History and Cobb County

Posted 22 December 2006 by Nick Matzke

Many were taken by surprise by the Cobb County School Board's decision to settle the Selman case, give up their practice of putting evolution "warning labels" in textbooks, and pay $167,000 in fees to the plaintiffs. They had fought this case for four years, and succeeded in getting the Court of Appeals to vacate the district court decision for a retrial. Perhaps the third time Cobb's sticker got in front of a court would be the charm. Well, the reality was that this was not likely at all. After the case was sent back to the district court for a retrial, the plaintiffs brought on two attorneys from the Kitzmiller case, Eric Rothschild and Richard Katskee. The Court of Appeals had directed the trial court to collect more evidence and clarify the record on a number of points they found insufficiently documented in the record from the first trial. The new legal team petitioned the district court for a new trial and new discovery ("discovery" is the pretrial gathering of documents and evidence that takes place before a trial). Judge Cooper granted this motion, including expert discovery. So, the plaintiffs selected three expert witnesses who had worked on the Kitzmiller case -- Ken Miller and Brian Alters, who had both testified in Kitzmiller, and Eugenie Scott of NCSE, who had consulted. Although we now will not have a Kitzmiller sequel in Georgia, the expert witness statements from these witnesses give us some idea of the case that confronted the school board in the retrial. I currently have just uploaded Genie Scott's expert report (links to expert statements or visit NCSE's Selman page). (I am waiting for permissions on the other two reports.) It is well known that the Supreme Court tests for constitutionality require judges to examine the history of governmental policies as part of their assessment of whether or not the government's asserted secular purposes and effects are real, or a sham. Well, Scott's report shows that there is far more history to "theory not fact" than even I knew until recently. Last year I noted on PT that "theory not fact" goes back to policy passed by the California state Board of Education in 1925 in the midst of the nationwide fundamentalist crusade against evolution. But it turns out that "theory not fact" can be traced back even further, to a 1923 policy pushed in Georgia by William Jennings Bryan himself.

Opposition to evolution in Georgia has deep roots. Like those in other southern states, Georgia legislators were enthusiastic over Scopes-type antievolution laws in the 1920s. William Jennings Bryan, in fact, visited Georgia to promote a "theory not fact" bill. In 1923, he urged the Georgia House to pass a bill that would "forbid teachers from teaching evolution as a fact, declaring that they had no right to present it to their pupils as anything other than a theory or hypothesis."

And, as it turns out, "theory not fact" statements were a common feature of antievolution policies both in the 1920s and as part of "creation science" and "intelligent design" policies from the 1960s to the present. The cases in which "theory not fact" language has appeared as part of the challenged creationist policy include Daniel v. Waters (1975), Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), and Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005). It has also appeared in policies or disclaimers in Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, etc. Read the report for more of the history. Furthermore, Cobb's theory-not-fact policy did not just occur to someone in Cobb one day as a good idea. Instead, it was just the latest in a long line of antievolution policies in Cobb and Georgia generally:

As with the rest of Georgia, evolution education in Cobb County, Georgia, has been a perennial sore spot. A controversy over evolution erupted in Cobb County in 1979 when the Cobb School Board approved on a 7-0 vote a "balanced treatment of evolution" resolution submitted by board member John McClure. The goal of the policy was to teach creation science along with evolution. The district spent $7,600 on instructional materials purchased from two creationist organizations, the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society. Teachers protested both the policy and the instructional materials, rating them as scientifically and pedagogically substandard, and according to one source, threatened to strike if the policy wasn't rescinded. In the mid-1980s, the district became embroiled in a controversy over the alleged teaching of "humanism" as part of a values clarification exercise in the elementary school classes. One of the people who had been central in promoting creationism in the 1980s, Carolyn Sanford, was prominent in this controversy as well. She included evolution education as part of the breakdown of morals in society that she saw as part of a creeping influence of "humanism" in the schools. To try to settle the issue, the Superintendent's office circulated a memo restricting classroom discussion on a number of topics, including "evolution, abortion, communism, religion, and [values clarification]". This memo, "Standard Practices to be Observed With Instructional Materials for Selected Curriculum Topics," was circulated to teachers in December 1984. Although teachers were permitted to supplement the county-approved instructional materials for all other controversial topics, materials used for teaching evolution were restricted to "that selected and purchased through county procedures." The policy was protested by the president-elect of the citizens group, Georgia Council for Science Education, Paula Eglin, a biology teacher in Cobb County. Because there were at the time no written guidelines for teaching evolution in Cobb County, the restriction on instructional materials were seen as a burden by teachers. The policy remained in place. In the mid-1990s, evolution returned to Cobb County as a controversial issue, when parents complained about the inclusion of a few pages about the origin of the solar system and Earth in a fourth-grade science book. Parents Jeffrey and Beth Wright objected to the Macmillan / McGraw-Hill book Changing Earth because one chapter, "The Birth of Earth," included a discussion of different theories about the origin of the solar system, and also mentioned -- briefly -- the Big Bang. The Wrights were quite clear that their objections to the book were because it conflicted with their biblically based views of creation. To quote from a news story: "We're not fanatics," says Beth Wright, "but we believe in creation. If creation isn't being taught, then nothing should be taught." The Board of Education, arguing that the topic of the evolution of the earth wasn't part of the fourth grade curriculum anyway, requested that the publisher reprint the books deleting pages 72--85. The publisher agreed, which generated a considerable amount of discussion in the community, including fiery letters to the editor from both sides of the controversy. During the course of this controversy, reporters uncovered the fact that the official Cobb County policy "Theories of Origin," Policy IDBD, proscribed the teaching of human evolution in several ways. The policy, originally passed in December of 1979, had undergone a number of revisions, the most recent in August of 1995. This policy would, in a few years, be seen to conflict with the contents of new textbooks.

By the terms of the consent agreement, the board does not have to admit that its "theory not fact" warning label was unconstitutional. But I think that the prospect of the above sort of detailed testimony may have helped convince them that settling was a good idea. Notes: Part of the policies ruled unconstitutional in Daniel v. Waters (1975):

Any biology textbook used for teaching in the public schools, which expresses an opinion of, or relates a theory about origins or creation of man and his world shall be prohibited from being used as a textbook in such system unless it specifically states that it is a theory as to the origin and creation of man and his world and is not represented to be scientific fact.

...in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987):

"When creation or evolution is taught, each shall be taught as a theory, rather than as proven scientific fact."

...in Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005):

"The Theory is not a fact."

11 Comments

frank schmidt · 22 December 2006

"theory not fact" can be traced back even further, to a 1923 policy pushed in Georgia by William Jennings Bryan himself.

Sheesh. Can't these people ever have an original thought?

whheydt · 22 December 2006

For them to have an original thought, their thinking would have to evolve...

wolfwalker · 23 December 2006

Can't these people ever have an original thought?

No. It's against their religion.

Larry Moran · 23 December 2006

Let's be clear about one thing, <Evolution Is a Fact and a Theory. Nobody is claiming that evolutionary theory doesn't exist, right?

If I understand the legal issues correctly, the issue is whether the phrase "theory not fact" can be associated with religious motivations and a history of trying to get religion into the classroom. Is this correct? It's not really about whether we can distinguish between evolution as theory and evolution as fact, right?

The reason I ask is that some of the things we'd like to teach really are theories, not facts, but they are scientific theories. We need to teach them even if they aren't facts. (It goes without saying that the Creationists are more afraid of the "facts" than the theory and they are trying to discredit the most solid facts, such as the common ancestry of humans and chimps, by portraying it as "theory.")

Are these just legal quibbles or is there some science behind Eugenie's report? Do scientists need to make the case that evolutionary theory is valid science or is it sufficient to demonstrate that "theory not fact" is a buzzword for creationism regardless of whether it might be scientifically correct in some contexts?

It's hard for us "furriners" to understand the legal constitutional issues and separate them from the science.

Ed Darrell · 23 December 2006

"We're not fanatics," says Beth Wright, "but we believe in creation. If creation isn't being taught, then nothing should be taught."

No, they are fanatics. Big Bang IS "creation," so far as the evidence shows -- that is, so far as God's creation (if you call and believe it that) shows. Readers here know of course that Big Bang was greeted with enthusiasm by religious people when it was first proposed because, simply, it stated there was a definite beginning to the universe. That, religious people of past decades thought, was much closer to a Genesis type of beginning than the previously-assumed-by-many-scientists, early version of Steady State ('the universe has always been here'). It's ironic years later that a few odd cults of Christians now oppose mention of the Big Bang. But be clear: People who oppose reality being taught in science are fanatics. Despite their denials, despite their sincere wishes not to be fanatics, they are fanatics.

Popper's ghost · 23 December 2006

It's hard for us "furriners" to understand the legal constitutional issues and separate them from the science.

The issue is that evolution is being singled out for special scrutiny -- there is no similar sticker for, say, atomic theory -- and that the motivation for that singling out is religious.

Nick (Matzke) · 24 December 2006

Hi Larry -- if you look at the history, what is meant by "theory not fact" policies is basically the assertion "evolution is just speculation" or even "evolution might explain some things but you are prohibited from teaching that it might actually be true." It is uniformly and always a product of fundamentalist opposition to evolution, from 1923 to the present.

(It really is an expression of the kind of Baconian view of science that fundamentalists have -- read books by George Marsden about this -- but that is another issue.)

It's all rather like what the Catholic Church told Galileo back in 1616 -- it was OK to write about heliocentric theory as a useful model, but he was prohibited from actually asserting that his model was correct and geocentrism was wrong.

Moonsword · 25 December 2006

I am so very happy to be a born and bred Georgian, right down the road from Cobb County, at the moment. I cannot express my joy at discovering yet more idiotic and/or discriminatory legislation and government action in this state. (Worcester v. Georgia came out of my home county of Gwinnett.) I really wish I could say I was terribly surprised at this without lying. I can't, but I do wish I could.

Gwinnett does note that it's a theory, right before explaining what theory means in scientific terms (or at least they did while I was in high school, but it's been, oh, seven years since I had HS biology). Nice bit of subversion, there.

Peter Henderson · 25 December 2006

I'm sure I read somewhere (it may have been on their website) that AIG had something to do with the stickers being placed on the books in the first place. Anyway, here's their reaction to the decision: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/1221cobb.asp

Executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, Debbie Seagraves said, "It's absolutely a victory for the parents and the children in Cobb County school."2 It's definitely a victory for humanism and censorship, but it is not a victory for science or for parents or their children who are being told they cannot question or challenge evolution in the classroom. This should make us all more aware of the important role that parents play in educating their children. We need to help our children understand that the Bible---the history book of the universe, the unchanging Word of God---is the ultimate authority for interpreting the science being presented in the classroom today.

The last part of the statement puzzles me. AIG want children to challenge science in the classroom ? (evolution doesn't just cover biology). I wonder what kind of alternative theories AIG expect teenage children to come up with ? But then, maybe what AIG really means is that they should challange teachers with religous dogma i.e. The YEC nonsense from Ken Ham etc. (where you there etc.)

Readers here know of course that Big Bang was greeted with enthusiasm by religious people when it was first proposed because, simply, it stated there was a definite beginning to the universe.

Didn't Stephen Hawking have an audience with the Pope at one stage because of this very issue Ed ? Of course the YEC's completely deny not only the "Big Bang" but fundamental aspects of astronomy such as stellar evolution and cosmic recycling etc.

Ed Darrell · 25 December 2006

Mr. Henderson, you may be recalling Hawking's remarks about a pope's urging scientists not to inquire into creation: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-06-15-hawking-pope_x.htm

I would temper such claims by noting that Pope John-Paul II also invited people like Jim Ferris to the Vatican to discuss the origins of life, in an open-minded fashion that most of us pray will continue.

AiG appears once again to have misplaced their wits. This is not an issue of censorship against questioning science. Science demands that kids bring their greatest skepticism with them -- take nothing on faith, question everything, would be an accurate summary of what science asks of those who strive to do research.

It's particularly telling that AiG, after just complaining about censorship, then offers what they hope will be an unchallenged view of the universe that is almost completely at odds with the facts. It's not censorship AiG really worries about; they worry that kids will be sane, and smart, and well-read. AiG hopes for ignorance in the pews. One wonders what it is they intend to sell, when they encourage their children to be ignorant of important and fun scientific knowledge. (One thinks of the Mormons' claim that "knowledge is the glory of God," and one hopes other Christ-following sects might adopt such a stance.)

Peter Henderson · 25 December 2006

Mr. Henderson, you may be recalling Hawking's remarks about a pope's urging scientists not to inquire into creation: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-...

That could be it Ed. For some reason I thought I had heard Stephen Hawking say that he had actually met with the pope. It was on the BBC series "Stephen Hawking's Universe"....one which I wish they would either repeat or release on DVD, but it must have been that incident he was recalling.