Evolution “restored” in Kansas?

A news item on the website of America’s leading anti-creationist organization—the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)—is typical of how the evolutionist community and the media as a whole have been misrepresenting what’s occurred in the public schools of Kansas over the years. The NCSE headline “Evolution returns to Kansas” is a highly misleading description of what has happened in that state since 1999.¹

That was the year when the state school board slightly de-emphasized the teaching of evolution in its standards for public school science classes. In recent years, language was placed in the state guidelines which gave teachers the freedom to bring up the problems with molecules-to-man evolution.

Yet some in the media (Time magazine in particular) have been howling for the past eight years that evolution was stripped from the state’s science classes. Such misinformation led late-night comics to mock the state, and an embarrassed electorate in Kansas (many of whom probably believed the canard that evolution was removed from schools) gradually voted in candidates who were pro-evolution. As a result of the recent election of new board members in Kansas and their vote on Tuesday, the teaching of evolution has become strengthened in the science standards.

On Wednesday the NCSE stated on its website:

On February 13, 2007, the Kansas state board of education voted 6-4 to approve a set of state science education standards in which evolution is treated in a scientifically appropriate and pedagogically responsible way. These standards replace a set adopted in November 2005, in which evolution was systematically misrepresented as scientifically controversial. Those standards were the subject of intense criticism from scientific and educational organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teachers Association. Subsequently, the balance of power on the board changed, and supporters of the integrity of science education, who now enjoy a 6-4 majority on the board, quickly moved to restore [sic] evolution.

Ken Ham, AiG–U.S. president, in his blog observed:“It’s sad to see the way the NCSE and the secular media have continually misrepresented what happened in Kansas. Evolution didn’t have to be “restored” or returned—it was never taken out of the standards to begin with.”;

Ham added:“It seems that all you have to do nowadays is to suggest to students that they can question evolution, and the resulting uproar by evolutionists and the secular media is incredible.”

It’s a shame that the young people of Kansas will now receive a one-sided indoctrination program of evolution teaching in their science classes. They are being denied the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not evolution is true or false.