The Plain Dealer

Decision leaves Ohio doomed to mediocrity

12/16/02

Lawrence M. Krauss

I moved from Connecticut to what most people call the Midwest almost a decade ago. Actually, since Cleveland is in a region of Ohio formerly known as the Western Reserve of Connecticut, in one sense I never really left my former state. Indeed, I was immediately struck by how much my adopted home resembled New England - far more than Kansas. Or so I thought.

As we in the hinterland work to compete with the two coasts in the technological dog-eat-dog world that is modern society, our politicians pay lip service to the goals of modernization. Our recently re-elected governor, Robert Taft, announced a "third frontier" project as part of his re-election campaign; it would supposedly commit $1.6 billion toward expanding Ohio's high-tech research capabilities, vastly increasing infrastructure in "biomedical research and technology transfer" with the goal of matching Massachusetts or California on the "new technology index." (We currently rank 30th out of the 50 states.)

Sadly, when it came to putting his mouth where his claimed money was, Taft and his political comrades remained strangely silent as the State Board of Education carried on its effort to update the science curriculum in the state over the past year. Remember that a national study of science standards performed two years ago gave Ohio a failing grade in its science standards, which did not even mention the word "evolution."

Last week, after tremendous public debate and discussion the school board voted on a final weird sort of compromise. The good news is that the word "evolution" now appears in the standards. The bad news is that Ohio is the first state to appear to require students to examine criticisms of biological evolution in science classes. Those who pushed for such a compromise include the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based, religious think tank that flooded Ohio with lobbyists over the past year in an effort to promote the notion that the pseudo-religious concept of "intelligent design" was somehow a viable scientific alternative to evolution.

The board added an amendment to its final package stating that the fact that evolutionary theory is treated differently in the science standards than, say, Einstein's special relativity theory somehow should not be construed as supporting the claims of intelligent design advocates.

No bother, the damage has been done.

As reported in The Plain Dealer, Discovery Institute Director Stephen Meyer hailed the decision as "historic," and his troops have packed up camp and moved to New Mexico, which is the next state to draft new science standards.

Creationist and law professor Philip Johnson made a triumphant tour of Ohio after the proposed standards language was unveiled; he claimed that Ohio's decision "is a victory in the battle to free science classes from the grip of Charles Darwin."

Retired California physicist Lawrence Lerner, who headed the national science standards study two years ago, was also reported as saying that Ohio would have received an "A" this time had it not made a point of singling out evolution for critical analysis. Instead, it will get a "B" or a "C." Lerner further stated that "Ohio has the opportunity of leaping from the bottom of the heap to a par with excellent state standards. The compromise would place Ohio in the mediocre middle."

Three years ago, when Kansas removed evolution from its state science curriculum, there was a public outcry that reached all the way up to the state's Republican governor, who publicly denounced the decision and threatened to remove the board. At no point during the public debate over the past year did Gov. Bob Taft weigh into the controversy here. The Ohio legislature almost did by briefly flirting with the idea of requiring the teaching of intelligent design.

Alas, we in the "mediocre middle" of the country, who have hoped to put our state on the technological frontier, may have to wait awhile longer. It is hard to imagine how the "third frontier" of high-tech research can flourish in a state whose public officials are not willing to raise hackles by being "modern."

Krauss is chair of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University, and a board member of the Great Lakes Science Center and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. His most recent book is "Atom: A Single Oxygen Atom's Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth . . . and Beyond."