Noting that an advisory committee of educators and parents had
previously concluded that Darwin on Trial was suitable for the high-school
collection, frustrated donor Mike Steiner said in the December 15 St. Paul
Pioneer Press that the district's written policies encouraging the use of
viewpoint-balanced materials "do not exist in practice."

     The board of the Rosemount-Eagan--Apple Valley school district has
declined a gift of two creationist titles that an area resident has been
proffering to the high-school library since 1997. Accepting Darwin on Trial
by Phillip Johnson and Darwin's Black Box by Michael J. Behe "as a science
resource, we thought, was disingenuous," Roger Everhart, a teacher at Apple
Valley's School of Environmental Studies explained after the board's
December 12 decision.

POWRÓT