Pennsylvania is just the latest battleground in which the slouch to a new Dark Ages continues:
"The Dover Area School Board voted to add "Intelligent Design Theory" to the district's biology curriculum Monday evening just two weeks after Supt. Richard Nilsen assured former board member Lonnie Langione that wouldn't happen.
The change passed by a six-to-three margin after a heated discussion"
"Intelligent Design" is creationism disguised with pseudo-scientific jargon that fools the ignorant but no one else.
The new curriculum guidelines actually state:
"Note: Origins of life will not be taught."
The National Center for Science Education reports anti-evolution activity in forty states from 2001-2003.
In Ohio this year, a lesson plan adopted by the state Board of Education is based on a book from the creationist Discovery Institute, "Icons of Evolution" by Institute fellow Jonathan Wells.
In Michigan and Missouri, bills were introduced to the state legislatures this year mandating "equal time" for "intelligent design" in science class whenever evolution is taught. In both cases, the bills failed, but creationists succeed far more often when they are less blatant and overt in their efforts.
In Charles County, Maryland, a list of "goals and recommendations" compiled by the school board included recommendations not to use 10th-grade biology textbooks "biased toward evolution" and to provide creationist books and videos to students.
Board member Margaret Young told the Washington Post, "Certainly only one [theory] has been taught in the public school system, yet the kids go to Sunday school and are taught an opposing point of view ... [They need] both theories, so they're informed students."
The State of Kansas is poised, once again, to impose creationism and block teaching of evolution in its schools. This is the second time, after one effort was reversed two years after it was passed.
In 1999, the five conservatives on the board persuaded a moderate member to vote with them to adopt new science standards de-emphasizing evolution and contradicting standards recommended by a 25-member committee appointed by the board. The decision brought worldwide ridicule to Kansas.
Two years later, moderates regained a majority on the board and reversed the 1999 decision. Since 2003, the board has been split 5-5, and the standards have remained unchanged.
In the August primary election, an anti-evolution candidate defeated a pro-science incumbent, ensuring a 6-4 anti-evolution majority in 2005
Another contest, for the position representing Topeka and Lawrence, will pit longtime moderate member Bill Wagnon, a Democrat, against Dr. Bob Meissner, a conservative Republican, in the general election Nov. 2. A victory for Meissner would give the conservatives a 7-3 majority when new members are seated in January. Both men expect a hard-fought battle.
The house and senate in Alabama passed legislation under the ruse of "academic freedom protection" that mandates the teaching of "alternative theories of points of view on the subject of origins", code language for creationist teaching.
In Georgia, state education standards were revised this year to remove the very word "evolution" from the standards.
State Superintendent of Education, Kathy Cox, who calls evolution a "buzzword," claimed that removing it would "make teaching easier for teachers."
These efforts are aided and abetted by the Bush administration.
The young-earth creationist anthology Grand Canyon: A Different View is currently sold in the National Park Service-supervised bookstores in Grand Canyon National Park. A legal challenge forced a legal policy review, but the review, originally scheduled to wrap-up in February, now has no deadline - an NPS spokesperson merely said, in response to inquiries, "it's resting with the solicitor's office".
Don't think that this problem will vanish if and when Kerry is elected; this movement has been going on for twenty years, and only determined efforts by unsung heros of science and enlightenment have turned back dozens of similar attempts in states all over the Union.
This is just one of the many fronts on which Dominionists are on the march, pursuing their strategy of overturning democracy and installing a n Old Testament theocracy in America.
Check your own state and local school boards. Odds are, there are creationists at work to censor, obstruct and obscure science teaching and promote a subservient, ignorant and gullible populace, vulnerable to superstition and authoritarian control, because they are not taught to follow evidence and think for themselves.
[sources for this story: The National Center for Science Education at http://www.ncseweb.org/ as well as articles from the NYTimes, Washington Post, and local newspapers in the respective states. Links for these can be found in the NCSE site "News" Archive 2004" section]