“Welcome to Kansas,” the bumper sticker reads. “Turn back your clocks 150 years.”
The car was in a Lawrence bakery parking lot Tuesday. The sticker wasn’t dated. It could refer to Gov. Sam Brownback’s decision to make Kansas the only state in the nation without a state-funded arts commission, or perhaps it harked back to the days when the Kansas Board of Education put our state in headlines worldwide by telling school districts that teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution was optional.
Whichever is the case, the target is over-the-top ideology and Topeka deserves the zinger.
On the same day, the news came that help was on the way.
Kansas has been named one of 20 lead states to help write academic standards that could be used as a national model for public schools and WILL INCLUDE REQUIREMENTS FOR TEACHING EVOLUTION. (Emphasis supplied.)
The state-led collaboration was assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and a nonprofit education reform organization called Achieve, the Associated Press reported.
Chances are that Kansas was chosen because the years-long fight over Darwin’s scientific and religious credentials required Kansas academics to become expert in the business of writing academic science standards for public schools. Or perhaps the members of the Academy felt sorry for the Sunflower State and wanted to help with the healing.
While the gesture should be appreciated, the damage done to our state’s reputation can be undone only by time. This week’s academic kudo will be forgotten next week. Denouncing Darwin is akin to proclaiming that God is dead. It gets headlines. Being named to a 20-state committee is nice but seriously ho-hum.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
