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The
Science of Dissent
A
teacher is stirring up trouble about Darwin —
in a very Minnesota way
by
JOSH TYRANGIEL
If it's been too long since you've heard the word
golly! uttered without irony, head to Faribault, Minn.,
a hamlet one hour south of the Twin Cities, and ask
for Rod LeVake. Maybe LeVake will meet you for some
apple pie at the Happy Chef and talk a little football.
Whatever you chat about, he will be solicitous of
your opinion and take pains not to overwhelm you with
his. Of his job teaching high school science, he says,
"It's just kinda fun to teach kids, to kinda show
them how complex living things are, I guess. That's
what I really kinda enjoy." LeVake is so profoundly
nonconfrontational that he inspires instant trust.
Which is why he is the perfect weapon in the new war
over how evolution is—or isn't‹being taught in
public schools across the U.S. LeVake believes evolution
is flat-out bad science. He can be very convincing.
This summer, which happens to mark the 75th anniversary
of the Scopes "Monkey Trial," LeVake will take his
cause to Minnesota's Court of Appeals, where, after
losing in district court, he is suing the Faribault
school district for discrimination. Really, he's suing
for the opportunity to teach evolution in a new way.
LeVake is a Fundamentalist Christian, but his biology
lesson plan doesn't include the word God or creationism.
All he asks is that as a scientist, he be allowed
to let students know about some of the holes in Darwin's
theory.
LeVake started teaching biology at Faribault High
School in 1997 after 13 years as a seventh-grade general-science
instructor. It wasn't long before colleagues suspected
he might have trouble teaching Darwin's theory to
his 10th-graders. "We'd just sort of talk informally,"
says LeVake of his chats with fellow teachers. "I'd
bring up things like ŚLook at how complex this system
is. It's hard for me to believe this all came about
by chance mutations over billions of years.'" When
department chair Ken Hubert asked LeVake point-blank
how he planned to teach evolution, LeVake said, "I
can't teach evolution." He instantly regretted it.
"I said, ŚMan, there's something wrong with what I
just said,' because I think kids, when they go off
to college . . . they have to know about Charles Darwin."
LeVake says he simply meant that he couldn't teach
evolution as fact. But after a series of meetings,
LeVake was demoted to teaching ninth-grade general
science.
Usually sanguine, LeVake was genuinely hurt. "I had
been waiting for 13 years to get a shot," he says.
"I felt like 'Golly, I was shortchanged.'" He sent
out a series of letters explaining his case to conservative
advocacy groups and got a bite from Pat Robertson's
American Center for Law and Justice. "This is a landmark
case," says LeVake's pro-bono attorney, Frank Manion.
"For the first time, we have a teacher who is not
asking to teach creationism. He simply wants to teach
science the way he thinks—and the way a lot of
people think—it should be taught, in a more balanced
way."
In a six-page "Position Paper on the Teaching of Evolution,"
LeVake pledges to teach evolution while also taking
"an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies
of the theory." He lists examples of irreducible complexity
in nature for which, he says, Darwin has no explanation,
such as the eggshell and the woodpecker's tongue.
LeVake cites "the amazing lack of transitional forms
in the fossil record. There has never been a creature
discovered that could be considered a logical intermediate
of any two major classes of animals or plants."
He sounds reasonable, but reputable scientists who
agree with LeVake can be counted on one hand. "There
are transitional fossils out the ying-yang," says
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National
Center for Science Education. "The problem is [antievolutionists]
will never tell you what they would accept as a transitional
fossil." Scott, one of the school district's expert
witnesses against LeVake, says, "If you look at the
content of his curriculum guide, it's the same thing
that five years ago they called creation science.
He's just left out the C word." Indeed, creationists
have become a lot more shrewd. For years they'd propose
antievolution laws and lesson plans brimming with
religious language, and for years their cases were
struck down on constitutional grounds. But creationists
have evolved. Like LeVake, they began co-opting the
logic of Darwinists and speaking in a softer voice.
In fact, LeVake's case has barely stirred blue-collar
Faribault (pop. 19,177). This is Minnesota, after
all, and as just about anyone here will tell you,
Minnesotans are nice. Laura Cesafsky, a recent Faribault
High graduate who calls herself a proud liberal, wrote
an editorial in the school paper decrying creationism
but avoided using LeVake's name. She agrees that "he's
a great guy." That helps explain why, even if he ultimately
loses, LeVake isn't going anywhere. He and his family
have found their place in the universe. "We're real
Faribault people."
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