Today's question asked if the following statement is true or false: "In Kansas, it is illegal to teach evolution without also teaching creationism", and students were pretty evenly divided on how they felt about it.
The statement, for the record, is completely false for reasons that I'll go into in a moment. But let me begin by saying I was surprised by the number of students who thought it was illegal to teach evolution PERIOD.
In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in
Epperson v. Arkansas that state laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools to be unconstitutional as a violation of the establishment (what is commonly, but perhaps incorrectly referred to as the "separation of church and state").
In response to this ruling, states begin issuing "equal time" laws which stipulated that evolution would be taught, but equal instructional time must be given to teaching creationism. In 1982, these laws were declared unconstitutional by a federal court's ruling in
McLean v. Arkansas. In 1987, the Supreme Court issued a similar ruling in
Edwards v. Aguillard. With this ruling, the court not only declared it unconstitutional to require "Creation Science" to be taught alongside evolution, but also declared that teaching "creation science" undermined the provisions of a comprehensive science education.
In response to the Edwards decision, creationist groups began removing all references to God or the Bible from their materials. This movement culminated in "Intelligent Design", which was declared unconstitutional by a federal court judge in the 2005
Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling.
I guess the take home message from all of this is that:
1. It is unconstitutional to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public school science classes.
2. It is unconstitutional to require the teaching of creationism (in any form) in public school science classes.
3. This is true in Kansas, along with the rest of the United States.
It is important to keep in mind that these court cases are not made in judgement of any particular religious belief. They do not, or cannot, speak to the validity or truth on any one particular belief system over another. All they do is define, legally, what the bounds of science are, and therefor what can and can't be taught about the origins and diversity of life (including humans) in public school science classes.
Posts
