
like charter schools and vouchers. 

Some teachers avoid the subject altogether, Dr. 
Lawrence S. Lerner, a physicist and historian of
science, wrote in the report. Others give it very 
short shrift or discuss it without using "the E
word," relying instead on what Dr. Lerner charac-
terized as incorrect or misleading phrases, like
"change over time."

Dr. Gerald Wheeler, a physicist who heads the 
National Science Teachers Association, said
many members of his organization "fly under the 
radar" of fundamentalists by introducing
evolution as controversial, which scientifically 
it is not, or by noting that many people do not
accept it, caveats not normally offered for other 
parts of the science curriculum.

Dr. Wheeler said the science teachers' organiz-
ation hears "constantly" from science teachers
who want the organization's backing. "What they 
are asking for is 'Can you support me?' " he
said, and the help they seek "is more political; 
it's not pedagogical."

There is no credible scientific challenge to the 
idea that all living things evolved from common
ancestors, that evolution on earth has been going 
on for billions of years and that evolution can
be and has been tested and confirmed by the 
methods of science. But in a 2001 survey, the
National Science Foundation found that only 53 
percent of Americans agreed with the statement
"human beings, as we know them, developed from 
earlier species of animals."

And this was good news to the foundation. It was 
the first time one of its regular surveys
showed a majority of Americans had accepted the idea. 
According to the foundation report, polls
consistently show that a plurality of Americans 
believe that God created humans in their present
form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds 
believe that this belief should be taught along
with evolution in public schools. 

These findings set the United States apart from 
all other industrialized nations, said Dr. Jon
Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical 
Communications at Northwestern University, who
has studied public attitudes toward science. 
Americans, he said, have been evenly divided for
years on the question of evolution, with about 
45 percent accepting it, 45 percent rejecting it and
the rest undecided.

In other industrialized countries, Dr. Miller said, 
80 percent or more typically accept evolution,
most of the others say they are not sure and very 
few people reject the idea outright. 

"In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolu-
tion," he said. Even in socially conservative,
predominantly Catholic countries like Poland, 
perhaps 75 percent of people surveyed accept
evolution, he said. "It has not been a Catholic 
issue or an Asian issue," he said. 

Indeed, two popes, Pius XII in 1950 and John 
Paul II in 1996, have endorsed the idea that
evolution and religion can coexist. "I have 
yet to meet a Catholic school teacher who skips
evolution," Dr. Scott said.

Dr. Gerald D. Skoog, a former dean of the College 
of Education at Texas Tech University and a
former president of the science teachers' organi-
zation, said that in some classrooms, the teaching
of evolution was hampered by the beliefs of the 
teachers themselves, who are creationists or
supporters of the teaching of creationism.

"Data from various studies in various states 
over an extended period of time indicate that about
one-third of biology teachers support the teaching 
of creationism or 'intelligent design,' " Dr.
Skoog said.

Advocates for the teaching of evolution provide 
teachers or school officials who are challenged
on it with information to help them make the 
case that evolution is completely accepted as a
bedrock idea of science. Organizations like the 
science teachers' association, the National
Academy of Sciences and the American Associ-
ation for the Advancement of Science provide
position papers and other information on the
subject. The National Association of Biology
Teachers devoted a two-day meeting to the 
subject last summer, Dr. Skoog said.

Other advocates of teaching evolution are 
making the case that a person can believe 
both in God and the scientific method. "People 
have been told by some evangelical Christians 
and by some scientists, that you have to choose." 
Dr. Scott said. "That is just wrong."

While plenty of scientists reject religion - 
the eminent evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins
famously likens it to a disease - many others 
do not. In fact, when a researcher from the
University of Georgia surveyed scientists' atti-
tudes toward religion several years ago, he found
their positions virtually unchanged from an 
identical survey in the early years of the 20th
century. About 40 percent of scientists said not 
just that they believed in God, but in a God who
communicates with people and to whom one may pray 
"in expectation of receiving an answer."

Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion 
and Public Life, said he thought the great
variety of religious groups in the United States 
led to competition for congregants. This
marketplace environment, he said, contributes 
to the politicization of issues like evolution among
religious groups.

He said the teaching of evolution was portrayed 
not as scientific instruction but as "an assault of
the secular elite on the values of God-fearing 
people." As a result, he said, politicians don't want
to touch it. "Everybody discovers the wisdom of 
federalism here very quickly," he said. "Leave
it at the state or the local level." 

But several experts say scientists are feeling 
increasing pressure to make their case, in part, Dr.
Miller said, because scriptural literalists are 
moving beyond evolution to challenge the teaching
of geology and physics on issues like the age of 
the earth and the origin of the universe.

"They have now decided the Big Bang has to be 
wrong," he said. "There are now a lot of people
who are insisting that that be called only a theory 
without evidence and so on, and now the
physicists are getting mad about this." 
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