Teaching Evolution in Florida
Aug 24, 2008 in Education, Politics
I strongly recommend every educator with even a passing interest in science read this story on David Campbell, a science teacher from Florida who helped to write the new standards that “Evolutionis the fundamental concept underlying all biology.” I expected some of the students to be hostile, but by far the most cringe-worthy passage came with describing another teacher:
With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”
Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”
This means, of course, that she decided to spend time axe-grinding with her students instead of teaching them actual biology.
