During my 20 years as a local reporter and columnist, I have noticed our schools deal with all of the big national education issues—student assessment, budget cuts, teacher quality, disabilities, misbehavior, test manipulation, instructional time and many more, says Washington Post Columnist Jay Mathews. There is one exception, however. While the rest of the country struggles with how to teach evolution, our educators approach the subject without fear. Nobody threatens them for contradicting the Bible. That is why I think my suggestion last week [1]that high schools teach alternative theories of evolution would work here even if it might create difficulties elsewhere. I raised the issue of challenges to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection because Republican presidential candidate and former senator Rick Santorum has advocated teaching alternative theories [2] such as intelligent design, the view that some supernatural force influenced the development of life on Earth. Santorum and I differ on Darwin…