The first in a series of Science Cafes planned in Pittsburg got off to a good start Wednesday with a discussion featuring Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, Brown University biology professor and nationally known author and advocate for science education.
His appearance, one of five scheduled in the state, was sponsored through Kansas Citizens for Science.
“I have the Commies to thank for my own education,” Miller said. “I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and when the Soviet Union shot Sputnik into orbit in 1957, it brought about a huge effort in science and mathematics education in the United States.”
He was hooked early by science.
“I watched ‘Mr. Wizard’ on television every Saturday morning,” Miller said.
“All the experiments that he did you could go into your mom’s kitchen or your dad’s workshop and do the same thing. From the fifth or sixth grade on, I never considered a job in anything but science.”
He became a cell biologist, doing research in the field of cell membranes and teaching at Brown University, Providence, R.I., where he received his undergraduate degree.
Somewhere along the way, he became a nationally known figure in controversy pitting the teaching of evolution vs. Intelligent Design.
“I’ll tell you the way I got into all this,” Miller said. “In a moment of weakness I allowed a former student to make me do something totally insane — write a high school biology textbook.”
The book, “Biology,” which he co-wrote with the former student, Joseph Levine, is now the number one biology text in the United States. It also became involved in a court case in Ohio regarding the legality of stickers, calling evolution “a theory, not a fact” which were placed on the textbook.
Miller was also the lead witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, challenging the Dover, Pa., School Board’s mandate to incorporate intelligent design into the district’s curriculum.
In both cases, judges ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
Kansas has had its own battles regarding the teaching of biological science.
“There’s a saying that Kansas produces more history than can be used locally, so what happens in Kansas affects the rest of the United States,” Miller said.
Starting in 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education underwent several changes in science standards regarding curriculum used throughout the state.
First, an anti-evolution majority on the board voted to remove evolution as required knowledge that students would be tested over.
