Salon article on Scopes II

[scratchtasia]

Salon has a good article about the Kansas evolution hearings. A sample:

May 13, 2005 | On the second day of Kansas' mock trial of evolution, Kathy Martin created a moment to remember.

Martin is a member of Kansas' Board of Education and part of a 6-4 majority that appears dead set on changing state standards so the creationist theory of intelligent design, and perhaps other religious ideas, can be taught in science classes along with evolution. Martin and her creationist colleagues are ready to override a report recently issued by scientists and educators on Kansas' curriculum committee, which wants to keep the state's solid science standards intact.

But Martin had trouble even articulating just what she dislikes about the current standards. Martin, you see, has not really read the curriculum committee's report, nor does she think such scrutiny is necessary.

"Please don't feel bad that you haven't read the whole thing," Martin told a creationist "witness" at the hearings on the science curriculum, "because I haven't read it myself." Audience members groaned. To clarify, Martin later explained: "I'm not a word-for-word reader in this kind of technical information." So it went at Kansas' evolution hearings, which concluded Thursday, a Board of Education event where a concrete understanding of all that pesky technical information involved in science was apparently considered unnecessary to reach a verdict on evolution.

[atommom]

1. Good article. Salon *gets* it, though many people apparently don't!