Another win for evolution

Among my lamentations in my year-end review was the continuing campaign against evolution in such places as Frazier Mountain High School, which is part of the El Tejon Unified School District in California. Today we learn, through the ever-vigilant folks at Panda's Thumb, that the district has agreed to bring its creationist-inspired "philosophy of design" course to an early end. And, according to the terms of the agreement it reached with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, it promised never to do it again.

This was an important one. Instead of trying to place the square peg of intelligent design into the round hole of a science course, special education teacher and soccer coach Sharon Lemburg thought she could get away with hiding her retro-instruction in a philosophy course. A UA lawsuit followed. And good thing, too, as her course was largely built around "young-earth" silliness found in creationist literature, something the Supreme Court ruled a no-no in public schools in 1987.

Mind you, there's still another dozen states or so out there sticking to their anti-evolution guns.