State Capitals Stirred By Evolution

By David J. Hoff

The Kansas board of education guaranteed that the battle over teaching evolution ended the 20th century with a bang—and ushered in the new millennium, and election season, with a flurry of activity.

Since the board last summer eliminated Charles Darwin’s theories from the Kansas science standards, conservatives in a number of other states have introduced similar measures as legislation or state policy, keeping the debate over how to teach the origins of life raging as it did throughout much of the past century.

"This pops up all over the place," said Ronald L. Numbers, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of two books on the debate. "One of the reasons that Kansas is attracting so much attention is because the activity is now back up...