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Alabama Will Require Students To Learn About Evolution, Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, public school students in Alabama will be required to understand evolution, thanks to new curriculum rules behind implemented next year. Teachers in the state will also be required to discuss climate change. Not only did the 40-person, Republican-controlled Board of Education pass the standards unanimously, but nobody even spoke out against them at a board meeting. The new rules say, "The theory of evolution has a role in explaining unity and diversity of life on earth. This theory is substantiated with much direct and indirect evidence. Therefore, this course of study requires our students to understand the principles of the theory of evolution from the perspective of established scientific knowledge. The committee recognizes and appreciates the diverse views associated with the theory of evolution."
I grew up in the South, and I don't think I ever heard "evolution" or "natural selection" ever even mentioned in school by a teacher. The closest thing I remember to it was another student asking my middle school biology teacher about evolution once. She basically told us she wouldn't talk about it because she didn't want to lose her job. And that was that. I had no idea how these process even worked until I read about them later and started to understand their importance and implications.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
FWIW, I went to public school in Alabama and learned about evolution. It wasn't taught as in "but remember kids, this is only a theory" nor did they say "and evolution is fact and I'm failing you if you don't admit that God doesn't exist".
It was just taught. Like things of this nature should be.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Darwin's biggest contribution to evolution was the scientific evidence he produced. Though he was ridiculed (and continues to be) by clergy it wasn't his theory that made the biggest history, it was the meticulous documentation he did that eventually won. In other words it was the facts he discovered, not his supposition of the cause that has had the biggest effect. One item of note, Alfred Russel Wallace had collected an equal amount of data using completely different methods and species (based more on fossils than living creatures) and Darwin beat him to publication. The collected data between the two works was so compelling that it laid the foundation for entire branches of science. The evidence they both collected was voluminous and irrefutable. This data laid the foundation and other scientists quickly built on that foundation, we have a dozen branches of biological science that wouldn't exist without the discovery of the fact of evolution. One of those is molecular biology.
At this point in time the amount of data backing the fact of evolution is essentially irrefutable at this point, it would be like trying to prove thermodynamics wrong. The theory of how it works is still being fought over but not the fact that it exists.