It Keeps Going and GoingAuthor(s): B. M. S.Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 77, No. 6 (Feb., 1996), p. 394Published by: Phi Delta Kappa InternationalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405595 .

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EDITOR'S PAGE

It Keeps Going and Going

PHI DELTA USPS 429-840

(ISSN 0031-7217) Published monthly, except July and August, by Phi Delta Kappa, Inc., 408 N. Union, P.O. Box 789, Bloomington, IN 47402. Subscription rate, $35 per year, domestic; $38.50 per year, foreign. Single copies, $4.50 each (plus $3 processing fee); remit with order. Indexed in Education Index and in Current Index to Journals in Education ; available on microfilm, University

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Bloomington, IN 47402. Copyright 1996 by Phi Delta Kappa, Inc.

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EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS

ROLAND S. BARTH, Prof. Emeritus, Graduate School of Educa tion, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND, William F. Russell Prof. of Education, Teachers College, Columbia Univ., New York, N.Y., and Co-Director, National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching.

ELLIOT W. EISNER, Prof. of Education and Art, Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif.

JOYCE L. EPSTEIN, Co-Director, Center on Families, Com munities, Schools, and Children's Learning, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore.

JESUS GARCIA, Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction, Social Studies Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham paign.

FRED M. NEWMANN, Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, and Director, Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools.

GILBERT T. SEWALL, Editor, Social Studies Review, and Direc tor, American Textbook Council, New York, N.Y.

MICHAEL D. USDAN, President, Institute for Educational Lead ership, Washington, D.C.

SUZANNE M. WILSON, Assoc. Prof., College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

DOUGLAS BEDIENT, Past President, PDK.

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L IKE THE Ener gizer bunny, the anti-evolution forces just keep on going and go

ing. Certainly, they share the stick-to-itiveness of the plucky little pink rabbit, but what they're up to is serious business.

By now, most Kappan readers have probably heard about the one-page insert that the Alabama State Board of Educa tion was planning to place in that state's 1Oth-grade biology textbooks. It was once supposed to describe evolution as a "con troversial theory" and to warn readers that "any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact." But cooler heads have since prevailed, and the insert has now been reduced to a single sentence: "Evolution should be treated as theory, not fact."

This strikes me as a reasonable revision for two reasons. First, the theory of evo lution makes no claims about how life on this planet began, so the matter of "life's origins" is not in any way central to it. In deed, Stanley Miller of the University of California at San Diego - the original chef who in the early 1950s cooked up a batch of primordial broth, added simulat ed lightning, and created organic com pounds - was seeking only to show that the materials of life might have formed in conditions thought to exist on the early Earth. These days, he is pursuing the role that PNA (the "P" is for peptide) might have played in the genesis of life as pre cursor to both RNA and DNA.

Whatever conclusions Miller and his colleagues ultimately draw from their cur rent research will show only that the basic building blocks of life might have been cre ated by means of certain chemical mech anisms. Science has so far proved unable to say anything about the role of the di vine in creation.

The second reason that the revised Alabama insert

is a step in the right direc

tion has to do with that old bugbear of education's un derbrush: unanticipated con sequences. Of course, no

reputable scientist will dispute the idea that evolution is indeed a fact - that over geological spans of time organisms have changed in systematic ways that we can investigate through a variety of rational

means. But the consequence that the Al abama board might not have anticipated is that the insert in question might spark a useful discussion of what constitutes a scientific theory.

For the record, a scientific theory is not a hunch or a guess based on limited in formation, though in day-to-day parlance the word is often used in that way. The

American Heritage Dictionary of Science explains that a scientific theory is "an ex planation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especial ly one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena: the theory of evolution." Evolution is the exemplar chosen to illustrate "scientific theory." The power of a scientific theory lies in its in clusion of data and in its ability to account for newly discovered data. Ultimately, we

must judge a theory by such explanatory power.

And that kind of discussion and reflec tion ought to be happening in science classes every day. The theory of evolution undergirds our understanding of all the life sciences, and it continues to accom

modate the new discoveries of geneticists and other researchers without great diffi culty. It has little to fear from the actions of the Alabama State Board of Education. Perhaps the theory of evolution will turn out to be the real bunny that just keeps go ing and going. - BMS

KAPPAN STAFF PAULINE B. GOUGH, Editor CAROL BUCHERI, Design/Production Director, BRUCE M. SMITH, Managing Editor Advertising/Circulation Manager RISE KOBEN, Assistant Editor VICTORIA VOELKER, Designer STANLEY M. ELAM, Contributing Editor CHERRY MERRITT-DARRIAU, Advertising Sales TERRI HAMPTON, Permissions SHEILA WAY, Compositor

The Phi Delta Kappan publishes articles concerned with educational research, service, and leader ship; issues, trends, and policy are emphasized. Views expressed do not necessarily agree with po sitions taken by Phi Delta Kappa, the professional fraternity in education.

394 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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