Emotional ed issues ahead

Utahns overwhelmingly — 71 percent — want Utah schools to keep teaching evolution in high school biology classes.

But two-thirds also want intelligent design — the notion that the universe is too complex to be explained by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution alone — to be taught as a complement to evolution lessons in Utah public schools.

That's according to a Dan Jones & Associates poll for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV. The survey of 406 Utah adults, taken Dec. 26 through Jan. 3, has a 5 percent margin of error.

Making intelligent design part of the public school curriculum is among several emotional debates — including a proposed gay-straight alliance ban in high schools, on which a poll shows Utah residents are split — expected to take place in the upcoming 45-day legislative session that convenes Monday.

But State Board of Education chairman Kim Burningham believes those issues are tangential to what's most important: money for schools.

"There's a tendency for other, moral issues to get a lot of play in the public and the press, and we lose sight of what is really important: how to make our school system the best system for everybody," Burningham said. "I hope (legislators) will stick to what's really important."

Among expected public school issues:

• Science and the origins of life

SB96, sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, would require schools to endorse no particular theory on how life began on Earth or the origins of the present state of the human race. Related curriculum requirements in the bill say that teachers must stress that not all scientists agree on which theory is correct.

Buttars says his bill still allows for evolution lessons, which the poll indicates Utahns favor.

But a State Office of Education attorney says it also opens the door to teaching of intelligent design in public schools, a concept a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled unconstitutional last month. Intelligent design critics call the concept a thinly veiled attempt to inject creationism into public schools.

While 66 percent of Utahns surveyed favor intelligent design lessons to balance those on evolution, the state curriculum boss says such discussions don't belong in science class.