MARINA DEL REY, CA The assault on education has found a new ally in the Kansas Board of Education, said a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
     By excising the theory of evolution from its textbooks, the Kansas Board of Education has paved the way for other states to elevate the feelings of religious fundamentalists over the accumulated scientific evidence of biology, said Robert Tracinski. The role of education is to provide young people with the information and methods they need in order to learn how to think independently. Education has liberated mankind from the shackles of myth, superstition, and unchallenged tradition. But the prevailing trend from both the progressive left and the religious right is to reverse this development, by enshrining feelings over facts and faith over reason.
     Even a milder approach, which would teach both evolution and creationism as competing theories, would undermine education, Tracinski continued. Teachers would present the theory of evolution, supported by countless observations, all integrated into a comprehensive explanation of virtually every fact in the field. Then, to balance things, teachers would present what? All that the Creationist view offers is the revealed assertion by self-proclaimed authorities that an ancient religious text claims that some 10,000 years ago God created the world in six days.