Peter Walks for Democracy

This entry begins my journey back through what’s motivated me to explore “The Mindful Ecological Citizen.” In 2004, Tammy Kitzmiller and 10 other parents filed a lawsuit against the Dover School District for passing an “intelligent design” policy that called the Theory of Evolution into question. Covering the story for a small paper, I came to see that the forces trying to undo teaching contemporary biology were also attacking climate science in every institution of modern life. The stakes of widespread institutional denial of climate change in the United States—the world’s oldest democracy and largest (fossil fuel powered) economy with the most powerful military—could and would undermine and devastate civilization itself. 

—

On Monday, October 18, 2004, students woke up, ate breakfast, and got on the bus in the Dover School District in York County, Pennsylvania. They rode over rolling hills to get to school. Some of them scrambled to finish homework. Others closed their eyes wishing they were back in bed. That night, the school board would take an action that would change their quiet town for years.

In 2004, I was teaching college rhetoric and composition, primarily writing for the social sciences. At least once a week, my students read the frontpage stories and the opinion page of The New York Times. At the time, Penn State had the paper freely available in dispensers on campus. Long-noted as “the paper of record,” we could use something in the paper to highlight style, concision, evidence, argumentation, context, and how issues evolved. During the fall of that year, a story appeared in The Times that caught my attention.

At a highly contentious meeting with standing room only, the Dover Area School District’s Board of Directors would vote, 6-3, to require a statement be read to ninth grade biology students. It said:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, ‘Of Pandas and People,’ is available in the library along with other resources for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.

The vote, led by then President Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham brought together at least a year’s worth of actions by creationists to manufacture a religiously-motivated controversy about evolutionary theory.

In the weeks that followed, eight families would file a lawsuit led by the American Civil Liberties Union. Kitzmiller v. Dover  brought the United States’s culture war into full view. It cast individual community members and special interests like Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the National Center for Science Education into direct conflict with the Thomas Moore Law Center and the Discovery Institute. It pitted science against religion, what it means to believe in God or be a practicing Christian in the United States, the status of non-believers in public life, what a democracy should do when things heat up, and what science education should be in that democracy.

All these struck chords in me. I’m a great appreciator of the scientific enterprise but not a scientist myself. I grew up in a nominally Catholic family where music and connection to the Creation mattered more than belief in transubstantiation. I had a brief stint with Evangelical Christianity in college but came to describe myself as an atheist. Today, while I do not believe in the supernatural, I am an intensely spiritual person who has much more in common with people of faith than I do with some of my atheist brothers and sisters. 

Ever mindful of what matters for making sound decisions in the public’s interest, Kitzmiller confronted me with problems in democracy. When the balance of values within our different ways of learning, knowing, and doing collide, our media, our elections and legislative bodies, our courts, our executive branches, and our schools must respond. Schools, in particular, become the center of cultural, economic, and social strife when factions go to war over who they think we should be, how we make our livings, and what we can know. I come from a family of award-winning teachers at every level of education. Schools matter to me. Later, I’ll share how I’ve witnessed this firsthand as a school board director.

While I was covering Kitzmiller for a small paper in central Pennsylvania, a pattern started emerging. The wedge that Dover’s board members Alan Bonsell and Bill Buckingham were driving into their community was part of a much larger and coordinated political enterprise. The same forces attacking evolution were attacking climate science from a religious vantage point. Much more frighteningly, they were defending the burning of fossil fuels and by proxy defending the world’s most powerful polluting corporations. This unholy alliance would use disinformation, distraction, and doubt to destroy individual reputations and delay actions. While I had severe misgivings about not teaching evolution, our nation and world could live without widespread acceptance of descent with modification and natural selection. But the stakes of widespread institutional denial of climate change in the world’s oldest democracy with the largest economy and most powerful military? That could undermine and devastate civilization itself.