Ye Hedge School

Kansas Story

It is fairly well known that in 1999, Kansas made a decision to cease teaching evolution in the public schools, that this decision was reversed fairly quickly by the next school board, and that it has been reversed again. Kansas is a hot spot. The Darwinians are apoplectic, and the creationists are, for the moment, smug.

But there is one piece of this story that is not so well-known. At the beginning of the battle, it was creationists against the Darwinist establishment, and they didn't stand a chance. What tipped the balance was a young Catholic who had heard Katherine O'Keefe speak and had understood the eugenic implications of the way that evolution is taught. She mobilized some portion of the Catholic community, and that was, for a time, the winning combination.

I do not know specifically what is or was in the books in Kansas, but I know what was going on in South Dakota at that time, having some famiarity with a science program which was sponsored by the eugenically-minded NSF, so let me give you an idea.

In second grade, there was an exercise in which the students were told that there was a food shortage among the polar bears (I think it was polar bears; it was bears.) So they were supposed to discuss what would be best for a mother bear, to abandon her cubs or stay with them. If she stays, they will die anyway, and so will she; but if she leaves them, she can live to have more cubs. What would be best, now, dears?

In second grade!

Supposedly this was not a eugenic exercise or a suggestion that "useless eaters" must be abandoned for the good of the community, because it was bears, not people, but anyone should realize that this distinction had to be lost on that age group.

Meantime, in 7th grade (it might have been 8th) there was another discussion. Suppose an infant had a severe heart defect, and suppose the only way to save his life was to use the heart of a baboon, an endangered species. Should the baboon heart be used to save the infant, or not? In the class discussion, everyone was in favor of protecting the baboons except one young man whose mother had just had a stillbirth; understandably, he would have wanted to save his brother's life. The discussion was not peaceful, and the teacher was quite severe with the student who, she claimed, became rude. Never mind that the entire discussion was deeply rude under the circumstances, even if it had not been eugenic in its intent.

All this took place in a Catholic school. The teacher was not, in fact, a Catholic, but keep in mind that this type of attitude does not develop in one class exercise. The whole class was on board with protecting the baboons and ignoring the human both in general and in the specific person of their grieving classmate. 

So it works. Seven or eight years of plugging away at the equality of man and beast and the brute calculation about which lives are dispensable has produced a student body that thinks of human infants in the same terms as if they were the young in a herd of animals, i.e in eugenic terms. In this view, neither childlike mercy nor maternal affection is understood as an approach to divine love, but rather as potential weaknesses to be brushed aside: and medicine must give priority to endangered species over human life which is not an endangered species.

All this is, of course, thinking in a box. There are always other ways to solve problems, it's never just ethics against prudence. But the point is, the kids have been taught to function in the eugenic box, and they are seeing the world that way.

South Dakota is not unique. The National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsors science curricula all over the country. Members of the American Eugenics Society have belonged to the NSF from time to time, and they sponsor the research to support their views in any case. They are aggressive in their efforts to influece public thinking.

So what is the best way to fight all this?

I believe that if we go all out against evolution, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. We are contributing to the climate of opinion that Christians have no sense at all, are unscientific, and are best left in the hills while serious thinkers make decisions. I believe that we need to make the case, very publicly, that we recognize the single family tree of life as a probable fact, but as for being accidental, we believe that the concept of accident is a philosophical, rather than a scientific category, so it shouldn't be pushed in a publicly funded science class where opposing opinions are being forbidden on the grounds that they are religious.

Distinct from this scientific and educational discussion is our belief that man, and indeed all the universe, is designed, and that we have a vocation from the Designer.