Evolving Some Reality

So this evolution v. creationism thing is just a local sideshow here and there, with few real consequences? If you believe that, you need to see this article in the Arkansas Times. It tells of a well-equipped school science lab, a smart and enthusiastic geology teacher, and bright and eager students, and a school board so afraid of losing everything to fundamentalist fulminations that they're censoring the science out of science, leaving behind--what?

Teachers are forbidden to use the "e-word" (evolution) with kids.They are permitted to use the word “adaptation” but only to refer to a current characteristic of an organism, not as a product of evolutionary change via natural selection. They cannot even use the term “natural selection.”

"Bob," the geology teacher, said: “I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old 'rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD ... but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.”

Why not? It's not that school officials don't themselves believe in the 4.5 billion year age of the earth, especially since knowledge of it is part of the state benchmark for fifth graders. It's the ruckus it could raise:

With regard to Bob’s geologic time scale issue, the program director likened it to a game of Russian roulette. He admitted that probably very few students would have a real problem with a discussion about time on the order of millions of years, but that it might only take one child’s parents to cause major problems. He spun a scenario of a student’s returning home with stories beginning with “Millions of years ago …” that could set a fundamentalist parent on a veritable witch hunt, first gathering support of like-minded parents and then showing up at school board meetings until the district pulled out of the science program to avoid conflict. He added that this might cause a ripple effect, other districts following suit, leading to the demise of the program.

Essentially, they are not allowing Bob to teach a certain set of scientific data in order to protect their ability to provide students the good science curriculum they do teach. The directors are not alone in their opinion that discussions of deep time and the “e-word” could be detrimental to the program’s existence. They have polled teachers in the districts they serve and have heard from them more than enough times that teaching evolution would be “political suicide.”

So let's be equally practical. It's not enough to be scandalized, or to see this is a modern Red Scare and Blacklist combined with some witchhunt crossed with medieval Church power of heresy. What I want is some teacher to lay it all out: what are the precise consequences for students who don't learn geologic time when studying geology in fifth grade, and don't learn natural selection when studying biology. We can guess that if this continues, these kids aren't going to become geologists (a pretty well paid profession wherever there are energy companies, like in Arkansas) or doctors. Maybe pharmacists who can make a living denying women birth control? I don't know.

But only real practical facts are going to stand up to this kind of repression. There's the shame of being considered a creepy little backwater lost in some prior century, which likely has broader economic consequences as well. But I'm interested in the parents who may or may not believe in their preacher's version of Genesis, but who damn well want their kids to get the education they need for a decent job and a decent life.

If anyone knows of such a statement, let me know. We'll tell the world.