We begin with a short flight on the merry wings of song, our own holiday harmonic convergence performed gaily to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Take it away:

“You’d better watch out, Forget about the Yeti, The thing we have to fear, Is omniscient spaghetti...”

What a couple of weeks it’s been for Polk County. We’ve gone from being an obscure, quaint community struggling with issues of growth and students scratched up by that feral feline, the FCAT, to becoming a cause celebre with international impact. Or, to quote school board member Margaret Lofton:

“They’ve made us the laughingstock of the world.”

You’ve heard the brewing haha. Four members of the Polk school board—Lofton, Kay Fields, Tim Harris and Hazel Sellers—were shocked, shocked!, when comments they made to a newspaper regarding the teaching of evolution ignited a firestorm of dismay and derision. What’d they say? Sample comment: “If it ever comes to the board for a vote, I will vote against the teaching of evolution as part of the science curriculum. If [evolution] is taught, I would want to balance it with the fact that we may live in a universe created by a supreme being as well.” That’s Lofton.

The “they” she accuses is the school board’s new starch-enemy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an all-powerful and brazenly all-imaginary cosmic deity created (or perhaps always in existence) to confront proponents of “intelligent design.”

The saucy folks who “worship” the FSM—they call themselves Pastafarians—got wind of the Polk evolution story. In less time than it takes to heat up a jar of Ragu, they smothered the school board with mocking e-mails and satire al dente. Overnight, Polk became the latest “pasta” child for backward-thinking, unconstitutional bureaucratic shenanigans. (Check out the FSM’s Web site, www.venganza.org, for a list of comments. See also scienceblogs.com/pharyngula, for another acidic take on the dispute.)

Speaking for her fellow believers on the school board, Fields said the impact of the story caught her off guard. Apparently she is unaware that what she says to a reporter may, in fact, wind up in print. She did not deny her remarks—including, “There needs to be intelligent design as well [taught in science classes]. You need to show both sides.” What has ruffled her fur, it seems, is that she was quoted, and accurately. Those scheming journalists!

Although it turns out the Polk board has no say in the new science standards, it’s vital to understand (A) the need for rigorous, accurate, up-to-date information in schools, including the latest in evolution theory; and (B) the importance of a school board that sets a proper tone for the improvement of Polk’s level of education.

Here are excerpts from a recent Associated Press article on the subject of the improved science standards. I’ve emphasized especially potent passages.

“The [science] standards are being updated on a 10-year cycle that in the future will go to six years,” says the article by Bill Kaczor, “but advocates say changes also are desperately needed to improve Florida’s poor performance in science and prepare students to compete on a global level.

“The Fordham Institute in 2005 gave [Florida’s] current standards an F, saying they are ‘sorely lacking in content.’ Florida students also score below the national average on college entrance tests and the gap has widened in recent years.”

Another concerned party, Wesley R. Elsberry, a Michigan State scientist who was educated in Lakeland, wrote an open online letter to the school district. Here’s how Billy Townsend reported it in a story in Friday’s Tribune:

“Elsberry wrote: ‘You’ve been conned. “Intelligent design” is a legal sham, a con game, one whose sole purpose is to insert a narrow sectarian doctrine into public school classrooms.’

“Echoing Fields’ original statement about teaching ‘both sides,’ Elsberry says intelligent design advocates want to set up a ‘conflict model’ for judging scientific progress. Under that model, science and religion often will come into conflict, and to be religious, one must come down on the side of religion.

“That’s a false conflict, argues Elsberry, who says he believes in God and sees no reason why observed science and religion can’t co-exist. Based on the scientific observation, Elsberry believes God employs evolution and natural selection as the mechanism of developing life.”

The people who demand that “intelligent design” or “scientific creationism” or, for that matter, astrology and Kirlian aura reading be taught in public schools must understand that, in addition to lobbing tomatoes at the Constitution, these pseudo-sciences have no place in a science curriculum. Here, listen to Rick Ellenburg, Florida’s 2008 teacher of the year, as he’s quoted in the AP story comparing evolution to “intelligent design.”

“ ‘We’re looking at a scientific theory as opposed to a belief system,’ said Ellenburg. ‘I’m a religious person and I don’t see a conflict in my life [regarding evolution]. Within the realm of what I teach it’s pretty much a non-issue.’

“Ellenburg, who is Presbyterian, teaches science at Camelot Elementary School in Orlando and served on the committee that wrote the [new science] standards.”

Evolution is scientific fact supported by mountains of peer-reviewed, cross-disciplinary evidence and is vital to a student’s comprehension of how our world works. “Intelligent design” is an unsupported construct attempting to wedge religion into the curriculum and has been adjudged unconstitutional.

Polk’s school board members have a tough job. I respect them for their service. But they have to recognize the responsibilities they’ve been charged with, which do not include letting their faith encroach upon their clearly secular function, and do not allow their religious biases to interfere—even just in quotes published in the local paper—with their task of ensuring Polk’s children get proper, comprehensive educations. If getting the school board members to face that takes a collective raspberry from people far from Polk who respect the Constitution while whimsically endorsing a giant flying entree from Heaven’s Italian kitchen, then so be it.

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