Greg Laden has posted an article, Teachers Under Fire, on how to effectively and sensitively deal with the issue of evolution and creationism as it comes up in science classes.
One way to combat this is to be intellectually honest about the role of evolution in biology. These days, evolution tends to be compressed into a single textbook unit, and not discussed very much elsewhere in that text (this depends on the book). My suspicion is that by placing all of the discussion of evolutionary biology into one unit, it makes it easier for teachers to skip that chapter, or gloss it, or at least, deal with it as a very bad thing that is happening to them, work out some strategies to minimize the pain, and then move on.
The plain fact is that biology without evolution is empty. So are anthropology and geology. It shouldn’t be treated as a separate unit, or none of it “fits.”
Send the link to any teachers that you know who you think would benefit from this post.
via March 8th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I suspect the ever present propagenda, as most text books in American are vetted and published through a fundamentalist Christian conservative committee in Texas.
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