I tried to send this a couple of days ago, but I don't think it went
through. Sorry if some get a double posting.
On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 00:58:38 -0500 Chris Cogan <ccogan@telepath.com>
writes:
>Is there someone who has gathered
>information on this issue, to determine if *either* evolution or design
is
>being taught, and to what degree? (I know that nearly everyone I've met
who
>has exhibited any awareness of it at all has a fantastically shallow
grasp
>of it, as if those two pages were all that they had ever seen or heard
>regarding evolution.)
Hi Chris,
A friend of mine who does "understand" evolution from both sides wrote
the following about an experience he had in the 60s:
************
Back in the 60's I was working as a writer with the BSCS (Biological
Sciences Curriculum Study). The BSCS was funded by the National Science
Foundation, and our task was to revise an early edition of the Green
Version (ecological approach). We were assigned to teams of two - a high
school teacher teamed with a university researcher, and each team was
assigned four chapters. The human evolution chapter was assigned to ____
from ____ College in New York. One morning at our offices at the
University of Colorado in Boulder, ____ came down the hall grunting like
an ape.
"What's wrong," we asked him. "Have you been working too hard?"
"Gentlemen," he said, "I have been looking at all of the evidence for
human evolution, and frankly, gentlemen, it is not there! Don't get me
wrong, I believe that human evolution occurred. It's just that we do not
get the idea of human evolution from the fossils; we import the idea from
somewhere else."
"Well," I said, "why don't we tell the kids that. Maybe we could show
them a variety of primate fossils and ask them what conclusion they would
reach." It was then that ____, the chairman of our writing committee,
sharply spoke up: "We can't," he said. "We are being paid to teach
evolution."
And so the book was written without even a hint that the writers did not
believe the fossils supported the concept of human evolution.
***********
My friend later became a Christian and ceased to believe in evolution.
There is an analysis of the science textbooks publishers orffered to the
public schools in Alabama in 1995, which may be found at:
http://www.arn.org/docs/anderson/analysis_main.htm
If you read this, I think you'll find that, just as my friend discovered
in the 60s, textbook publishers are still attempting to force-feed
evolution to our children, to the exclusion of any other possibility.
A statement from one of the proposed textbooks was widely quoted during
the time leading up to the State School Board's meeting to select texts
for the next six years. From _Biology, Visualizing Life_, Johnson, Holt
Rinehart Winston, 1994, p 453: "You are an animal, and share a common
heritage with earthworms......" That didn't play too well here in
Alabama; the backlash was largely responsible for the State School
Board's approval of the textbook insert now found in every biology
textbook in Alabama. The insert is in Appendix A of the above-referenced
textbook analysis.
It's been six years, and science books in Alabama are up for review
again. Should be interesting.
Bill
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