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Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery. Evolution is not a peripheral subject but the central organizing principle of all biological science. No one who has not read the Bible or the Bard can be considered educated in Western traditions; so no one ignorant of evolution can understand science.

 Dorothy followed her yellow brick road as it spiraled outward toward redemption and homecoming (to the true Kansas of our dreams and possibilities). The road of the newly adopted Kansas curriculum can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance.

 Stephen Jay Gould is a professor of geology at Harvard and New York University. His most recent book is Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (Crown; $18.95) END

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 Creationism: Stephen Jay Gould on a tornado out of Oz

TIME ARCHIVES
TIME 100: Scientists & Thinkers - Louis, Mary & Richard Leakey

 TIME.com Chat: Richard Leakey

 The First Butcher
Filleted bones and an ape-man surprise: Could this big-toothed scavenger be our ancestor? (May 3, 1999)

 On Its Own Two Feet
Kenyan fossils suggest a new, earlier date when a human ancestor first walked upright (August 28, 1995)

 One Less Missing Link
Bones from the Ethiopian desert prove that human ancestors walked the earth 4.4 million years ago (October 3, 1994)

 Lucy's Grandson
A fossil skull implies that humanity's earliest known progenitors belonged to a single, long-lived species (April 11, 1994)

 How Man Began
New evidence shows that early humans left Africa much sooner than once thought. Did Homo sapiens evolve in many places at once? (March 14, 1994) 

BULLETIN BOARDS
Discuss early man on TIME.com's science bulletin board

 POLL: Do you believe in creationism or evolutionary theory for an explanation of man's existance?

WEB RESOURCES
American Museum of Natural History

 Human Evolution: The Evidence in 3D

 Take the Lucy Test
Was Lucy ape or human? You decide

 PBS: A Science Odyssey - Human Evolution