Darwinism Critic Applauds California School District's New Science Policy
by Jim Brown
March 31, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A southern California school district has voted to allow teachers to present scientific criticisms of evolution in biology class. Under a new policy adopted by the Lancaster School District, "discussions that question the theory of evolution may be appropriate as long as they do not stray from current criteria of scientific fact, hypothesis, and theory." The school district officials' vote came after a citizens group called Integrity in Academics organized support for the policy change. Attorney Larry Caldwell, president of the group Quality Science Education for All, also backed the new guidelines. Such policies are not frequently found in public schools, Caldwell notes. "This is significant because, in too many school districts around the country, we find that any criticism of Darwinism is suppressed," he says.
Education activists have been advocating revisions in the Lancaster, California, school district with respect to the teaching of evolution for some time now. Besides the changes in the school's science education policy, the district is also looking to adopt new science textbooks: the current texts do not even mention the so-called Cambrian explosion -- a period in the fossil record marked by a geologically sudden appearance of complex multi-cellular macroscopic organisms.
This omission, despite the fact that California's science framework specifically says that the Cambrian explosion should be presented in seventh-grade science, is significant to those who claim much of the evidence and many of the weaknesses of Darwin's evolutionary theory are not adequately addressed in public school science classrooms.
Caldwell is pleased with the Lancaster schools' new guidelines allowing for the scientific questioning of Darwin's theory and the discussion of its flaws in science classrooms. He says getting a school system to adopt a science policy like the one this district has now embraced can be a difficult and daunting task.
"One of the things I was so impressed with in this district," the quality education advocate notes, "is that the assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum, Dr. Howard Sundberg, was the one who actually crafted the policy that was passed. Before he went to the board for the vote, he was able to get the science teachers in the district on board with the policy as well. And that, in my experience, is very rare."
Caldwell, who tried unsuccessfully to get a similar policy passed in Roseville, California, is urging other school systems to follow Lancaster's lead. The Lancaster School District will be adopting new biology textbooks next year.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
