Textbook Panel Defends Teaching Evolution as Fact

SACRAMENTO — Despite a barrage of criticism from religious fundamentalists, the authors of proposed guidelines for science textbooks refused Friday to back away from their recommendation that evolution be taught as accepted fact in California schools.

In a move that prompted fundamentalists to demand the resignation of its chairman, the Science Committee of the California Curriculum Commission agreed to make no “substantive” changes in its controversial proposal. The committee decided to delay its request for a formal commission endorsement until September, however, to give it more time to prepare the document.

“If it’s war they want, it’s war they’re going to get,” said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition. “The issue still continues to be the same--that this framework is stating that evolution is a fact. When it does that then it (evolution) becomes a religion de facto. “

Scheduled to Vote

The guidelines or framework tells publishers exactly what material is to be included in textbooks purchased by California school districts. The commission, which had been scheduled to vote on the proposed guidelines Friday, presents recommendations to the 11-member state Board of Education, which then makes the final decision.

Fundamentalist religious groups had demanded that all references to the teaching of evolution as fact be erased from the proposed framework and that it make provisions for science teachers to present other theories on the origin of man, including creationism.

After an informal review of the Science Committee’s proposed framework, the state board urged the committee in a letter to modify the guidelines so they no longer included “an advocacy statement for evolution.”

“They (the Science Committee) have now thumbed their noses at the state board’s request, which probably will lead to an impending crisis this fall,” Sheldon said. “The Curriculum Commission and its Science Committee are on a collision course with the board, and the board is going to have to dump somebody, and we’re calling for the committee chairman’s resignation. She needs either to resign, be fired or repent.”

Additional Discussion

“I’m leaning toward repentance,” said Elizabeth Stage, the professor who now heads the California Science Project at the University of California’s statewide office.

Stage, a prime author of the proposed framework, said in working on the document, the committee will answer the board’s request by providing additional discussion in the guidelines on why scientists say evolution is a fact.

“In other words, it will discuss the facts, the evidence on which the theory is based. The facts and the evidence about which there is not much doubt,” she said.

The committee will also address criticism of the various theories within evolution, she said, but “substantively we won’t change” the framework.

People for the American Way, a 270,000-member organization that has promoted the teaching of evolution, said the committee’s decision--while a “defeat for anti-evolution forces”--will now mean both sides will be focusing their attention on the state board.

“The battle is far from over as the anti-evolution forces will put a full-court press on the members of the Board of Education,” said Michael Hudson, Western director for the organization.