By: David Bloomberg Re: Pandas in Plano, II The following appears in the current issue of

By: David Bloomberg
Re: Pandas in Plano, II

The following appears in the current issue of The Skeptic, the newsletter of
the North Texas Skeptics.  Permission is granted to reprint this text for non
commercial purposes, provide attribution is given to the authors and The
Skeptic.

John Blanton
Vice President/Secretary,
The North Texas Skeptics
3220 Silent Oak
Farmers Branch, Texas 75234-2273

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Creationist text urged for Plano schools

By Mike Sullivan and Joe Voelkering

PLANO, Texas: A Creationist textbook is being promoted by
three school trustees to supplement biology texts in the
Plano, Texas, public high school science classes. The book,
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological
Origins (Second Edition), is being promoted by three members
of the Board who want to spend district funds to make the
book available to all Plano high school biology teachers. An
organized group of about 75 Plano parents opposed to the
book's use in science classes has asked the North Texas
Skeptics and others for help in mounting their opposition to
using the book in the large suburban Dallas district.

Plano Independent School District trustees Tom Wilds, Don
Mills and Gary Clark want the district to authorize the
purchase of a copy of the clearly Creationist Pandas text
for every biology teacher in the district. Teachers may then
request the book for use in their classrooms, and district
funds would be used for their purchase. At least one other
trustee, Judy Coppolo, has been quoted as being in favor of
Pandas. With Mills, Clark, Wilds and Coppolo all supporting
Pandas, the seven-member board could vote to approve the
purchase at their meeting on February 7. There are
approximately 3,000 biology students currently in the Plano
ISD, so the district may eventually fund the purchase of
many copies of Pandas if the board votes to adopt the text.

By having the board authorize samples of Pandas to be
acquired with district funds, and then to use district funds
to purchase quantities of the books for students if
requested by a teacher as a supplemental text, the usual
textbook review process that would be carried out if a
teacher had requested the book from the outset can be
averted, Wilds revealed in a telephone interview. Texas
state funds could not be used to purchase Pandas since the
book is not on the state-approved list.

Pandas, published by the Richardson-based Foundation for
Thought and Ethics, has been widely criticized by science
education groups, biologists and several religious groups as
being a thinly-veiled promotion of special creation over
evolution theory, substituting the euphemism "intelligent
designer" for God. The nature of the claimed "intelligent
designer" is not described in Pandas, but readers are led to
think that it is a supernatural being unknown to science. It
also claims that complex "designs" in Nature cannot be
explained by evolution theory, and that therefore, such
organisms must have been created ex nihilo by the hand of
the "intelligent designer."

In a front-page story in the January 13 edition of the
Dallas Morning News, Wilds is quoted as saying "Darwinism is
full of holes, and we shouldn't be teaching it as gospel
truth. This [Pandas] brings out other possibilities for how
our universe got started without pushing any philosophy or
theology." As best as can be determined independently,
Pandas is not in actual classroom use in any public school
biology curriculum in America. The publisher refuses to give
the names of any of the districts they claim are using the
text in science classes. Pandas has been rejected in widely-
reported cases in California, Idaho, and Alabama.

Pandas rejected in another metroplex district

The Pandas pandemonium has already been met and dealt with
in another large Dallas-area school district. Officials in
this large Dallas suburban district, contacted by NTS and
who spoke on the condition that their district not be
identified, received a request to use Pandas as a
supplemental text by one of their biology teachers, and the
administrators handled the investigation into the book's
appropriateness aggressively.

First, school officials conducted an extensive academic
review of the book and received materials from informed
science education advocacy groups like the National Center
for Science Education; they read a review of the science
posited in Pandas by Dr. Frank Sonleitner, associate
professor of zoology, University of Oklahoma; and they
solicited information from every other public school
district they could find which had considered adoption of
the Pandas text. They told NTS that this study resulted in
two findings: not a single public school district could be
located which had approved the book for use in science
classes; and that the book failed the publisher's claim that
it is a science textbook.

Next, the district's legal counsel reviewed all the legal
cases applicable to the adoption of Pandas. They found that
case law supported the idea that Panda's "intelligent
designer" was a euphemism for a Creator, thereby making
Panda's content comparable to proselytizing, and so barring
it from use in public school science classes based on the
First Amendment's establishment clause.

Most notably, the officials defended their rejection of the
Pandas text based on their fiduciary responsibility to
district taxpayers. They reasoned that if Pandas were
adopted, a legal challenge to the book would be a near-
certainty. They would then be faced with the prospect of
defending a court challenge to the use of the book,
resulting in significant expenditure of taxpayer funds in
the legal defense.

Apart from the fairly minor cost of the books themselves,
these officials were mindful of the financial exposure
adoption of Pandas would mean to their district from the
legal issues sure to follow. "I feel that the actions of
this administration are an example of how the review process
should work, and that they should be commended for their
very high academic and ethical standards," North Texas
Skeptics President Joe Voelkering said.

Plano officials may face the legal challenge averted by that
district, should Pandas be adopted for use in the Plano
schools. Other local school officials told NTS that they are
sure that Pandas will be tested in court somewhere in Texas,
and most likely in the Metroplex. They fear that if the
Plano challenge fails, their large suburban district may be
the next one faced with the Pandas controversy. Research by
NTS has disclosed that there is legal precedent for
individual board members being held responsible for
liability when advancing their own views through their
actions on the board in such cases.

Plano parents, NTS respond

A group of Plano parents organized last August under the
name Keep Quality in Plano Schools (KQUIPS) shortly after
the board elections that brought Mills, Clark and Wilds to
office. Soon after those elections, the Board ended the
demonstration of condom use for birth control and disease
control in Plano high school biology classes and passed a
resolution advocating the teaching of "traditional morals"
in the public schools.

Evelyn Peelle, the vice-president and a board member of the
KQUIPS group, is no stranger to good science. She has earned
a B.S. in Engineering and a B.A. in Chemistry from
Swarthmore College, and has completed work towards a Ph.D.
in Chemical Engineering. Yet she and other KQUIPS members
have sought and accepted help on the Pandas issue from
groups more familiar with dealing with Creationist issues in
public schools.

Contacted by NTS President Joe Voelkering, Peele and KQUIPS
spokesperson Nancy Machen were eager to receive information
on how their group could mount a challenge to the Pandas
initiative. Voelkering was able to brief the two on the
general background of the Pandas book and steer the group
towards another school board that has already met and turned
back the pseudoscience of Pandas.

NTS has also offered KQUIPS the expertise of NTS Directors
Emeritus and co-founders John Thomas and Ronnie Hastings.
Thomas is a practicing attorney with an undergraduate degree
in physics from UT, and Hastings is the chairman of the
Science department and a teacher of advanced mathematics and
physics at Waxahachie High School and earned his Ph.D. in
physics from Texas A&M. Both men are familiar with
Creationist tactics, case law, the pseudoscientific
arguments from design, the poor science offered in Pandas,
and other issues concerning the Creationist movement.
Hastings also served on the committee that approved the
science textbooks now in use in Texas public schools. In
addition, NTS Technical Advisors Ray Eve and Frank Harrold
have been contacted about the Plano issue. The two associate
professors at UT-Arlington authored a book on the
Creationist phenomenon, titled "The Creationist Movement in
Modern America" from Twayne Publishers, Boston.

Wilds' ideas on science education

Peelle, Machen and the KQUIPS parents will have an uphill
battle on their hands to keep quality science education in
biology classes in Plano, if the transcript of a telephone
interview of trustee Wilds by Peelle and supplied to The
Skeptic is any indication. In it, Wilds:

admits that he can't remember much of anything from his
college biology classes;

that he is in favor of each biology teacher in the district
being able to decide whether to use Pandas in their
classroom on a teacher-by-teacher basis;

that he sees no reason why a teacher shouldn't be able to
use Pandas in science class if district funds aren't
involved;

that students are well-served in science education by
exposing them to various views about important topics and
leaving it to the students to sort out which are valid and
which aren't;

and that he would consider any significant opposition to the
Pandas book by parents or scientists to be secondary to an
individual teacher's desire to use the text.

KQUIPS has mounted a letter-writing campaign and plans to
turn out in force at the February 7th meeting to voice their
concern over Pandas. NTS members who pay property taxes in
Plano ISD or who have children attending public school in
Plano have a valid reason to voice their concern as well,
and support the continuation of quality science education in
Plano without the pseudoscience promoted in Pandas.

As one of the largest and richest school districts in the
state, Plano students deserve better than to have
Creationist propaganda offered to them in science classes as
being equivalent to the accepted views of real science.
Imagine what a Plano high school graduate would face on
their first day of college-level biology at The University
of Texas, for example, when their professor tells them that
none of what they were led to believe in Pandas has anything
to do with the real world of biology and the life sciences.
They will start off their college career at a deficit, for
no good reason, simply because some Plano school trustees
don't understand the difference between legitimate science
and theology that comes wrapped in scientific terms.