In America's culture wars, schoolchildren are on the front lines.
From Maine to California, parents, teachers and school boards are
squabbling over what children should learn about sex, how to teach
about religion's role in American history and how students ought to be
introduced to the mystery of mankind's origins.
These arguments have been going on, with varying degrees of
intensity, for decades. But President Bush's November victory seems to
have emboldened the religious right and enlivened the debate.
"I think right now there's a lot of new energy among some
conservative Christian groups," said Charles C. Haynes, First Amendment
Center senior scholar.
The teaching of evolution is a center of contention. Parents and
school boards are currently involved in court battles over it in at
least 13 states.
There are other flashpoints.
In Cupertino, Calif., fifth-grade teacher Steven Williams has filed
suit against the school district that employs him, claiming that his
First Amendment rights are violated by a policy that requires him to
submit for approval any classroom handout mentioning religion.
The Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing
Williams, says the school's policy effectively bans the teacher from
handing out such important historical documents as the Declaration of
Independence, which says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator…
."
Nonsense, say school district officials. In fact, the Declaration of
Independence is right in the students' textbooks, district
communications manager Jerry Nishihara points out. What's not in the
textbooks is the material Williams was handing out to students on his
own.
There was a classroom handout entitled, "What Great Leaders Have
Said About the Bible," containing quotes from nine U.S. presidents and
another from Jesus. Some of these quotes, school officials say, are
fictitious.
Then there is the text of a prayer book, supposedly George
Washington's, that Williams handed out to students. Historians
concluded in the 19th century that the book wasn't Washington's,
although it may have belonged to one of his descendants.
At the root of disagreements like the one in Cupertino are feelings
on the part of conservatives that schools go too far in trying to avoid
violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
In suburban Dallas, for example, a school district is being sued for
prohibiting students from exchanging cards and candy canes with
Christmas-specific messages at a winter holiday party.
"We're just sick and tired of all this criticism of all these
foundational things that's made America a great country," said Jordan
Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.
Conservatives and fundamentalist Christians aren't always the plaintiffs in such lawsuits.
Michael Newdow, a California man who complains that the inclusion of
the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violate his
10-year-old daughter's right to religious freedom, is going back to
court.
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his original complaint
on technical grounds, saying Newdow could not sue on his daughter's
behalf because he is divorced and does not have full custody. This
time, his petition has been joined by other parents whose custody
rights are not at issue.
Other culture battles in the schools involve what children should be learning about sex.
Texans squabbled recently over how textbooks should define marriage,
and whether books used in health classes should mention condoms or
contraception as an option for sexually active teenagers.
In both cases, conservatives won the day. Textbooks in use in public
schools in Texas explicitly define marriage as between a man and a
woman. And they present only one option for avoiding pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases — abstinence.
Books on all kinds of subjects continue to be a perennial source of
controversy in schools. Year after year, parents object to the books
their children are assigned or check out of school libraries, often
citing language or sexual material they consider offensive.
According to the American Library Association, there have been widespread objections to the children's book King and King, which tells the tale of a gay royal couple.
Religious conservatives also object to "occult" themes such as
sorcery and witchcraft. Among their top targets: the wildly popular
Harry Potter series.
The argument over the teaching of evolution, which has been raging
since before William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow faced off in
the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee nearly 80 years ago, shows no
signs of abating.
Last October, the Dover, Pa., school board voted to require the
teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in
ninth grade biology classes. "Intelligent design," a favored theory of
religious conservatives, argues that life is too complex to have arisen
solely through evolution, and that the guiding hand of a superior being
must be behind it.
"Anyone with half a brain should have known we were going to be
sued," said school board member Angie Yingling, who initially supported
the idea but has since reconsidered.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued in December, on behalf of
eight families, arguing that intelligent design is not science, but an
attempt to inject religion into science classes.
The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes
intelligent design, argues that if evolution were taught more
skeptically, students would come to recognize that the theory alone
cannot explain the incredible complexity of life and the biological
processes that produced it.
Since intelligent design is a new theory, "we don't think it should
be mandated" in schools, said John West, the associate director of the
Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.
"The thing is, there's very little in intelligent design to teach,"
Glenn Branch, deputy of the National Center for Science Education, in
Oakland, Calif., insists. "The big uniting principle of intelligent
design is that evolution is bad."
Meanwhile, in Georgia's Cobb County, a campaign by parents convinced
the school board to require a warning sticker on biology textbooks
stating that "evolution is a theory, not a fact" and imploring students
to consider the books' contents "with an open mind."
The ACLU sued, and a court ordered the stickers removed.
Ken Miller, who co-authored the biology textbook used in Cobb
County, called the sticker a failed attempt at compromise. The sticker,
he said, "is factually incorrect, it is scientifically misleading and
it is very poor educational policy."
Miller, a professor of cell biology at Brown University, said that
the authors of the sticker, like many critics of evolution, do not
understand what the word "theory" means in science. Scientific theories
are not conjectures, he said; they are exhaustively researched,
overarching explanations of how the world works.
The theory of evolution, he said, is like the theory of gravitation,
atomic theory, the germ theory of disease. In science, Miller said,
"the word 'theory' actually implies a higher level of understanding
than the word 'fact.'"
Supporters of evolution have consistently prevailed in court battles
in recent decades. "If the scientists think they have won, they should
think again," said Haynes, of the First Amendment Center.
Polls consistently show fewer than half of Americans believe
evolutionary theory is well supported by evidence. In a recent Gallup
poll, 45% of those surveyed believe God created humans more or less in
their current form about 10,000 years ago.
Haynes recommends a truce. Letting some of the creationist and
intelligent design arguments into the curriculum could help students
understand how science and religion have interacted over the centuries,
he said.
Perhaps if students engage in the very same arguments their elders
are struggling with, Haynes suggests, they might gain a better
appreciation for the contentious world we live in.
Comments