Word: evolutionism
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Instead, they voted to de-emphasize the role evolution would play. They were okay with the concept of microevolution, changes that occur within a gene pool of a species of plants or animals. That was left alone.
But they made it so that Kansas schoolchildren would no longer have to display any knowledge of macroevolution, large-scale evolutionary change, on a state exam. Local school boards were left to decide how this aspect of evolution would be taught in their schools.
On the surface, the vote didn't cause too massive of a change. Only a few questions would be removed from the state exam and local school districts still had to prepare their students for a medley of other standardized tests which would require teaching evolution. Most vowed that they...
What was alarming wasn't so much the vote itself, but what it represented, how large an issue evolution had become, how powerful its opponents had grown and, most importantly, how the debate was not as simple as many made it seem.
The truth is, the school board vote was not simply a matter of reason versus religion, good guys versus bad. The conservatives weren't crazy, Bible-toting fundamentalists spouting scripture. They were highly organized and researched. They brought in their own scientists and their own theories. They claimed that their...