Too Much Evolution For KY Superintendent

Caricature of Darwin, 1871 (Public Domain)

Evolution, is fine, just like junk food, so long as we aren’t giving our kids too much of it, suggests Ricky Line, superintendent of Hart County Schools in Kentucky. Line wrote to the Kentucky Board of Education to complain about the overemphasis on evolution in the schools.

The Panda’s Thumb blog paraphrased his letter to the school board:

“I have a deep concern about the increased emphasis on the evolution content required in the new End-of-Course Blueprint. After carefully reviewing the Blueprint, I find the increase is substantial and alarming .…

I have a very difficult time believing that we have come to a point in education that we are teaching evolution, not the theory of evolution, [sic] as a factual occurrence, while totally omitting the creation story by a God who is bigger than all of us. I do not believe in macroevolution, and I do believe in creation by our God. …

I take no issue with the teaching of microevolution, the documented proof that a species changes over time, just as humans are taller on the average than they were 50 years ago. I also take no issue with macroevolution being taught as a theory.

Fortunately for the integrity of science education in Kentucky, the Commissioner of the Kentucky Board of Education, Terry Holliday, wrote back to Line explaining that he was misusing the word “theory” to mean “guess” or “hypothesis,” and that both macro- and micro-evolution are well-established scientific principles, supported by ample evidence, and necessary concepts for their students to master if they hope to be college-ready.

Unfortunately for the children of Hart County, Ricky Line continues to assert that macroevolution wasn’t supported by evidence and that creationism was true (though he failed to provide any evidence for this truth).