Kansans, Evolution Coexist Tenuously : Schools: Many disbelievers don’t object if subject, dropped from courses, is taught.

If they know anything, person after person here declares, they know this: God created them. Created all mankind. As for the talk about man evolving from tree-swinging apes? A hoax, they scoff--and a cruel one at that.

The biblical creation story is bedrock belief for many in this blue-collar prairie town.

Yet even as they call evolution a fraud, residents by and large say they do not object to their children studying it in school. Sure, there are caveats. Some think parents should be able to take their kids out of class when the subject comes up. Others insist evolution be labeled a tenuous theory. Still, they grudgingly acknowledge that their children should be exposed to it, if only because it’s so widely accepted.

The complex views expressed and debated here reflect the confusion roiling communities across Kansas since the state Board of Education last month voted to delete evolution from the mandatory science curriculum.

Teachers in Kansas still are free to present evolution, the theory that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor nearly 4 billion years old. And no one is required to teach creation, the biblical view that God created all species over the course of six days.

But the board’s decision is far-reaching nonetheless.

It’s now up to Kansas’ 304 school districts to decide whether to spend class time on a topic that’s not required and will not be tested on statewide assessment exams.

Parents can try to influence the curriculum through their elected school boards. But often, as in Douglass, those parents are deeply conflicted--believing on the one hand that their children should hear about evolution but convinced on the other that it’s blasphemous.

So in the end, both evolutionists and creationists agree, what Kansas kids learn about our origins will depend in large measure on their teachers--and, quite possibly, on their teachers’ personal beliefs.

“They’ll be able to teach what they want to teach,” said Mary Douglass Brown, a Board of Education member.

Thus, in a Topeka middle school, science teacher Shannon Keller plans to delay teaching evolution to the end of the year, figuring he won’t have time to get to it. If he does find a spare hour for evolution, he said, he’ll tell his students that, in his opinion, “the odds are astronomical against it.” And he’ll “provide examples of complex organisms” that he believes could not possibly have evolved due to random genetic mutation.

At a nearby high school, however, biology teacher Dennis Ary will continue to lecture on evolution, just as he always has. “Oh, yes,” he said, sounding surprised that anyone would doubt it. In fact, Ary added, the current uproar has him talking more than ever about evolution, as students have come to him with question after question.

High School Principal Seeks Middle Ground

Seeking a middle ground here in Douglass, a southeast Kansas town of 1,700, junior high school principal Bob Swigart said he’s told his teachers that “we’re going to continue doing what we’re doing,” regardless of the board decision. If his teachers want to present evolution, he won’t interfere--although he’s made clear that he personally thinks it’s bunk.

Still, for all his hands-off attitude, Swigart acknowledged that he expects his teachers to “gear up” for the state tests--which leave out evolution--by “using [state guidelines] to help plan the curriculum.” And he added that he feels duty-bound to make sure public schools accommodate Christian parents and their views on education. “We need to meet their needs,” he explained. “They’re part of the public too.”

Fearing that such accommodations will allow religion to creep into the public schools--even as science slinks out--critics have blasted the Board of Education’s decision as dangerous.

Outside the classroom, meanwhile, it’s become increasingly clear that the decision has affected not just secondary school science education but other fields as well. For instance:

* The publisher of an upcoming textbook on the history of Kansas deleted the first chapter, which covered the state’s geology, for fear that descriptions of fossils many millions of years old would disturb creationists who believe God created the Earth less than 10,000 years ago. “We just didn’t want to offend people,” explained James Bean, director of the nonprofit foundation that will publish the book this fall.

* Kansas State University has run into trouble recruiting young faculty for two open positions in the biology department. Professor Gary Conrad, who is heading the search, said potential candidates are leery of teaching students who have not learned evolution in high school. And, he added, they are reluctant to enroll their own children in “an educational system that anyone in their right mind would think is totally deficient.”

* Republican Gov. Bill Graves, condemning the new curriculum as an “embarrassment” for his state, has expressed concern that it might drag down the local economy by giving Kansas a reputation as backward. He’s worried, spokesman Mike Matson said, about Kansas’ “ability to portray ourselves as a serious, forward-thinking, progressive place to do business.”

* Kansas legislators are toying with ways to undercut the conservative bloc on the education board, which passed the curriculum on a 6-4 vote. Republican state Rep. David Adkins also has introduced a bill to make the study of evolution a requirement for admission into any Kansas state university.

As they grapple with the fallout within their state, Kansans have been stunned to find themselves the subject of national scrutiny as well. Columnists and cartoonists from around the country have lampooned the board’s decision, mocking Kansas as evolving backward into a primitive, see-no-evil Dark Age. “It makes us feel pretty lousy,” said Celtie Johnson, a creationist activist.

At the same time, however, editorial pages across the Midwest have been crammed with letters to the editor on the controversy--many of them supporting the board’s action.

“It is no small wonder,” one such letter in the Wichita paper read, “that many people, having been taught evolution all their lives, commit suicide because they feel that life is meaningless and that there is no God who truly cares about them.” A letter in the Des Moines Register offered similar sentiment: “Small wonder the public schools have become killing fields of violence. If one is taught that he is an animal long enough, he will commence to act like one.”

Education Officials Are Put on Defensive

The national furor has put Kansas education officials on the defensive; many insist the decision has been blown way out of proportion.

“I really doubt we will do anything differently,” said A.C. Boland, superintendent of the tiny Skyline school district in south-central Kansas.

“Nothing’s new except for the big row-dee-dow,” added Steve Abrams, a veterinarian who led the Board of Education’s move.

But beyond those reflexive reassurances, both sides acknowledge that they do expect the standards to have an effect. They’ll surely affect the next Board of Education election. And, more important, they’ll affect what students learn.

The creationist side tends to believe change in the classroom will be gradual because most teachers have been “brainwashed” into accepting evolution as gospel and are unlikely to present opposing views.

“We’ve got a whole generation of teachers who are not going to change at all. Maybe when they die out we’ll start getting some good science,” said Brown, who would like students to learn that an “intelligent designer” created life on Earth.

But evolutionists worry that the effect will be more immediate.

Teachers who take the Book of Genesis literally won’t have any reason to present the widely accepted scientific view of life’s origins. (The new curriculum does require kids to study “microevolution,” or the phenomenon of change within a species. For example, students might learn how selective breeding produces brawnier cattle or how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics over time. But “macroevolution,” or the process of one species developing into another, is not mandatory. Neither is the Big Bang Theory of the universe’s origins.)

Evolution Material Will Not Be Tested

Even those teachers who do believe in evolution may be hard-pressed to justify spending significant class time on it, since it will not be tested on the statewide assessments. The results of those exams are published, so teachers and principals care--a lot--about how well their students do.

“What gets tested gets taught,” said Bill Wagnon, a history professor and Board of Education member who voted against the new standards. “Over time, this will get to be a worse and worse problem.”

So far, even the most ardent creationists aren’t calling on teachers to ignore Charles Darwin altogether. Instead, they’re insisting that teachers no longer present evolution as science’s only--or even its best--explanation of how we all got here.

In the south-central Kansas town of Pratt, for instance, parents recently urged the two school districts to adopt a book advocating the theory of intelligent design as a supplement to the standard biology text. Neither district has made a decision. But Willa Beth Mills, president of the Pratt school board, has suggested the book “would be a very fine supplement” and has insisted that creationism need not be “relegated to Sunday school.”

Here in Douglass, where boarded-up buildings line the little downtown and a peeling billboard advertises a late-summer gun auction, residents seem a bit more leery of teaching creationism in schools. They’re content to let their kids hear about evolution in the classroom--so long as they can teach them the truth, as they know it, at home. That truth can be summed up in one word: God.

“I don’t believe we came from monkeys,” Sheri Cagle said, ringing up potatoes and coleslaw at Douglass’ lone grocery store.

If her five children learn evolution in school, so be it. But that doesn’t mean they have to buy it. And, in fact, they don’t.

“They may act like animals sometimes,” Cagle said with a chuckle. “But my kids, they know where they come from.”