Kern County, CA school agrees to stop teaching 'intelligent design'

Kern County school agrees to stop teaching 'intelligent design'

- By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, January 17, 2006

(01-17) 09:53 PST Fresno, Calif. (AP) --

A rural school district agreed to stop teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution as part of a court settlement filed Tuesday, a legal group said.

Frazier Mountain High School will stop teaching a philosophy class discussing the theory of "intelligent design" this week and won't teach it in the future, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

A federal judge in Fresno, who had been scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday on whether to halt the class midway through the monthlong winter term, must approve the settlement. El Tejon school officials were not immediately available for comment.

A group of parents sued El Tejon Unified School District for violating the constitutional separation of church and state by offering "Philosophy of Design," a course taught by a minister's wife that advanced the theory that life is so complex it must have been created by God.

"The course was designed to advance religious theories on the origins of life, including creationism and its offshoot, 'intelligent design,'" said the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court.

The high school in the Tehachapi Mountains about 75 miles north of Los Angeles draws 500 students from a dozen small communities.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State had successfully blocked Dover, Pa., schools last month from teaching intelligent design in science courses.

Superintendent John Wight had said the subject was proper for a philosophy class meant to introduce students to both viewpoints.

The legal organization argued the course relied almost exclusively on videos that presented religious theories as scientific ones.

"This sends a strong signal to school districts across the country that they cannot promote creationism or intelligent design as an alternative to evolution whether they do so in a science class or a humanities class," said Khan.

The course ignited debate in the hamlets that sit atop the mountains dividing the left-leaning Los Angeles basin from the conservative San Joaquin Valley. The weekly newspaper, the Mountain Enterprise, devoted five pages to letters from readers.

Teacher Sharon Lemburg, the wife of an Assembly of God minister, defended the course she designed in a letter to the editor.

"I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach," she wrote.