Think for yourself.

That's the cornerstone of an agreement state education officials arrived at Monday that they say resolves an impasse over how evolution is taught in public schools.

Members of the Education Oversight Committee, which had voted against the state's new biology standards, agreed to support them even though they don't call for students to question Darwin's theory as some had hoped.

The change of heart was based on a new proviso in the state budget that says all textbooks used in South Carolina public schools should encourage "critical thinking" skills.

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Whether that means anything will change in the way evolution is taught is a matter for interpretation.

State Sen. Mike Fair, who believes the theory of evolution is scientifically flawed, inserted the one-year proviso in the state appropriations bill.

The Greenville Republican said his intent wasn't to try to inject Intelligent Design into the curriculum but to encourage students to question the science behind Darwin's theory.

"You don't have to have evolution against anything. Evolution, true or false is what we're talking about," Fair said.

Intelligent Design holds that natural selection and random mutation alone can't account for the diversity of life and that there must be an intelligent designer behind it.

The theory doesn't speculate on who or what the intelligent designer is, but a federal court ruled earlier this year that teaching it is tantamount to teaching religion.

Defenders of the status quo say they don't feel threatened by the language in the budget proviso. Critical thinking -- questioning what is being taught -- is already embedded in the state's curriculum, they say.

"Our textbooks already have a high concentration of material that focuses on critical thinking skills, higher order thinking skills," said Jim Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

Joe Isaacs, chairman of the state Board of Education, also doesn't believe the proviso changes anything about the way biology is taught in South Carolina schools.

"I think that's basically what we're doing," he said. "I don't think that's going to create a problem at all."

The Education Oversight Committee in February asked the state Board of Education to amend the high school biology standards to require students "to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory" using "data from a variety of scientific sources."

The Board of Education didn't follow that recommendation and decided to keep the current standards, which teach evolution only.

Both the EOC and the board must agree for the standards to be valid under state law.

The issue arose as the state was moving to update the science standards as required by state law.

The state Board of Education will hold a special meeting by teleconference to approve sending the updated standards back to the EOC. The EOC's Academic Standards and Assessments Subcommittee voted Monday to recommend the full committee approve the standards -- without any mention of critical analysis -- at its June 12 meeting, Anderson said.

South Carolina isn't the only state where "critical analysis" has been used to attack Darwin, said Susan Spath, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that specializes in the teaching of evolution. In Ohio, it was used to bring Intelligent Design into lesson plans, she said.

"Critical analysis in the general context is great, especially in science," Spath said. "But the reality is this language is being pushed in the context of pushing bogus criticisms of evolution."

Dr. Jerry Waldvogel, a biology professor at Clemson University who was on the review panel for the state's biology standards, said he's glad that the EOC appears to be moving toward approving the standards.

But he questions the motives behind those who are pushing for "critical analysis."

"What science does he (Fair) have that calls into question the accepted science regarding evolution?" he said. "My response would be that there is none."