Posted on 12/14/2005 12:02:42 PM PST by doc30
Atlanta — Nearly seven months after schools in a suburban Atlanta county were forced to peel off textbook stickers that called evolution a theory rather than fact, a federal appeals court is set to consider whether the disclaimers were unconstitutional.
In January, a federal judge ordered Cobb County school officials to remove the stickers immediately, saying they were an endorsement of religion. The ruling was appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear arguments on Thursday.
Advocates on both sides say the appeals court's decision will go a long way toward shaping a debate between science and religion that has cropped up in various forms around the country.
“If it's unconstitutional to tell students to study evolution with an open mind, then what's not unconstitutional?” said John West, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that supports intelligent design, the belief that the universe is so complex it must have been created by a higher power. “The judge is basically trying to make it unconstitutional for anyone to have a divergent view, and we think that has a chilling effect on free speech.”
Opponents of the sticker campaign see it as a backdoor attempt to introduce creationism – the biblical story of creation – into the public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court disallowed it in a 1987 case from Louisiana.
“The anti-evolution forces have been searching for a new strategy that would accomplish the same end,” said Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and co-author of the science book that was stickered. “That purpose is, if not to get evolution out of the schools altogether, then at least undermine it as much as possible in the minds of students.”
The disclaimers were placed in the books in 2002 by school officials in Cobb County, a suburb of about 650,000. The stickers were printed up after more than 2,000 parents complained that science texts presented evolution as a fact, with no mention of other theories.
The stickers read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”
The school board called the stickers “a reasonable and evenhanded guide to science instruction” that encourages students to be critical thinkers.
Some parents, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, sued, arguing that the stickers violated the constitutional separation of church and state.
U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that the sticker “conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others they are political insiders.”
In Pennsylvania, a federal judge has yet to decide whether the Dover Area School District can require ninth-grade biology students to learn about intelligent design. A few days after the trial ended earlier this fall, Dover voters ousted eight of the nine school board members who adopted the policy.
The same week, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question.
In 2004, Georgia's school superintendent proposed a statewide science curriculum that dropped the word “evolution” in favour of “changes over time.” That plan was soon scrapped amid protests from teachers.
Pinging...Didn't know this was still going on in GA
Me either. Thanks for the post.
I can't believe Cobb county is wasting the money to appeal this. Actually I can.
It never seems to end. I'm not eager to ping the list for this, because we've already deployed the list twice today, and one of those was for an education controversy in South Carolina. These education threads all involve the same issues, and I don't want to cause "ping fatigue" with too many threads going on at the same time, involving the same issue. Lemme mull it over. (Good article, however.)
As long as the sticker includes the SCIENTIFIC definiton of a theory, I wouldn't have a problem with the stickers either.
OOPS.That should be 'definition' not 'definiton'.
Asking "the few" ... to ping, or not to ping?
To ping.
The hearing is tomorrow. Maybe wait until there's some hard news?
I say ping - volume doesn't seem like a problem to me yet.
The opinion could come months after the oral arguments. It certainly won't be the same day the attorneys argue. I guess I'll ping, just to keep the issue alive.
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Thanks for the ping!
Eight Significant Court Decisions.
Selman v. Cobb County School District. The Georgia textbook sticker case.
So you want this kind of a sticker for gravity, astronomy, and how many other sciences?
Just so folks don't go getting the notion that any of them are "theory and not proven fact"??
Why? They're not blasphemy, like eeeevoooo-loouuu-shun.
</internet idiot mode>
Ah - but not allowing you to speak is free speech and rejecting ideas without even looking at the evidence is being open minded.
Doesn't matter - we're the left, the schools are OUR ivory tower and you can just butt out.
Vote Hillary in 08'. :)
I don't think that astronomy is either a theory or a fact. It's a field of study.
Whether you approve of the stickers or not is not the issue. The decision to affix the stickers belongs to the school board, not to you. The question before the Court is whether a sticker that reads "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." constitutes an unconstitutional "establishment of religion." It obviously does not, and I am frankly flabbergasted that any reasonable person would consider that it does.
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