Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

First, the impetus: Ontario schools simply sidestep the issue, teaching neither evolution nor creation explicitly until grade 12 biology.

I promised the original poster of this article that I would look through my curriculum document for science and see what I could find. Well, here's what I found.

First, the document I have goes from grade one to grade eight only. I don't own a copy of the nine to twelve document, and I have never taught those grades, so I can't speak to them.

I looked at two sections of the five-part science curriculum: Life Systems and the Earth and Space Systems. Then I narrowed that down to the areas where one would be most likely to see references to evolution: Habitats and Communities, taught in grade four; Diversity of Living Things in grade six; Interactions within Ecosystems in grade seven; Rocks, Minerals, and Erosion in grade four; Space in grade six; The Earth's Crust in grade seven; and Water Systems in grade eight. Though the words "evolution" and "evolve" don't appear anywhere in the document, the words "adapt" and "change" do, as do the concepts of formations over millenia, erosion and buildup of soils and other formations, geologic formations as legacies of past events, plate tectonics - in other words, a great many concepts that depend on old-earth evolution as a guiding principle. In fact, in several of the above, the idea of formations changing over millenia is a central theme of the unit, one of the "overall expectations" from which all the other expectations are derived.

Then I looked in my book room at my school, for any evidence that the (overwhelmingly Christian) staff have been selecting teaching materials that avoid evolution. I found the exact opposite. There are at least four big books, designed for shared reading with the entire class, that specifically use the word "evolution" or a derivative word, and assume it to be true. There are three more shared-reading type resources of shorter length, designed for a single lesson, that include the concept of "changes over thousands of years;" and there are six guided reading units, each at different levels (mostly designed to support the science curricula listed above) that are quite specific about changes over very long periods of time. These resources are being purchased with Ministry money, selected by a Board team of literacy experts and listed as "good to purchase," from which list our school literacy team has selected them - all within the last five years. I did not find a single reference anywhere to Creationism or ID, and I know exactly what to look for. If it had been there, i would have found it.

This does not speak to me of creeping creationism in my school or school board. Instead, it tells me that evolution is simply assumed to be true. It's not taught specifically, but neither is it ignored; it underpins the science curriculum, and no one in the system appears to be questioning it. There is no infiltration of the science curriculum at any level that was evident in my school - which, with its tight connections to specific literacy money from the Ministry of Education, is a good place to go looking for it.

I think the article overstates its case for the sake of some fear-mongering amongst those who don't care for the Evolution/Creation issues going on in American schools. In our elementary schools, this is a non-issue.

First, the article: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061117/23510.htm

A few choice quotes: "First, Christians need to realize that part of basic human rationality detects action of intelligence. . . . To explain the first step, the apologist listed emails, Stonehenge, and monuments in Washington as examples that are “clearly the products of intelligence” that would be “irrational” to explain otherwise."

The idea that "anything this complex OBVIOUSLY has an intelligence behind it" is really, really poor logic. It's basically a cosmic conspiracy theory, on the same level as, "My son got autism right after he got his MMR, therefore the vaccine caused his autism!" or even "The number of traffic tie-ups between me and the mall is a clear indication that God doesn't want me doing my Christmas shopping this afternoon." It confuses coincidence with causality, leading to a monumental error. To say that human intelligence is hard-wired to find items that were created by an intelligence is true, as far as it goes. What it doesn't say is that humans often manage to find conspiracy where there is only coincidence. Just because we see intelligence in everything doesn't mean we're right - it means we want there to be intelligence in everything. (Note: I'm not saying God didn't create - I'm saying this particular argument for creation is as full of holes as my cheese grater, and about as useful for holding water.)

On to my next critique. First, the quote: "The questions that result from these discoveries are where did all these genetic information come from and why are they specific to one bacteria if according to Darwin’s theory of common descent they have to derive from a common ancestor?"

I think he's missed a few things here - specifically, a century and a half of scientific thought since Darwin. Does science still postulate that all life on Earth came from a single bit of life millenia ago? My suggestion for this: why is it impossible for life to develop twice or more times, independently of each other? The answer: it's not impossible, just highly improbable. But given the vast amounts of time involved, the improbable becomes much more possible. Other possibility: maybe you just haven't found the links that tie this bit of DNA in with the more common varieties that science has already linked to each other. Just because you don't have the link doesn't mean it doesn't, and never did, exist. It just means you haven't found it yet.

Okay, I'm done.