Tom Spears
Ottawa Citizen
"Most Ontario students will go through elementary and high
school without being taught about evolution, because of a new
science curriculum intended to avoid controversy. The new provincial
curriculum only addresses evolution in a single course -- advanced biology
designed for Grade 12 students who will study biology or biochemistry in
university. And the older five-year high school science curriculum, which
is now being phased out, also skips over evolution for all but one
Ontario Academic Credit course. The science curriculum in elementary
schools does not mention evolution in living things at all.
Biologists such as Jim Fenwick of the University of Ottawa say
this is a gaping hole in science education. Evolution is necessary in
biology courses "every bit as much as you need numbers to teach
mathematics. You cannot do a competent job of teaching biology without
evolution," he says. Yet he says each year brings a new crop of first-year
science students who know nothing about the topic. "I know the level of
understanding from years of teaching first year. [It's]basically zero. They
don't know what evolution is," he said. In skipping evolution entirely for
all
but one grade, and restricting it mainly to those who will study biology in
university, Ontario is following the lead of parts of the United States.
Nineteen states have bowed to pressure from creationists and either
removed evolution from the science curriculum or watered it down to avoid
controversy.
In 1999, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences summed
up evolution's positionat the core of biology this way: "Biological
evolution is
the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations
about the living world."
Ontario's new curriculum gives a great deal of attention to other, safer
topics in biology. Life sciences begin in Grade 1 and continue every year
in elementary school and in some grades of high school. All Ontario students
are required to learn vast arrays of facts ranging from the parts and life
cycles of plants (Grade 3) to how the availability of light, food and
water affect animals (Grade 4) to models of human skeletons, muscles and
nervous systems (Grade 5) and the functions of cells, organs and tissues
(Grade 8).
But none of this material directly mentions evolution. "It is all
value-neutral. So stuff that is controversial or has values attached to it
-- environmental stuff and so on -- is pretty much left out,"says Tom
Steinke of the Ottawa Carleton Catholic School Board. He oversees math and
science for the board.
"The quick answer is: evolution -- no," for all except the one Grade 12
course, he said. "In the biology sections and some of the Earth sciences
stuff, there's some biology that slips in that could be viewed as kind of
evolutionary of sorts." For instance, Grade 9 science deals with the
evolution of the solar system. But this doesn't address evolution in the
biological sense: the concept that modern life forms evolved over millions
of years from plants and animals that no longer exist, all coming
originally from single-celled creatures.
Ontario hasn't banned evolution in other grades and courses, but science
teachers say the curriculum they must teach is already so large there is
no room for extras such as evolution. "We're pretty locked in ... to having
kids learn the mandated curriculum -- not for fear of stepping outside of
it, but because of lack of time," Mr. Steinke said. "So [evolution] isn't
something that's addressed. We're pretty much kept busy enough just doing
what we're supposed to be doing."
Each fall, Mr. Fenwick asks his class of 400 first-year biology students
how many have been taught evolution at some point in school and "very few"
hands go up. Those few who have studied it often tell him that evolution
was an optional part of their OAC biology, and even then taught only
briefly, he said. Many who do know something about the topic believe that
since it is a theory, it is uncertain or weak. But this is a tricky point:
A theory in science means something so strongly established that it is
accepted as fact. An untested way of interpreting the world around us
would be called a hypothesis, not a theory. While his current students
are still products of the old curriculum, he has also reviewed the new
curriculum for the Ministry of Education. Apart from teaching evolution to
one group of students in their final year, he says the curriculum still
does not address evolution for anyone else. Without evolution, he says,
biology is just "a cookbook list of facts, each isolated, and each by
itself perhaps interesting but meaningless. "That is what they are
getting in courses outside of the university."
The Ontario Ministry of Education and Training has refused repeated
requests to discuss the issue over the past two weeks."
Can't say we weren't warned.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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