The evolution-in-the-classroom debate has taken a new twist in Michigan. In the Gull Lake Community School District (west of Ann Arbor), the superintendent has ordered seventh grade science teachers to teach Darwin, and has confiscated 30 copies of a book that two teachers were using as supplemental texts to include the theory of Intelligent Design into their classrooms. In response, the Thomas Moore Law Center on April 14 sent a six-page letter to the school board asking that the books be returned to the classroom and that the teachers be permitted to teach Intelligent Design as they had done for two years.
The letter claims that Intelligent Design is different from Creationism, and that removal of the books violates teachers' academic freedom and students' First Amendment rights to receive information. The books at issue, which the Gull Lake School Board itself had previously purchased, is Pandas and People.
