Why teaching evolution is so important What is actually taught and what should be taught?

Teachers obviously are in a very difficult position. Depending on the situation, they may be under prepared to teach concepts of evolution, pressured to teach evolution in a conservative Christian setting because it is part of state standards, or pressured not to teach evolution even when it is part of the standard curriculum. Wayne Carley, the executive director of the National Association of Biology Teachers said in 1996 that the debate may have a “chilling effect” on teachers. Certainly in the years since Carley made his statement, the situation has gotten worse not better. The result of this public tension between the forces of good, and evil (good depends on where one’s sentiments lie) is that the state of teaching evolution in our public schools is in disarray. While scientists regularly win in courts of law, they lose in the court of public opinion.

The Right of students to receive knowledge

One of the arguments for teaching alternatives to evolution is that choosing what to teach children is within the responsibility of the state or parish school board to establish the curriculum. Exposing students and allowing access to a wide variety of knowledge and ideas are by the courts to such an extent that a right to receive knowledge has even been forwarded by the courts. This right based in the freedom of speech guarantee granted by the First Amendment.

Freedom of Speech in Public Schools

The Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to require a student to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Important in the holding was the compulsion of students to declare a belief which is a violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. The parents upset about the pledge were Jehovah’s Witnesses who asserted that their religious beliefs hold God above earthly laws. Saluting the flag was to them, a violation of the Ten Commandments prohibition of bowing before a graven image. Even though, the issue at hand was the student’s religious beliefs, the case decided on freedom of speech grounds.

Teaching evolution in public school

It found that the evolution takes place in every part of life, and always the betterment comes due to the evolution in the concern field. In general, it found that the evolution identified as the unifying principle for understanding and making good relationship in the History of life, living things, and the learning behavior of the human. It found that the uniform framework within which many diverse facts integrated, and explain. Scientific literacy which found central goal of the contemporary learning and the education reform, within the realm of biology, cannot be achieved without an understanding of the nature of science and biological evolution.

In addition to this policy of exclusion of learners from science education (to a high degree) particularly impacts and is impacting on science education reform in Public schools. Public school children have low levels of scientific literacy as shown by the TIMSS studies (international studies of mathematics and scientific literacy) in which they participated. For various reasons outlined so far, the Public school system has failed to prepare school children to benefit from the insights of contemporary science, more specifically, the origin and evolution of life. The new set of courses contained in the National Set of courses Statements is a political and planned strategy of the Public government to address inequalities of the past and to prepare citizenry that informed and empowered.

It is therefore, an attempt to free the nation from its political and disenfranchised past under an Apartheid government and educational system. There were many innovations in the set of courses aimed at achieving these goals; among these include a focus on a learner–centered approach to delivering the curriculum; integration across the set of courses at the lower grades; the removal of racially discriminating information from the learning materials and textbooks; the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge systems as a theme in the Natural and Life Sciences Set of courses Statement; and the use of the word ‘Evolution’ in the Life Sciences Curriculum. In this paper, I cover aspects of the training needs of teachers in terms of preserving teacher education. I will also touch on teacher professional development or in-service training as it relates to the teaching of evolution in Public schools.

The public school system consists of 2 greatest bands: The General Education and Training phase –GET- (Grades R-9) and the Further Education and Training band - FET- (Grades 10-12). The GET band follows the Natural science learning area is an integrated set of courses and the set of courses is composed of 4 strands (Matter and Material, Planet Earth and Beyond, Energy and Change, and Life and Living) .A major challenge faced by teachers is that they had to familiarize themselves with the new content in the set of courses which they were probably not exposed to before during their training. Teachers had to implement a brand-new curriculum, where their roles changed from implementers of a prepackaged set of courses to one where they play 7 different roles, among them, facilitator of knowledge, assessor, and set of courses developer. They were not specifically trained for these roles.

Training for the implementation of the new set of courses consisted of once off workshops, holiday workshops, and very little support from overstretched Set of courses Advisors employed by the education district offices to support teachers. Where the Natural Science and Life Science was concerned, teachers faced enormous challenges. Having to learn new educational principles of integration and progression, they had to focus on these and above all on designing learning programmers to attain the learning outcomes. The whole set of courses is structured around the 3 Learning Outcomes (LO) and ultimately toward the developmental and uncertain outcomes.

Teacher Choices and Challenges with regard to Teaching Evolution

Teachers can avoid the word evolution in their teaching up to grade 12 (changed to grade 10 in 2009). Even though, the set of courses contains concepts which are able to provide a solid base for learning about evolution later on, the danger is that teachers can focus teaching biology at the level of descriptive and functional biology, and never address ultimate causation – that is ignoring the structural concept of modern biology – Darwinian evolution. In the end, evolution by natural selection remains the most controversial topic in schools. The set of courses does contain the concepts necessary to lay a foundation for the understanding of Darwinian evolution but does not provide teachers with a plan or a sequence of steps to get there.

Genetics is in Paper 1 and Evolution is in Paper 2. Teachers report a general lack of support and lack of training. I am not aware that set of courses advisors themselves have received any training to ‘teach’ teachers about the developments in Evolutionary Biology. Teachers report about once-off workshops which do not make a major difference in terms of preparing them to teach the different topics – such as Evolution and Indigenous Systems. What we are therefore, facing is implementation without adequate training of teachers to teach the fundamentals of Evolutionary Biology. Furthermore, the set of courses statements emphasize the need to consider alternative theories or ways of knowing – in our case, faith-based and indigenous knowledge systems. This places added pressure on the teacher (Example, multicultural class, different faiths, and indigenous knowledge systems).

In some cases, there is control by officials as to what kinds of exposure teachers get. In some cases, there can see an agenda put forth intelligent design as an equal theory and the question is: should religion be taught in a science class? In a multicultural and multi-religious society this is not unproblematic. Denying teachers the ability to discuss religious issues in the science classroom could be seen as undermining religious rights. There are parents and students who do not want to learn about evolution due to their religious convictions or students are contraceptive students because they are not open to evolution because of their faith. Then there are those who are not able to make the conceptual and inferential leaps to understand the evolution.

Why teaching evolution is so important – What is actually taught and what should be taught?

For Public schools knowledge of evolution especially if taught in a way that builds on Darwin’s argument as it developed, can lead to critically thinking students. This can stand them in good stead in their daily lives as we try to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDs, multi-drug resistant TB and other problems facing African children with regard to human life on earth. “Darwinian evolution is part of scientific literacy in a variety of fields beyond the life sciences” While we have these rich resources our learners view science as boring and incomprehensible. Tourists are interested in our heritage yet our individual learners know nothing of it.

He believes that public schools should formulate a policy aimed to protect the fossils while still promoting tourism. The oldest evidence of life on Earth and the most complete record of the ancestry of mammals as well as having over one third of the entire fossil record of human evolution in U.S. Lack of material resources (and unequal resources) and problems of access to the rich natural resources we find in Public schools (Example, Cradle of mankind) hinder students from learning firsthand about the importance of school in terms of evolutionary biology and furthermore we miss the opportunity to concrete and demystify the topic for our students.

Teachers need to be challenged to adapt their teaching styles and to approach their teaching differently; they should be shown how to include innovative practices which include teaching, to develop critical thinking skills, and adopting a Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) approach, in addition to understanding the subject matter knowledge.

Conclusion

More than 300,000 school teachers are affected by the Curricula changes and it appears that the current teacher and in-service teacher training are not reaching a large number of teachers. There is therefore, a role for the institutions who prepare teachers for the workforce in more ways than they are currently engaged with the needs of teachers. Universities should form a support structure for teachers and Set of courses Advisors and work together to support teachers. The pre service teacher framework needs to be redesigned ensuring that the teacher as a life-long learner equipped to keep abreast of research in biology and education. In this regard, the literature confirms the important relationship between the understanding of the nature of science and domain-specific knowledge, in this case, evolution. The latter is also a central principle of biology, and therefore, this relationship has substantially reached the implications for student understanding of biolog

End Notes

1. Bauer, D. (2006) “Resolving the controversy over teaching the controversy: The constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools”, Oxford publishers, pp.81-85
2. Beckwith, F. (2003) “Science and religion twenty years after McLean v. Arkansas: Evolution, public education, and the new challenge of intelligent design”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, pp. 455-499
3. Bowman, K. (2009) “Seeing government purpose through the objective observer’s eyes: The evolution-intelligent design debates”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, pp. 235-255
4. Bowman, K.L. (2008) “Seeing government purpose through the objective observer’s eyes: The evolution of intelligent design debates”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 29, pp. 417-490
5. Brauer, M.et.al (2010) “Is it science yet: Intelligent design, creationism, and the Constitution”, Washington University Law Quarterly, 83, pp. 1-149.
6. Brauer, S. (2007) “Title is Cited Here”, Oxford journal of Revolution, pp. 53-57
7. Cavanagh, S. (2007) “Supporters of evolution theory show their religious stripes”, Education Week, pp. 1-22
8. Holtman, S. (2000) “Title is cited here”, Oxford Publishers Press, pp. 234-241
9. Jack, W. (2007) “Title is Cited Here”, Oxford journal of Revolution, pp. 112-123
10. Moore, R. (2004) “The revival of creationism in the United States”, Journal of Biological Education, 35, pp. 17-22
11. Scott, E. (2002) "The American Revolution", black well publishers, pp. 42-48

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