TOPEKA, Kan. (Reuters) - The Kansas Board of Education rejected evolution as a scientific principle Wednesday, dealing a victory to religious conservatives who are increasingly challenging science education in U.S. schools.
The 10-member board, ignoring pleas by educators and established scientists, voted six to four to embrace new standards for science curricula that eliminate evolution as an underlying principle of biology and other sciences.
"Evolution has been removed," board member Janet Waugh, who opposed the new standard, said in a packed conference room near the state capitol. "Instead of Kansas' curriculum having more and more credibility, it will have less and less."
The board voted on a modified version of curriculum guidelines for grades kindergarten through high school that eliminates evolution as a way to describe the emergence of new species -- for instance the evolution of primates into homo sapiens -- while leaving intact references to "microevolution," or changes that occur within a single species.
The theory of evolution was developed by 19th-century British scientist Charles Darwin. His discoveries were famously argued in the 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial," in which the state of Tennessee put teacher John Thomas Scopes on trial for knowingly infringing a law banning the teaching of evolution.
Defended by prominent trial attorney Clarence Darrow, Scopes was convicted and fined the minimum $100 but the verdict was reversed on a technicality by the state Supreme Court.
Prior to Wednesday's vote, the presidents of Kansas' six public universities wrote a letter saying the new standards "will set Kansas back a century and give hard-to-find science teachers no choice but to pursue other career fields or assignments outside of Kansas.
"The argument that teaching evolution will destroy a student's faith in God is no more true today than it was during the Scopes trial in 1925," the letter said.
Banning evolution from the classroom gave conservative forces a victory after previous attempts to eliminate evolution in states including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Nebraska.