By Margaret Flowers, Professor of Biology, and Linda Schwab '73, Professor of Chemistry at Wells College

Shortly before the beginning of this school year (on August 11th, to be exact), the Board of Education of the State of Kansas completed a four-year project to revise science education standards. The ten-member board voted to approve an amended final draft by a vote of six to four. Within days, the national media were reporting angry responses to this action from various scientific professional societies, the ACLU and teachers' groups, more or less accusing Kansas of rushing headlong into the 17th century. Just last Thursday, September 23rd, the National Research Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teachers Association decided not to grant Kansas the right to quote their materials in the Kansas State Science Standards. As a result, the Kansas Board of Education was forced to remove the August 11 final draft of standards from its website and rewrite at least the introduction to the standards, if not also substantial portions of the "heart" of the document, to avoid copyright infringement. Is it ever possible to touch science education standards without such controversy?

 First of all, what hath Kansas wrought? The crucial section of the Aug. 11 standards is this: "Students should develop an understanding of the universe. The origin of the universe remains one of the greatest questions in science. Studies of data regarding fossils, geologic tables, cosmological information are encouraged. But standards regarding origins are not mandated." As some have pointed out, of course, a topic that isn't assessed on statewide tests is simply less likely to be taught. What the Kansas standards didn't do, however, is banish evolution or "dump Darwin," as one headline put it, and as the scientific societies have claimed. For example, the standards stipulate: "As a result of their activities in grades 9-12, all students should develop an understanding of the cell, molecular basis of heredity, biological evolution, interdependence of organisms, matter, energy, and organization in living systems, and the behavior of organisms" and, in addition to specific illustrations of each of these, set detailed expectations for the study of natural selection, including Darwin's key observations and his interpretations. Nor do the new standards anywhere even mention "creationism" or young-earth viewpoints, except in a footnote explaining why certain logic skills need to be taught. Life-science teachers in Kansas are still required to be trained in evolutionary origins, as well as other appropriate areas of biology, for certification. Commentators have been quick to invoke the Scopes Trial of 1925, but "Inherit the Wind" it's not. Nor is it a re-run of cases in Arkansas and Louisiana in the 1980s in which "creationism" or "creation science" were judged to be religiously based and therefore may not be presented in public classrooms as an alternative to evolution.

 But what did Kansas attempt to do? The stakeholder positions remain similar and recognizable: teachers are concerned about teaching "good science" in an atmosphere of academic freedom. Boards want to meet professional-preparation criteria because program quality is their job. Both invite and need the cooperation of parents and communities, who do want education with a "seal of approval," but are often especially aware of the sum total of the influences felt by their children. For example, hundreds of thousands of school children have heard Carl Sagan say, "the Cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be." A few years later, these students may find evolution presented along these lines: "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind" (as concisely stated by George Gaylord Simpson, a leading figure in what has come to be called Neo-Darwinism and recently elaborated by Richard Dawkins, the popular author of "The Blind Watchmaker"). If society's recollection of the Scopes trial is the question "was great-grandpa a chimp?", the battleground over "origins" in Kansas may be remembered as "was great-great-grandma a randomly assembled microbe?"

 And this is a critical difference. If the Kansas standards explicitly call for competence in understanding "biological evolution" aren't they somehow requiring discussion of "origins"? In fact, scientists speak of two perspectives on evolution, "microevolution" and "macroevolution," and Kansas has chosen a slightly but significantly different wording to differentiate which of these kinds of evolution is classically associated with natural selection and which goes to the question of "origins." To appreciate the differences, it will help to define key terms and look at examples from both biology and geology.

 Since the Kansas standards give learning objectives in science, we should begin the definitions there. A recent college-level textbook explains science as "a way of viewing the world that focuses on objective information, putting that information to work to build understanding." In other words, science is based on observation and experimentation with the goal of determining underlying principles. This is commonly done by suggesting an explanation, or hypothesis, to explain observations, and then to experimentally test the validity of the hypothesis. A hypothesis that is validated by multiple experiments is considered a theory. While to the general public, the word "theory" implies an often wild guess, to the scientist, is means a best explanation, based on all of the available facts.

 The Theory of Evolution is based on Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, often referred to as "survival of the fittest." This is the process whereby individuals in a population of a species with a genetic makeup that favors their survival in a particular habitat will produce more offspring. The result will be that over time, the population will include a higher percentage of the individuals with the favorable characteristics. Thus, there will be slow (or evolutionary) changes within the species. Evolution at this level is referred to as adaptation or microevolution. There is an overwhelming body of experimental evidence that attests to the validity of natural selection as a driving force in microevolutionary change. Indeed, human-directed animal and plant breeding models microevolution.

 Macroevolution is the additive effect of microevolutionary change; given the conditions of reproductive isolation of populations that are increasingly different in their adaptations to the environment, formation of new species should occur. Taken to its logical conclusion, this mechanism could be extrapolated to form the basis for the formation of different lineages, and ultimately, for the creation of life itself. The fossil record provides evidence that changes have occurred over geologic time, and comparative observations of living organisms also strongly indicate a history of change.

 It is in the area of macroevolution where the problems lie. Observations and experimental data provide indisputable factual information. Interpretations of these data are not always universally accepted; scientists are no different from anyone else in sometimes having opposing viewpoints about what a piece of information means. But beyond that, there are areas in which there is little or no available information, and the hypotheses made are necessarily based on speculation.

 Among the difficulties is the fact that there still remain major gaps in the fossil record. True, we have a far more complete picture than did nineteenth century paleontologists, but the gaps that have been plugged are the ones within lineages. What do I mean by a lineage? Biologists classify organisms into a hierarchy of categories, each more inclusive than the one below. You may remember these from your high school biology class: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Some of these categories reflect natural relationships; others are artificial constructs for the convenience of the scientist and are subject to rather frequent change. In general, the higher the category, the more artificial, as is evidenced by what sometimes seems like an almost yearly change in the number of recognized Kingdoms. In the best of all possible worlds, each of the categories, at least those at the level of the Phylum or below are monophyletic. This is a fancy term meaning that the entire group had one and only one common ancestor, and, therefore, could be considered a lineage. And even though the fossil intermediates within lineages such as the vertebrates have been found, we are missing the transitional forms necessary to link the phyla within the kingdoms.

 Also requiring explanation is the Cambrian explosion. During a short period of time (at least short in geologic terms) starting about 570 million years ago and lasting for approximately 10 million years, all but one of the more than thirty extant animal phyla appeared, as well as an equally large number of phyla that subsequently became extinct. While there are a number of documented Precambrian fossils, a great morphological distance separates these organisms from the later invertebrates, and it is not at all clear that they were ancestral to the Cambrian animals. According to the respected evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, author of "Wonderful Life," "Two different kinds of explanation for the absence of Precambrian ancestors have been debated for more than a century: the artifact theory (they did exist, but the fossil record hasn't preserved them), and the fast-transition theory (they really didn't exist, at least as complex invertebrates easily linked to their descendents, and the evolution of modern anatomical plans occurred with a rapidity that threatens our usual ideas about the stately pace of evolutionary change)." At least as important as the Precambrian missing ancestors is the large number of recognizably distinct and complex body plans that had a relatively sudden and simultaneous appearance. According to Darwin's theory, diversification of phyla should come after species, genus, and family diversification, not before. Even Darwin's famous Galapagos finches fail to demonstrate the evolution of taxa above the genus level. In fact, the majority of documented cases of plant speciation involve not the gradual cyclic mechanism of natural selection acting on mutations, but the sudden appearance of new species as a result of chromosome doubling. The result? New species are instantaneously produced. Not at all what Darwin envisioned! Another point of interest: the Plant Kingdom experienced, in geologic terms, a much more gradual appearance of the 15 phyla, but as in the animal kingdom, there is a notable lack of transitional forms between phyla.

 Looking on a smaller scale, molecular biology can describe genetic relationships with great thoroughness, and provides information on which to base inferences about evolutionarily-crucial features. Even with this additional information, however, evolutionary theory has yet to demonstrate the origin of complex molecular cascades - that is, a series of steps, each one of which is required to occur in the proper sequence - for a successful final outcome. The phenomenon of blood clotting is an example of such a cascade. Fully nine interlocking chemical steps follow in precise sequence from the time of wounding to final blood clotting. A mistake at any one of the stages results in a failure of the system, as was illustrated in the royal family of 19th century Europe who were afflicted with such a problem - hemophilia. Examples of such complexity are not limited to sequences of chemical reactions; multi-component physical structures such as flagella are also extremely complex. Evolution of such features would appear to require simultaneous mutations in an already rather delicately balanced system instead of the proven and familiar step-by-step pathway of mutation followed by natural selection.

 The ultimate question about origins is, "How did life start, or how did that randomly assembled microbe that was great-great-grandma come into being?" Well, this is a real problem. Part of the reason that the fossil record is incomplete is that the fossilization process requires precise conditions of the surrounding environment, and even under the best of conditions, soft tissues and cells just do not make good fossils. So the likelihood of finding the "molecular parent" is vanishingly small. Is there any way to answer the question? Since direct observations of the past seem ruled out, that leaves only the possibility of experimentation. In decades of laboratory work, starting materials probably found on the primitive earth have been shown to react to form most of the small building-block molecules found in living things. In other experiments, some related big molecules do have, to some extent, the ability both to replicate and to speed up some chemical reactions, properties critical for life. However, the gap between formation of the little building blocks and these kinds of big molecules with "life-like" properties is probably as great as between the latter and the simplest living cells. Neither of these gaps has been bridged.

 So the Theory of Evolution contains open questions. Such questions don't necessarily conflict with its generally-accepted status as the unifying principle in biology. What will happen to the students in Kansas with the application of the new standards?

 The ultimate goal of the Kansas standards is, of course, to maintain and advance that state's already excellent record in education (in the top ten states by several educational measures, including S.A.T. performance), Given that goal, what effect will the omission of "origins" have from a pedagogic standpoint? First, a general question: does omission of any concept from a curriculum always make for a weaker program? Many states besides Kansas, including New York, are revising learning standards to favor more hands-on experience in the scientific method. When you place greater emphasis on the learner's responsibility in this way, you will typically treat fewer topics more thoroughly. Such a strategy doesn't necessarily compromise educational quality. But, second, is the extension of macroevolution to ultimate origins so fundamental a concept that a high-school student who has not studied it in detail will be at a serious disadvantage in college entrance exams and in college? Without question, this would be the case for a student unfamiliar with microevolution; he or she would be at a terrible disadvantage. But with "microevolution" defined as "within a lineage" (rather than "within a species," as is more usual), some of what is usually taught as "macroevolution" could be included on tests. Indeed, until the assessments - the statewide tests - are available, it isn't clear how much about fossils, for example, will be mandated rather than "encouraged." However, the breadth of the statement on "origins" appears potentially to have shifted the pedagogical problems out of biology and into earth science and physical science, and definitely moved some critical interpretive problems to those who will be contracted to design the tests.

 So, in these ways, Kansas chose to try to sail around the storms of controversy on an unexplored course. The vehemence of the evolution debate in the United States appears to have increased in proportion to the extent to which macroevolution seems to be presented as "fact" or "law" rather than as "theory," especially when materialistic naturalism becomes fused to Darwinian evolution. A significant feature of the action taken by the Board of Education in Kansas is that, unlike the cases of the 1980's in Arkansas and Louisiana, the religiously based dogmatism of the young-earth creationists has not been put in opposition to "evolution," but rather, distinctions between "kinds" of evolution were selected as the critical feature.

 But having avoided lawsuits of the type faced by other states, how does the Kansas case compare to a successful school-board resolution of similar issues in Hemet, Califormia, in September, 1995? This local district set out to draft state-compliant standards that might be paraphrased: "teach evolution as science." Key points specified that only scientific evidence should be taught in science classes; no theory should be taught dogmatically; and scientific terms must be precisely defined and used with consistency of meaning. The key definitions - drawn from state frameworks and, in particular, a peer-reviewed scientific summary - covered the meanings of evolution as "change over time," "common descent" and "natural selection" and precisely identified the open questions which we have surveyed in this talk. Unlike the situation in Kansas, the media identified this as a workable solution, reporting a favorable comment even from a local academic representative of an organization dedicated to "defense of education in evolutionary theory." Elements in reaching a successful resolution were identified as board members willing to think about solutions beyond those tried in the past; a community willing to set aside differences in support of the board's effort to find a broadly acceptable solution; the backing of many dedicated science teachers concerned about academic freedom; and several training sessions to lay out the controversial issues. Minutes of the Board meeting in Kansas show that critical changes to the standards were proposed for vote with very little notice. The proposal, brought on behalf of parents, set aside parts of a version which was clearly worded and had already been reviewed favorably by teachers and many local boards. In selecting a general statement about "origins" over such clear specification of critical and controversial issues, Kansas may have lost its first and best chance at a workable statewide solution.

Delivered September 28, 1999, in Union Springs, New York