Sue Gamble is one of the Kansas State Board of Education who voted to reinstate curriculum about evolution.

Two years ago, the Kansas State Board of Education ignited a firestorm of controversy by voting to remove from the state's public school curriculum the theory of evolution as the sole explanation of the origin of man. But in a 7-to-3 vote Wednesday, the board reversed that decision, reinstating evolution as the sole theory and essentially mandating evolution be taught in public schools throughout the state.

An omen of the change came last August when voters in a Republican primary defeated two of the members of the school board who had supported the earlier anti-evolution decision. A third conservative board member resigned and moved out of the state. All three of the new board members who replaced those conservatives, Republicans Sue Gamble, Bruce Wyatt, and Carol Rupe voted in favor of the new standards.

The anti-evolution standards, crafted by religious conservatives on the previous board, brought Kansas international attention and significant ridicule from scientists and science groups.

"The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim, 'They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore.'¿ The road of the newly adopted Kansas curriculum can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance," declared Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of geology at Harvard and New York University.

The sudden emergence of a public policy fight over evolution made some wonder whether the Kansas Board's decision signaled a religious backlash against secularist domination of public schools and their science classrooms.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer called the Kansas decision is an important cultural indicator. "It represents the reaction of people of faith to the fact that all legitimate expressions of that faith in their children's public schooling are blocked by the new secular ethos," Krauthammer wrote. "In a society in which it is unconstitutional to post the Ten Commandments in school, creationism is a back door to religion, brought in under the guise--the absurd yet constitutionally permitted guise--of science."

But rather than igniting a major debate in school boards across the country, the issues of evolution and creationism has become a lower-tier controversy in public education for most of the past two years. Pennsylvania's Department of Education is examining the issue, and a new charter school in Rochester, New York has announced it would include creationism in its curriculum. The Oklahoma state textbook committee voted to require that biology textbooks label evolution is a "controversial theory." Kentucky's education department replaced the word "evolution" in its state standards with the phrase, "change over time."

But the New Mexico Board of Education voted against requiring classroom instruction on creationism or other alternative theories about how life forms came to be, and measures limiting the teaching of evolution were rejected in New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and other states. Most other state boards of education have chosen to avoid the issue and focus on other matters.

Some of this is undoubtedly because of the public relations damage that comes with embracing creationism can do to a state's education system. Kansas Gov. Bill Graves called the decision to remove evolution "an embarrassment."

Kansas' decision came with caveats designed to protect students' rights to believe alternatives to evolution. The Board of Education adopted a resolution that stated, "While students may be required to understand some concepts that researchers use to conduct research and solve practical problems, they may accept or reject the scientific concepts presented. This applies particularly where students' and/or parents' beliefs may be at odds with the current scientific theories or concepts." The board also directed that teachers should not "ridicule, belittle or embarrass" a student for expressing an alternative view or belief.

National polls have found considerable support among the general public for creationism. According to a Gallup poll conducted in June 1999, Americans favor teaching creationism in the public schools, along with evolution, by a margin of 68 percent to 29 percent. However, by a margin of 55 percent to 40 percent, they opposed replacing evolution with creationism.

Responding to the controversy, then-Vice President Al Gore said that he favored the teaching of evolution in public schools, but that the decision should and will be made at the local level and localities should be free to decide to teach creationism as well. Then-Governor George W. Bush declared, "I believe children ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started."

Public Schools Should Teach Evolution	Schools Should Also Embrace Alternative Theories