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Teachers in middle of brouhaha over evolution
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Aug. 24, 2002
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/0802/24evolution.html
You’re a Cobb County science teacher and it’s time to discuss evolution.
A hand pops up from the back of the room. “What about the Bible? I believe God created man.”
What do you do?
Can you open it up for discussion? Do you teach that evolution is science but acknowledge that a lot of people believe in biblical creation and say there’s room for diversity? Or do you put your hands over your ears and hum loudly, trying to ignore the fact that someone said “God” in your classroom?
The Cobb County school board voted unanimously Thursday to review a new draft policy on the issue written by the school system’s attorney. The board is hoping to establish some clarity on what a teacher can and can’t do and perhaps open up classrooms for wider discussion on the origins of life.
Kristie Wright, a Kell High School teacher, is no stranger to the evolution debate. She says she never gets flustered and has not felt the need for additional clarification on how to handle such situations.
She began fielding the Bible questions, as she calls them, during her first year of teaching biology in Cobb public schools. Some students would bring their Bibles into the classroom with them or quote Scripture.
“The Bible quoters will try to fight the subject,” Wright said. “So I try to make it clear that these theories are not in competition with each other. I ask them to consider both of them.”
Wes McCoy, who has taught science at North Cobb High since 1978, said he didn’t believe there was a conflict between science and religion.
“It’s like I tell my students,” he said Friday. “There are rules about which sounds are music, and it’s the same with science. Creationism isn’t science because it doesn’t have evidentiary support.”
“I believe in God, and so do some of our science textbook authors,” added McCoy, who is on the executive board of the national Presbyterian Association for Science, Technology and the Christian Faith.
The Presbyterian denomination “encourages boards of education to establish standards for scientific education in public schools based on the most reliable content of scientific knowledge,” McCoy said.
He understands that some churches disagree with this view. Yet McCoy, who was taught about evolution as a student in the Cobb school system, said the issue was not a scientific dispute but a religious one.
“As a science teacher I can’t be asked to teach creationism because it is not science,” he said. “I don’t want my students to be handicapped when they go to college.”
Most teachers asked by reporters about the subject declined to talk, saying they had been instructed not to discuss the controversy.
Cobb school district spokesman Jay Dillon said having teachers talk publicly about the issue was not “in our best interest.”
George Stickel, Cobb County’s high school science supervisor, said teachers had mixed reactions over what is happening.
[...]
Many students in training to be middle school teachers have had little exposure to earth science and aren’t aware of the facts behind evolution, said University of Georgia associate professor David Jackson. Many of them are creationists, he said.
“They’ve never been presented in a coherent way with a belief that evolution ever happened at all,” said Jackson, who teaches earth science. “They’ve never looked at patterns of evolution of animals. They’ve never seen fossils firsthand.”
While the professor doesn’t tell college students what they should believe, he lays out the facts for them and shares with them what he considers the constitutional view of separation of church and state.
“I make it clear what Cobb County is doing is pretty clearly illegal,” Jackson said.
Jackson also assigns readings by people of Christian faith who are scientists and who have resolved for themselves any conflict between evolution and creationism.
At the end of the year, few students remain as committed to creationism, the professor said. “There are very few who say, ‘I can’t bring myself to teach this,’ ” Jackson said. He advises those who do — there was one in his class of 23 students last year — to consider a different career path.
UGA professor Norman Thomson is more blunt.
“We’re dealing with science, and we don’t talk about issues that aren’t scientific,” Thomson tells his students who are preparing to teach high school science, where Darwinian theory typically is explored. “It’s been ruled unconstitutional. We abide by constitutional rulings.”
Thomson said he saw fewer creationists in his classes, probably because his students have had a heavier science curriculum than students studying to be middle school teachers.
He said he hoped the state school board would step into the Cobb controversy.
“I think the state needs to tell Cobb County what should be in the science classroom,” he said.
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