Minnesota School Board Refuses
Donation of Creationist Books
The board of the Rosemount-Eagan-Apple Valley school district has declined a gift of two creationist titles that an area resident has been proffering to the high-school library since 1997. Accepting Darwin on Trial by Phillip Johnson and Darwin’s Black Box by Michael J. Behe “as a science resource, we thought, was disingenuous,” Roger Everhart, a teacher at Apple Valley’s School of Environmental Studies explained after the board’s December 12 decision.
Frustrated donor Mike Steiner said in the December 13 St. Paul Pioneer Press that district media specialists and science teachers “lobbied by saying it wasn’t book-banning, which obviously I think it was.”
Noting that an advisory committee of educators and parents had previously concluded that Darwin on Trial was suitable for the high-school collection, Steiner said that the district’s written policies encouraging the use of viewpoint-balanced materials “do not exist in practice.”
Posted December 18, 2000.
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