Teaching students’ ideas about how the world came to be, other than science based theories like Evolution or the Big Bang is now forbidden in the Youngstown City Schools.

A directive issued by Youngstown Schools Chief Executive Officer Crish Mohip orders that starting this academic year, curriculum content will conform to science standards published by the Ohio Department of Education.

Mohip issued a memo earlier this week says it has come to his attention that a portion of the district’s science curriculum must be altered to comply with laws applicable to public education.

The memo says that “beginning this 2016-2017 school year any reference to intelligent design, creationism, or any like concepts are eliminated from the science curriculum.”

Intelligent design and creationism are religion based theories of how the universe began.

Mohip writes that discussions, activities, videos and articles that may have referenced what he characterized as “objectionable concepts” have been replaced with state science standards.

The Ohio Department of Education issued a 344 page Science Standards manual in 2011 that states that the Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of the universe.

The Big Bang theory postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the universe was only a few millimeters across, but expanded explosively and continues to expand.

The words “evolution” or “evolutionary” are mentioned fifty times in the Ohio Science Standards document.

Those standards say that the basic concept of biological evolution is that the Earth’s present-day species descended from earlier, common ancestral species.

The fight over teaching evolution versus creationism is a decades old battle in the United States.

One of the most notable examples is what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, when teacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law making it illegal to teach evolution in any state-funded school.

In a landmark decision issued in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Louisiana law making it illegal to teach evolution in public schools without also teaching creation science.

According to Mohip's memo, the curriculum change will not impact instruction or grading, as the units that are being updated have not yet been presented in class this year.

Mohip has given the task of making sure his directive is immediately carried out to Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Timothy Filipovich.

The CEO wants the district's website to reflect the curriculum changes by September 10, and wants to make sure that all building administrators and staff responsible for teaching the content have clear instructions on their assigned duties.

You can view the Science Standards issued by the Ohio Department of Education here.