{"id":1332,"date":"2004-03-01T12:52:55","date_gmt":"2004-03-01T17:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1332.html"},"modified":"2004-03-01T12:52:55","modified_gmt":"2004-03-01T17:52:55","slug":"fighting-the-good-fight-even-in-a-small-montana-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fighting-the-good-fight-even-in-a-small-montana-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting the good fight, even in a small Montana town"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times had a fascinating, and only slightly discouraging, report about a small Montana town divided<\/a> over a proposal for creationism in local public schools.<\/p>\n

The fact that the town is divided at all, however, is the interesting part. After all, Darby, Montana — population 754 — is not exactly Cambridge, Mass. Darby’s marshal, mayor, state representative, library director, and some school board members are self-identified creationists. In this environment, one might assume evolution could be derided and ignored without any resistance from local residents.<\/p>\n

That’s probably what the Rev. Curtis Brickley was expecting. Brickley, a local Baptist minister, organized a town meeting in early December so he could “explain” his thoughts on evolutionary biology. Not surprisingly, Brickley, who has no scientific background at all, pulled some creationist criticisms off the Internet and told a receptive audience of 200 that local public schools should limit its lessons on modern biology.<\/p>\n

And then a few local citizens decided to take action.<\/p>\n

Within days, a group of parents, business people, teachers, students and other residents mobilized to defend Darwin against Mr. Brickley’s challenge. The group, Ravalli County Citizens for Science, phoned a biotechnology firm in nearby Hamilton asking for help and was connected with Dr. Jay Evans, a research immunologist. He began looking into Mr. Brickley’s claims, which were drawn in part from materials from the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization affiliated with many conservative causes.<\/p>\n

Refuting Mr. Brickley’s claims, Dr. Evans said, “took me one afternoon.” As soon as he had the information, it went to the rest of the citizens’ committee, and from there to the wider community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nIt was particularly encouraging to read that young people are standing up for a quality science education.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, there was yet another confrontation at the board meeting, and on Wednesday, about 50 Darby High School students staged a walkout carrying signs with slogans like “Don’t spread the gospel into school” and “Strike against creation science.” There are 39 students in this year’s graduating class.<\/p>\n

“We decided to create this group to figure out what was going on,” said Aaron Lebowitz, a senior who was a founder of Citizens for Science and the chief organizer of the walkout. Partly as a result of the group, he said, “awareness has been awesome.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good for them. After all, it’s these kids’ education the creationists are tampering with. They deserve better and it’s heartening to see them have the courage to speak out.<\/p>\n

They’re certainly paying a price for their bravery. Mary Lovejoy, a member of the local school board, said that kids who support modern biology are being “harassed” and have been the subject of “hideous name calling.”<\/p>\n

Undeterred, Lebowitz and others arranged for their own town hall-style meeting in January to respond to the presentation from Rev. Brickley. They brought in Dr. Alan Gishlick, a paleontologist at the National Center for Science Education, and the crowd was almost as big as the one Brickley generated a month earlier.<\/p>\n

At this point, a narrow majority of the local school board aren’t persuaded.<\/p>\n

[A]fter three long evenings of often anguished public comment in late January and early February, a preliminary vote of the school board was 3-2 to add a revision to school policy suggested by Mr. Brickley.<\/p>\n

The revision specifies that teachers “assess evidence for and against” the theory of evolution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not entirely a done deal. A final vote on the proposal isn’t expected for another month. Regardless, the fact that a fight like this one is being waged in such a small, conservative town suggests that there are still a few brave activists willing to speak out to demand a quality science education, even in the face of intense local hostility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times had a fascinating, and only slightly discouraging, report about a small Montana town divided over a proposal for creationism in local public schools. The fact that the town is divided at all, however, is the interesting part. After all, Darby, Montana — population 754 — is not exactly Cambridge, Mass. Darby’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}