Darwinism on trial in Kansas

Kansas is reportedly ready to approve teaching standards requiring Darwin's theory of evolution be challenged in the classroom.

In the first of three daylong hearings being referred to as a direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, academics testified last week about the flaws they see in mainstream science's explanation of the origins of life, The New York Times reported.

Defenders of Darwin's theory have refused to testify during the hearings, ordered by the Kansas State Board of education's conservative majority, the Times said. However, their lawyers pushed the other side into acknowledging nothing in the current standards prevents discussion of challenges to evolution.

If the board, as expected, adopts the standards next June, Kansas would join Ohio in requiring students be taught there is controversy over evolution.

One high school physics teacher, Cheryl Shepherd-Adams, took an unpaid day from teaching to attend the hearings. "Kansas has been through this before," she told the Times. "I'm really tired of going to conferences and being laughed at because I'm from Kansas."

Copyright 2005 by United Press International