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Midweek Perspectives: Evolution, education and WQED: Kansas is closer than you think
Wednesday, September 01, 1999 By Michael Schneider and Lincoln Wolfenstein
Evolution vs. "creationism": Thanks to Kansas this cultural battleground, relatively remote for most of us in Pittsburgh, has recently erupted into the media. The Kansas Board of Education decided to purge evolution (and the big bang) from the state's recommended science curriculum. The "mental hijacking of an entire state's schoolchildren by sectarian zealots" is what Charles Lane of The New Republic called it on last Saturday's Post-Gazette Perspectives page.
Perhaps the good news is that cartoonists, comics and editorial writers across the country have joined in criticizing the Kansas decision. The enlightenment is alive and well and living in America.
Should we breathe easy? Since at least the landmark Scopes trial of 1925, the consensus in this country, as in most of the world, has been that public education should be free from the blinders of religious dogma. The Kansas Board of Education is an aberration, and nothing like it is likely to happen around here, right? Just ask the WQED board of directors.
In 1997 they approved a deal that would transfer the educational broadcasting license of channel 16 (WQEX) to Cornerstone TeleVision, the Greensburg-based broadcaster that currently airs its born-again Christian programming on channel 40 (WPCB). WQED asked the Federal Communications Commission to approve the license transfer, and the FCC hasn't yet decided.
The question is whether Cornerstone "serves the educational needs of the community." WQED says yes, no problem. It has hired a Washington law firm and, recently, a high-powered lobbyist to advance this position before the FCC. The WQED board, prominent leaders in our community, approved this course of action, in effect saying - for all of us in this region - that Cornerstone serves our educational needs.
Welcome to Kansas. A centerpiece of Cornerstone's "educational" message is a weekly program "Origins," devoted to promoting creationism and debunking evolution. It's a discussion-format show that can be summed up, to put it mildly, as questioning the legitimacy of scientific knowledge. In one 1997 segment, the speaker, a mathematician of the born-again persuasion, argued that teaching evolution is detrimental to the development of scientific reasoning.
A more recent segment discussed the theory of relativity to arrive at the conclusion that Einstein's theory makes it possible for creation to have occurred in six days.
Other airings of "Origins" have presented misinformation about geology, astronomy and radioactive nuclear decay. These segments included no interviews with geologists, astronomers or physicists. One segment was devoted to showing there's no evidence for planets circling stars other than the sun. There's convincing evidence for more than a dozen such planets. None of it was mentioned, even though some of it comes from the University of Pittsburgh (Professor George Gatewood).
Let's be clear. We're not arguing - nor is anyone else we know of - that Cornerstone doesn't have the right to broadcast this "information." It does.
But does it serve the educational needs of this community? Do we want an agency of the federal government, the FCC, to issue an educational license to this station, a governmental stamp of authority saying it does? Do we want to spend the pledge money of Pittsburgh viewers to advance this position in a legal proceeding?
The WQED board of directors unanimously said yes.
Public ignorance and misunderstanding about science is vast. In a Lou Harris poll from the early 1990s, 65 percent of Americans didn't know how many planets are in the solar system. More than half didn't know that humans are descended from earlier species of animals. "Scientific illiteracy" is a serious challenge to our educational system at all levels, and many devoted educators work hard addressing it. To say that a program like "Origins" is educational is an affront to all of us concerned with science education.
To many people, "Origins" might be less objectionable than other Cornerstone programs. In a program called "Just the Facts," billed by Cornerstone (and WQED's attorneys) as a program for teens that develops "critical thinking skills," an animated speaker declares that "spirits are watching you to see if you have what it takes. . . . The most powerful force in the universe and beyond is Christ and you need him because you're not alone."
Other Cornerstone programs have asserted that homosexuality is a disease, denigrated non-Christian faiths, public schools and funding for AIDS awareness. On Earth Day two years ago, Cornerstone aired a documentary proclaiming that the environmental movement is an elitist conspiracy and global warming is a myth.
Should we laugh? Many people aren't laughing right now in Kansas. Before the 1980s, it would have been unthinkable for a religiously programmed station to receive an educational broadcasting license. That's all changed.
In Pittsburgh at least there's still hope for the enlightenment. Through the Alliance for Progressive Action, a group of people actively oppose WQED's plan. After more than two years, the FCC still hasn't decided, but they've indicated (in a letter to the parties) that they're concerned about whether Cornerstone programming is educational. That's a step forward.
In a better world, one might assume WQED's board would better represent the public interest. They justify their action as a bottom-line decision. There's no other way, they say, to relieve the station from debt.
Other public stations in other cities have found less drastic ways to relieve crushing debt. And which is worse? Undergoing the travail, if necessary, of bankruptcy, and possibly losing broadcast licenses (which would then be available to other qualified groups in this area), or handing over a valuable community asset, channel 16, to sectarian fundamentalists?
WQED board members, we're pretty sure, are intelligent, well meaning people. Because of the deal they've approved, we've spent some time watching Cornerstone, and we have to wonder whether they have. In the Post-Gazette, WQED has argued that this deal has nothing to do with politics.
To say this is to be somewhere in the land of Oz. From where we sit, it looks a lot like they're in Kansas.
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