FRESNO — In a second defeat in a month for proponents of teaching "intelligent design" in public schools, a rural school district in Kern County agreed Tuesday to stop a course that had included discussion of a religion-based alternative to evolution.
As part of a court settlement, Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec will terminate the course one week earlier than planned, and the El Tejon Unified School District agreed never to offer such a course in its classrooms again.
The settlement comes on the heels of a court battle in Dover, Pa., in which a U.S. district judge rejected the school board's decision to teach intelligent design as part of a science course, ruling that it was a theological argument, and not science. The Lebec suit was the first legal challenge of teaching intelligent design in California.
Intelligent design holds that some biological aspects of life are so complex that they could not have evolved randomly, but rather, must have been produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, or designer.
The El Tejon school board had argued that its course, called "Philosophy of Design," was not science, but philosophy, and sought to explore cultural phenomena, including history, religion and creation myths. But a group of parents objected and sued, contending that the district was violating the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
A hearing scheduled before a federal judge in Fresno on Tuesday was canceled as a result of the settlement.
"We see this as sending a signal to school districts across the country that you can't just change the title of a course from science to humanities and then proceed to promote religious theories as alternatives to evolution," said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
"You can teach students about historical, legal and cultural aspects, and about the controversy, but you cannot do so in a way that promotes a religious point of view," said Khan, whose Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group represented the Frazier Mountain High parents opposing the class.
El Tejon school Supt. John W. Wight said in a written statement Tuesday that it had been "very difficult" for the school board to make its decision to halt the class. Neither the school board nor its employees "have promoted any religious belief in any academic setting," Wight said. "The idea was to have an open discussion of the different points of views on the origin of life, a philosophical exercise in critical thinking.
