The great debate on teaching evolution in Alaska's public schools was short and sweet Friday morning.
Short in that it took less than a minute at the start of the State Board of Education meeting for board member Shirley Holloway of Anchorage to propose adopting a controversial set of state science teaching standards and for board member Esther Cox, also of Anchorage, to move to strengthen the standard on evolution.
And sweet, in that Holloway quickly agreed, noting that a procession of scientists and educators who testified for such a change the day before were "respectful, professional and very helpful."
Specifically, Cox proposed dropping language advanced by the state Department of Education and Early Development that would have mentioned "evolution" only in parentheses at the end of a standard about life science.
In its place she proposed a more forceful statement recommended by the Anchorage School District.
The amended standard, Cox said, would state: "A student should ... develop an understanding of how science explains changes in life forms over time, including genetics, heredity, the process of natural selection and biological evolution."
Like Holloway, she was persuaded toward the change, she said, by the thoughtful comments of several who testified.
The board then voted 9-0 to amend the clause on evolution as proposed by Cox -- then voted to adopt the overall science standards, with no dissent.
Anchorage school officials said they were elated.
"I think (the amended standard) is a strong statement," said Superintendent Carol Comeau. "It will make it easier for us to send a message that our curriculum addresses evolution."
She had criticized the life science standard in public testimony the previous day for treating evolution as an afterthought.
The sudden light mood contrasted sharply with the angst over the same issue that filled the same room 12 years earlier, according to longtime Education Department spokesman Harry Gamble.
"Almost to the person, the only people who came out for the (1993) public hearing were people who testified one after another on behalf of creationism," Gamble said. "There must have been a few others who came out, but they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. And the board moved with that, you know, compromise language (on teaching evolution)."
It's a tangled story:
During the 1993 hearing, the board appointed by former Republican Gov. Wally Hickel failed on a 3-3 vote to insert a requirement into the state's new science standards that required creationism to be taught along with evolution.
Critics then pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled six years earlier that teaching creationism was the same as teaching a religious doctrine in a public school and, therefore, unconstitutional. But proponents in Alaska argued that evolution was "only a theory," just like creationism.
While the creationism motion failed, the science standards the Hickel administration adopted exemplified some of the board's ambivalence toward teaching evolution. Its life science standard shied away from using the word "evolution" in favor of the euphemistic phrase "changes in life forms over time" and then reinserted "evolution" at the end of the sentence, in parentheses.
When under Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski the department began revising the state's science standards -- prompted by the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act -- it started with the old standards.
Initially, the department chose to eliminate the reference to evolution altogether, even though a majority of the educators and scientists who helped draft the first part of the standards favored using it.
Education department assessment director Les Morse said he did that to try to avoid the sort of strife that plagued the department in 1993. But he decided to reinsert the word "evolution" parenthetically after similar science standards absent that word in the state of Georgia made national headlines, drawing the scorn of even former President Jimmy Carter.
But the final product still drew criticism recently from scientists and educators as part of the public review. It also prompted criticism at Thursday's public hearing.
No one at the hearing complained about teaching evolution. Gamble found himself wondering why.
"I thought about that last night as I lay awake," he said Friday. "I think maybe it's the correspondence schools that have popped up around the state that serve as alternatives."
Parents who object to the teaching of evolution now have more options, he said.
The state will now use the new standards to develop a statewide science exam due to be administered to public school students in the spring of 2008 -- a test mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
Daily News reporter George Bryson can be reached at gbryson@adn.com.
