"Skagit Valley Herald"
Burlington reassigns biology teacher
DeHart at center of debate over evolution vs. creation

07/22/01
Marina Parr

BURLINGTON Roger DeHart, the man at the middle of the maelstrom over
teaching creation and evolution, won't be heading up any biology classes
next year at Burlington-Edison High School.

School district officials have reassigned DeHart to teach earth science,
an academic area that focuses on geology rather than the origins of life.

Superintendent Rick Jones said the reassignment is rooted in practical
reasons, not political ones.

We transfer teachers at the high school level every year, Jones said.
It's because we have staff that come and go and the needs change with the
kids.

Supporters insist students are being cheated of DeHart's 23 years of
teaching experience, his biology background and enthusiasm for the
subject.

It's not in the best interest of the students, said Bruce Chapman,
president of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that promotes
teaching of intelligent design.

Chapman, like many of DeHart's supporters, insist religion isn't the real
issue. They say DeHart's teachings, which touched on a subject dubbed
intelligent design, is a valid rebuke of Darwinian evolution.

But critics of intelligent design say it=92s really an attempt to explain
the origins of life in religious terms. They consider intelligent design
an end-run around the separation between church and state.

This is only a start for what they want to get into the schools, said
Carl Johnson, a local parent involved with the Burlington  Edison
Committee for Science Education, a grassroots group formed two years ago
in opposition to DeHart and his backers at the Discovery Institute.

Intelligent design centers on the idea that living matter is so
overwhelmingly complex that the slow, gradual, biological changes
championed by mainstream scientists cannot be supported. The theory
implies a higher being, or God, creating life largely as it exists today.

A major tenet of evolution is that the earth's biological diversity sprang
naturally from a common source, or ancestor, with incremental changes
occurring over time.

Most scientists agree evolution occurs through random mutation and through
outside forces, such as famine or weather, when strong creatures survive
and pass on their genes to the next generation while the weak die out.

Charles Darwin, a 19th century English biologist, created the theory of
evolution after observing finches with distinctive beaks on the Galapagos
Islands, on the west coast of South America.

Opponents of DeHart say intelligent design is a way to sneak religion into
the classroom by implying there is a larger force, or higher being,
responsible for designing the world we live in.

They hope the school district's decision to move DeHart from his ninth and
10th grade biology class to a new teaching assignment resolves the problem.

We're quite happy about it, said Ken Atkins, who has two children who
once sat in DeHart's biology class.

Atkins is a member of the Burlington-Edison Committee for Science
Education, whose members have battled what they view as religion being
mixed in with mainstream science.

We hope that it eases the tensions. We want it over like everyone else,
said Atkins of DeHart's removal from biology classes.

The issue has raged in newspaper editorial pages, has been written about
in The New York Times and planted DeHart on the  front page of The Los
Angeles Times and in front of CNN television cameras.

The controversy became public three years ago after a student in DeHart's
class complained to his parents about what DeHart was teaching.

For 10 years, DeHart had supplemented his biology curriculum with the
textbook, Of Pandas and People, with little if any criticism. The book
critiques evolution while making a case for intelligent design.

In 1998, the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, threatening the
school district with a lawsuit over DeHart=92s teaching.

During that first episode of public criticism, DeHart says the school
district leadership supported him. Things changed, he said, in the summer
of 1998, when Superintendent Paul Chaplik retired and the district hired a
new superintendent, Rick Jones.

DeHart was told to teach from the school's approved biology textbook and
not to deviate from it. However, in the spring of 1999, DeHart offered his
class an article on irreducible complexity.

Championed by Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University, the theory
suggests that some life forms are so complex they cannot be reduced to
their simplest parts and thus cannot show an evolutionary path.

The school district allowed DeHart to bring up this element of intelligent
design if he balanced it with mainstream scientific teachings. His critics
say he did not.

Last year, district officials reiterated that DeHart stick to the
textbook. He says he did.

There's not been insubordination, DeHart said.

Although De Hart, 47, said he's never pushed his religious beliefs in the
classroom, he acknowledges there are theological implications to
teaching intelligent design.

But he waves those concerns away as belonging to a small group of people.

There's a minority of the population that doesn't want to believe there's
anything outside atoms and molecules. That really does challenge their
world view, he said.

He said he feels his academic freedom is being trampled on by being
removed from the subject he has studied and taught for so long.

We're talking about reassigning a teacher for ideological reasons, he
said.

DeHart said he stopped teaching intelligent design four years ago but
feels constrained by the school district's directive not to criticize
evolution as it's presented in high school textbooks.

Critics say DeHart still wants to acquaint students with the possibility
that a higher being is responsible for the earth's biodiversity.

What they want to do is include God as a possible hypothesis, using not
just naturalistic explanations but supernatural,=94 said  Johnson, a member
of the grassroots science education committee.

It's not the job of science to explain the purpose of life. Miracles
aren't allowed anywhere else in science, said Johnson, who considers
himself a Christian. Why should biology be singled out as the only
science that can permit the supernatural?

Meanwhile, DeHart said it's intellectually dishonest to discount the
supernatural especially as it applies to science and its rigorous
testing and retesting of answers to life's most basic questions.

The whole idea of (intelligent) design has been eliminated from science,
he said. The only area we're going to go to is the area of best
naturalistic explanation, when it's really a search for truth. With
science ... you go to the best explanation, period. Not just the best
naturalistic explanation.

Reporter Marina Parr can be reached at 360-416-2141 or by e-mail at
mparr@skagitvalleyherald.com.