School Board Okays Discussion of Problems Associated with Evolution
by Jim Brown

(AgapePress) A Pennsylvania school district has changed the language of its mission statement to allow for discussion of alternatives to the theory of evolution, such as intelligent design.

The superintendent of the Phoenixville Area School District altered the mission statement, and said he expects teachers to encourage critical thinking and divergent thought and higher-order thinking. School board vice president David Langdon had originally requested that the district begin teaching intelligent design in addition to evolution.

Langdon, a biochemist who believes in the biblical account of creation, says the new wording in the mission statement is a step forward for his district.

"Evolution is a topic that the district would like to start looking at [differently], whether they're going to specifically going to teach [other approaches to life's origin] or whether they're going to allow discussion in the classroom," Langdon says. "I think the latter is more likely, that we'll be encouraging discussion of problems with existing views on evolution."

Langdon says failing to inform students of the controversy surrounding evolution would be harmful to their learning experience.

"Our district strives to provide the best opportunity for our kids to learn, and I think this is a move that would be characteristic of our district to provide for critical thinking using the skills that we're trying to teach our children," he says. Those skills, he says, include making informed decisions based upon all the information students can obtain.

Langdon's original proposal was modeled after a resolution that was recently adopted by the Cobb County School Board in Georgia.

Editor's note: Because evolution is a hypothesis and not even a theory, isn't the teaching of evolution a faith based curriculum?

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