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Arkansas considers banning evolution from textbooks
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) -- A committee of the Arkansas legislature has recommended banning the theory of evolution from textbooks in the latest challenge by state officials to the scientific view of how life develops.
A committee of the state House approved the legislation and forwarded it to the full House, 20 years after the state legislature passed a similar bill later struck down in federal courts as unconstitutional. The measure advanced despite a warning from the American Civil Liberties Union that it could violate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Creationism competition"Would anybody here pretend that this isn't about religion?" Rita Sklar of the ACLU's Arkansas chapter asked the committee. "Do you believe you were descended from a monkey?" Rep. Denny Altes shot back. "If we teach kids that they were descended from monkeys, don't you think they'll act like monkeys?" Fundamentalist Christian activists have had little success in repeated attempts at the state level to block the teaching of biological evolution, which holds that humans developed from animals, or promote divine "creationism" as a competing theory The most recent failure was in Kansas, where a newly elected state board of education last month overturned a 1999 decision by the previous board to drop evolution from state education requirements. Focus on textbooksThe Arkansas legislation was approved by the House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental affairs. It would bar the topic of evolution or related radio-carbon dating of animal and plant fossils from state-funded textbooks used in schools, museums, libraries and zoos. In books already on hand, the bill would require teachers to instruct students to mark "false evidence" or "theory" in the margins next to references to evolution and the carbon dating of fossils. "We have been elected to make sure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and only for truth," Rep. Jim Holt, a freshman Republican and self-described Christian conservative, told the committee. Political observers questioned whether the bill would survive the state Senate if it makes it through the full House. The Senate is traditionally less conservative than the House. Rep. Barbara King, a retired teacher, was the lone vote against sending the bill to the House floor. She said the measure was unnecessary and was probably unconstitutional. Legal challengesThe committee vote came exactly 20 years after Arkansas passed a law requiring public school teachers who referred to evolution in the classroom to give equal treatment to the Biblical account of creation. The ACLU filed suit and was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees when a federal judge overturned the law in 1982. Arkansas along with Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee barred the teaching of evolution in their public schools in the 1920s, a move hailed by failed Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a key figure in the 1925 prosecution of John T. Scopes, a Tennessee high school teacher charged with violating the ban. Scopes was convicted and fined $100. The state's high court later acquitted him, saying he had been fined excessively, but upheld the law. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional any laws barring evolutionary teaching in public schools. Copyright 2001 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. RELATED STORIES: Lawmakers might require teaching creationism RELATED SITES: Arkansas State Board of Education | ||||||||
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