PZ Myers refers us to a new report evaluating the states on their approach to teaching evolution in the schools.
Obviously this is important, since you can't understand the rest of biology if you don't understand evolution.
Vermont does pretty well. If you look at the map you'll see that we're doing way better than a lot of other states, and those states are mostly no surprise. It shouldn't take more than the experience of the last eight years to tell you that you don't want your kids to be educated in Texas, for instance. In addition, I can't ever remember a big fight over teaching evolution in any Vermont school boards.
But still, we only rank a B. Why not an A? Here's what the report says:
And:
Column 4: “Human evolution treated?”
It's true. Here's what the Vermont Frameworks have to say about evolution education at the high school level:
What do you think? Is it time for Vermont to score an “A” in science education?
One worthy of asking each and every school board/union administration/school administration.
doppelganger to the East got and “A” !
Vermont does as good or worse than Kansas, Indiana, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida…. really?
Embarrassing.
…came home from Kindergarten last year and told me that her teacher said people came from monkeys, monkeys came from fish, fish came from water, and the water came from a big explosion.
I think that Kindergarten teacher deserves an A!
I then asked my daughter what she thought caused the big explosion and she said someone probably put metal in a giant microwave. LOL!
and I was told they do indeed teach human evolution (10th grade it seems).
It should be noted that teaching to a standard of natural selection is not the same as teaching human evolution, but once you teach the first it would seem the latter is hard to avoid.
West Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma.
There is a lesson here. Kids being ignorant of biology is scary. But in places like West Va. or Texas having parents who are willfully retarded about genetics is just plain dangerous.
For me, at least, I was taught biological evolution, and then the question of human evolution was kind of just tossed in the air, with kids being allowed to say they thought the big man up top brought them to the planet. Effectively they only fully supported microevolution