America is a wonderfully diverse country. We come from all parts of the world, speak many languages, profess varied religious faiths and represent a huge spectrum of lifestyles and ideas. It is just that freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution, to be who we are, to believe what we want and to say what we believe that is our nation's foundation and strength.

That's why the decision by the Kansas Board of Education so discouraged and offended me. This small group of officials decided to delete any mention of evolution from their science curriculum. In other words, schoolchildren will learn an abbreviated form of biology that meets the religious beliefs of a particular religious minority. That should give us all pause.

We should be concerned not just because a small group wants to impose its version of religious belief on all public school children, but also because children have a right to learn all that our accumulated knowledge, including scientific knowledge, has to offer. We should be concerned because in America, a fundamental principle is the separation of church and state and the right of all Americans to practice their religion free from the dictates of any particular religious group or doctrine.

Since the teaching of biology has become a battleground between "creationists" and "evolutionists", I looked up "evolution" and "creation" on the Internet to learn more about this debate. There are over 936,000 sites on "creationism vs. evolution" and over 991,000 on "evolution vs. creationism". Being somewhat daunted by the huge volume of opinion, I chose to look at 20 sites from each side.

Personally, I believe that life evolved and continues to evolve. Mountains of scientific evidence back this up. As several web sites pointed out, however, you don't have to deny religion or God to believe in evolution. What's important is that our children have access to all the information so they can make their own, well-reasoned, choices when the time comes to do so.

As a parent, I tried to raise my kids with a strong moral and ethical structure within which to make their decisions and live their lives. I also wanted their education to provide them with the information and knowledge they needed to learn, decide, question and create. I knew that the time would come when they would be on their own. I wanted them to have the best preparation possible for living their lives ethically and contributing to their communities. I knew that sometimes their decisions would be like those I would make and sometimes they wouldn't.

The Kansas Board of Education has said to children, "We may not be able to force feed our religious doctrine to you, but we will keep you from learning all that you need to know about science." That is the back door approach to imposing one's religious views on others. And we Americans should be deeply worried about that.

That leads me to elections. School board elections, local and state, are critically important. Because they are often low profile and many of us don't have any idea who the candidates are, we may not vote. Each of us should feel very responsible for learning about the candidates and their educational philosophies. We need to ask ourselves if they have a real concern for students and the quality of their education or just a personal agenda they wish to promote.

When less than 25% of the electorate votes, as usually happens in school elections, special interest groups can get their candidates elected. Whether we agree with the special interest agenda or not, it is unhealthy for our schools to be whipsawed by political motivations that generally don't have the best interests of the kids at heart.

We have school board elections this November and a State Board of Education election next fall. For our children and our state, these may be the most important votes we cast. We can do better for our kids than the Kansas State School Board did for theirs. And we will-if we choose candidates who care about education, not about imposing their personal agendas on our kids.