When students at the Ensign School ask about evolution, teacher Sue Otis has no problem answering. She just goes to the Book of Genesis and the Book of Mormon.
Otherwise, her sixth, seventh and eighth graders don't spend much time studying Darwin's theory."I guess it's just not a big deal to us," said Otis, who co-founded the Mormon private school where she teaches in American Fork. "We believe the Heavenly Father has created all things, so we let him worry about those things. We just try to teach truth."
What the truth is, and how children should learn it, has been at the forefront of debate since the Kansas school board adopted new testing standards last month that don't include evolution.
Critics and advocates alike say the decision could bring more religion into the classroom. But in Utah, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the dominant faith, the issue isn't as clear-cut.
While state standards require biology students to learn evolution according to the recommendations of the National Association of Science Teachers, practice in Utah's mostly Mormon classrooms may be very different.
"In Utah, teachers are cautious, mostly because they don't feel comfortable teaching something they don't believe in themselves," said Gayle Ruzicka, president of the Utah Eagle Forum, a conservative organization pushing to allow more religious thought into public schools. "And those who do believe evolution understand the culture and know they could have hostility coming down all around them."
The state's core curriculum, finalized in 1995, says students in public high schools must understand the theory of biological evolution and be able to explain how species have evolved over time from common ancestors.
But in a state that is 76 percent Mormon, science sometimes doesn't jibe with faith. In its official position on the origin of man, first set out in 1909 and restated in 1925, the LDS Church declares that man is the child of God, formed in the divine image.
The church's statement goes on to say that though the scriptures tell why God created man, they do not explain how -- a mystery that will be solved with the second coming of Christ. For the time being, church leaders rely on this statement issued in 1931:
"Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church."
But that open-ended statement leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Duane Jeffery, a zoology professor at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, estimated about 40 percent of students who take the school's required biology class come in opposed to the idea of evolution.
He said Biology 100 teachers usually explain the church's position on the subject before teaching the science, which he personally frames by saying God works through natural law. It might be simpler to skip over evolution, he said, but teaching biology without Darwin's theory is like teaching chemistry without the periodic table.
"It's much better that students learn this within the context of faith, rather than seeing it used as a hammer against religion," Jeffery said.
The rules are different in public high schools, where the U.S. Supreme Court has forbidden the teaching of creationism, the belief that a higher power created the universe, because it violates the separation of church and state. The fact that teachers can't legally preface their evolutionary lessons with a discussion of religion sometimes irks parents.
"I'll occasionally have calls into our office," said Brett Moulding, science education specialist for the state Office of Education. "We always go back to what is science and what we believe and what we know based on evidence. Some of them are very open-minded and some of them are not."
But Moulding said he could only think of one person who had repeatedly railed against the core curriculum.
In fact, open debate about teaching evolution has been relatively quiet in Utah, where some religious families just trust students are being taught in their own tradition -- particularly since there's a Mormon seminary next to almost every high school in the state.
"Most Mormons, partly because they make up the majority of the political base here in the state, don't get all that excited about taking doctrinal issues into the political arena," Jeffery said.
In next-door Idaho, however, where evangelical groups balance out the state's 25 percent Mormon population, the discussion is more heated.
Idaho's graduation standards, set to come before the legislature this winter, require evolution alone be taught in schools. But of 386 people who gave public comment on the standards last year, 27 percent favored teaching evolution and creationism together (that was by far the greatest single response, and 75 percent of it was reflected in signatures on two community-organized letters).
But in Utah, the most ardent opponents of evolution are turning not to politics but to a handful of private schools that teach according to Mormon doctrine -- schools such as Ensign and its sister school, Ensign High School, which just started up this fall with five students.
"We didn't feel like the kind of options we wanted to provide our children were available anywhere else," said Brian Bates, a co-founder of the school. Students there find much the same approach to evolution those at the elementary school do: that Darwin and his proponents came up with just one of many theories that attempt to understand God's working in the world.
"I think people have to realize that a religious person need not be threatened by error, they just need to know the truth," Bates said. "We don't fully understand God's work and are trying to explain the processes of our world. There's probably some truth in there and there's probably some error in there, too."