Schools

How did we get here?

By Ron Matus, Times Staff Writer
Published February 14, 2008

Think about this the next time you see a dolphin fin slicing through the water off the Howard Frankland Bridge: Beneath that fishlike exterior is an unattached pelvic bone, a piece of dolphin skeleton where scientists say ancestral legs were once attached. That bone, they say, is a clue from the past, another compelling nugget of evidence that life on Earth has changed over millions of years. On Tuesday, the Florida Board of Education will vote on proposed new science standards that call evolution "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" and one "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence." The standards dictate what students will be taught and tested on. For the vast majority of scientists, evolution is as much a fact as gravity. But polls show much of the public is skeptical. Time and again that disconnect flares into an emotional debate that, for some, pits science against faith. See where board members stand on the issue, 6B.

The current standards

They do not use the word "evolution." Instead they refer to evidence in the fossil record for changes over time.

The proposed standards

-"Evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

-Students should be able to recognize that "small genetic differences between parents and offspring can accumulate in successive generations so that descendants are very different from their ancestors."

-Students will learn that "fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species."

Darwin's theory of evolution

Says species have changed over millions of years, driven by their ability to adapt and survive in changing environments.

Example: A DOLPHIN'S FAMILY TREE:Over the past two decades, scientists have uncovered a series of fossils that they say suggests the evolutionary pathway some land mammals took as they returned to the sea. In December, the journal Nature reported that scientists found another missing link: the 48-million-year-old fossilized bones of Indohyus, a creature that looked like a deer, waded like a hippo and may have high-tailed it into water to flee predators. The Indohyus fossil has a thick section of ear bone that, until now, had only been seen in whales and dolphins. So, case closed? Hardly. Other scientists have demanded more proof.

Creationism

The belief that a god or gods created the Earth, the universe and life.

Example: The Bible

From Genesis:

Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."

God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Intelligent design

The belief that some systems found in nature are too complex to have formed without the intervention of an unnamed designer.

Example: The human eye

Supporters of intelligent design have used the eye as a prime example of flaws they see in evolutionary theory. The eye, they hypothesize, has so many complex parts working in synch - retina, lens, optic nerve and so on - that it could not have evolved over time through a series of slight changes.

Key court cases

1925: Scopes Monkey Trial

A Tennessee judge upholds a state law that forbids the teaching of evolution in public schools, but the Tennessee Supreme Court overturns the conviction on a technicality, thus preventing the American Civil Liberties Union from taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1968: Epperson vs. Arkansas

U.S. Supreme Court rules that a 1928 Arkansas law banning teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of church and state.

1987: Edwards vs. Aguillard

U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law that required creationism to be taught alongside evolution. The ruling is 7-2, with current Justice Antonin Scalia one of those who dissented.

2005: Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School Board

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III rules that intelligent design is a form of creationism and that the Dover, Pa., school district violated the Constitution when it required that intelligent design be taught as an alternative theory.

[Last modified February 13, 2008, 23:54:40]