‘Intelligent design' debate looming in Montana again

By JOHN FITZGERALD - The Billings Gazette - 06/23/05

While the debate rages in Kansas over how to teach evolution in public schools, the topic could come up this summer in Montana.

Kansas officials are debating evolution versus ‘‘intelligent design,'' an increasingly popular theory that claims some elements of the natural world are too complex to be the result of randomness.

In some states, intelligent design has been proffered as a compromise between evolution, which suggests everything in the living world evolved naturally over millions of years, and creationism, which suggests all living things were created by God just as it states in the Bible.

And even though some school districts in the country, and even Montana, have adopted elements of creationism and intelligent design into their science curriculums, in Billings it has been a tough sell.

‘‘We're talking about science classes and this isn't science,'' Shaun Harrington, curriculum director for grades 9-12 in Billings, said of creationism.


Last spring in Darby, a town of about 1,000 people in southwest Montana, the school board adopted a plan to include creationism in its science classes. Although such a move sets the district at odds with the state's accreditation standards, school districts legally can create their own curriculum.

The decision was reversed before it could be implemented, however, when one of the board's pro-creationism members was voted out during the next regular board election.

Earlier this year, the issue came up again when the 2005 Montana Legislature was asked to weigh in.

Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, sponsored a bill urging the state to reaffirm the separation of church and state, and asking the state to teach only valid scientific principles. Meanwhile, Rep. Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, wrote legislation that would allow schools to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

While both bills died without a vote, they indicate the issue is far from settled.

State review

Intelligent design could become an issue again this summer as Montana undergoes its regular examination of the state science standards.

‘‘We review all the different chapters of the accreditation standards every five years,'' said Steve Meloy, the executive secretary of the Board of Public Education. In addition to a regularly scheduled review, educators have their eye on the federal No Child Left Behind requirements for a standardized science test by 2008.

The Board of Public Education reviews the standards, but board members rely on the Office of Public Instruction for the information they need.

‘‘Each subject, whether it's reading, math, science or whatever, we bring together a broad cross-section of educators to review the standards,'' said OPI spokesman Joe Lamson.

He said the OPI will start the review process this summer, with a finished plan going to the Board of Public Education by 2006. The board will then conduct hearings on the science standards throughout the state, then make a decision on whether to approve the standards, probably by this time next year.

The Board of Public Education is made up of seven people appointed for seven-year terms by the governor. They meet eight times a year, and although Meloy wouldn't speak specifically about hearing from those who promote intelligent design, he did say the board works hard to be open to every Montanan.

‘‘Anybody can bring anything at any time,'' he said.

Dueling bills

Toole, the Helena Democrat, filed his resolution during the last Legislature as a direct result of the Darby creationism incident.

He said someone in the Bitterroot Valley asked him if he could get a law passed against teaching creationism.

‘‘I said no, but we can write a resolution,'' Toole recalled.

The resolution, which ‘‘supports the separation of church and state and promotes a quality science education,'' was forwarded to the Education and Cultural Resources Committee, where it died for lack of support.

Meanwhile, Rep. Koopman, the Bozeman Republican, wrote but didn't introduce a bill that would allow for ‘‘teaching competing theories of origin.''