Board Rescinds 'Intelligent Design' Policy
By Martha Raffaele
The Associated Press
Tuesday 03 January 2006
Dover, Pa. - Dover's much-maligned school policy of presenting
"intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution was officially
relegated to the history books Tuesday night.
On a voice vote, and with no discussion beforehand, the newly
elected Dover Area School Board unanimously rescinded the policy. Two
weeks earlier, a judge ruled the policy unconstitutional.
"This is it," new school board president Bernadette Reinking said
Tuesday, indicating the vote was final and the case was closed.
A different group of school board members had been in control when
the policy was approved in October 2004. The policy required that a
statement be read to Dover public school students about "intelligent
design" before ninth-grade biology class lessons on evolution.
The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has
inexplicable "gaps." It also referred students to an
"intelligent-design" book, "Of Pandas and People."
Eight families sued, and on Dec. 20, US District Judge John E.
Jones III sided with their argument that the concept of "intelligent
design" _ which attributes the existence of complex organisms to an
unidentified intelligent cause _ is religious, not scientific. The
judge said that violated the establishment clause in the First
Amendment.
Dover biology teacher Jennifer Miller was relieved Tuesday night
to know the policy was officially off the books.
"I will feel comfortable again teaching what I'd always felt
comfortable teaching," she after the meeting, attended by a crowd of
about 100 people.
School board members declined to comment after the vote.
Most of the previous board members who had defended the policy
were ousted in the November election, replaced by candidates who
pledged to eliminate the policy.
Policy defenders had said they were trying to improve science
education by exposing students to alternatives with the policy. But
the judge said the board's real purpose was "to promote religion in
the public school classroom," and said intelligent design could not be
taught as an alternative to evolution in biology classes.
"I tried ... to warn the board that we were facing a disaster and
obviously I was not persuasive enough," said Jeff Brown, a former
board member who resigned in protest after the policy passed. He said
the costly court battle could have been avoided.
The Dover policy and high-profile lawsuit added fuel to a national
debate over "intelligent design."
In Kansas, where state officials have been arguing over the
teaching of evolution since 1999, education officials recently
approved science standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory.
In Georgia, the state schools superintendent drew protests in 2004
for proposing a science curriculum that replaced the word "evolution"
with "changes over time." Last year, a federal judge ordered Cobb
County schools to remove from biology textbooks stickers that called
evolution a theory, not a fact.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406D.shtml
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