"State stance on evolution a devolution into stupidity"

"State stance on evolution a devolution into stupidity"
An Atlantic Journal Constitution Editorial

Ever try to listen to someone talk at a party but find yourself unable to focus because they have spinach stuck in their teeth?

After describing evolution as a "controversial buzzword" and striking the term from Georgia's proposed curriculum, state School Superintendent Kathy Cox has spinach caught in her teeth. And nobody is going to hear another word she has to say about the new k-12 curriculum until she cleans it up. To do so, Cox has to stop acting like a politician and start acting like an educator.

The state was hanging its hopes for academic improvement on its long-awaited overhaul of the current curriculum that's been condemned as "a mile wide and an inch deep." Cox hired nationally renowned education experts, including Diane Ravitch and James Rutherford, and assembled a panel of teachers.

Now, by eliminating any mention of evolution from the resulting product, Cox has cast the integrity and the intelligence of the process in doubt and raised questions about her ability to provide the education leadership necessary to prepare Georgia students for an information economy.

As a former teacher in a high-performing district, Cox would never have permitted politics to compromise her McIntosh High School social studies class. Had she tried, the parents of Fayette County would have confiscated her chalk and sent her packing.

Fayette parents, like parents everywhere, want their children to be well educated. They want them enrolled in Advanced-Placement Biology, which, according to the College Board's Web site, requires students to devote 25 percent of their time to "heredity and evolution." They want them to get into Georgia Tech and Duke, and they want them to win jobs at the high-tech firms that the governor says are critical to Georgia's economic future.

Well, those high-tech firms are now looking toward North Carolina after Cox confirmed every stereotype about Southern ignorance with her explanation of why Georgia ought to teach evolutionary science without using the e-word itself. Instead, Cox advocates replacing "evolution" with "biological changes over time."

"The unfortunate truth is that evolution has become a controversial buzzword that could prevent some from reading the proposed biology curriculum comprehensive document with multiple scientific models woven throughout," says Cox.

Cox's irrational position is a sop to a handful of religious hard-liners who believe that schools should teach creationism, a belief born of faith rather than science. If faith replaces science as the standard in Georgia's classrooms, can we expect the banishment of globes from geography classes to placate the flat-Earth folks? Would alchemy be given equal time with chemistry? That seems to be the direction we're headed: backward.

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