Few High School Biology Teachers Accurately Teach Evolution

I hate to bag on my own colleagues, but the evidence is overwhelming: most high school biology teachers either do not teach evolution or undermine their own teaching by giving nods and winks to creationist ideas. (See Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution, by Valerie Strauss.)

The result is that few U.S. high school students are really being taught evolution in an accurate or comprehensible way. Not only is this unfair to students who graduate believing they have mastered biology, when many have not, but it is a violation of teachers’ responsibility to accurately teach the content standards, including the scientific process (how scientists obtain data, analyze it and determine the validity of their hypotheses).


Here are some of the details from Strauss’ article:

* Only 28% of biology teachers consistently teach the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommended evolution curriculum,
* Around 13% of biology teachers explicitly include creationism or intelligent design for at least part of their curriculum
* The remaining 60% either fail to explain the scientific process sufficiently, undermine the authority of evolution experts, or legitimize creationist arguments
* Many teach evolutionary biology as if it is only applicable to molecular processes, but not to populations or the process of speciation.
* Many tell students that they don’t have to “believe in evolution, but they have to know it for tests, which, for many students, implies that it is just one of many explanations that may or may not be true.
* Others tell students to decide for themselves what to believe, even though scientists are as certain of the validity of evolution as they are about any other scientific fact. We would not tell students to decide for themselves if the Holocaust or slavery occurred (although I wonder, based on the evolution data, if there are many biology teachers who are also climate deniers).

To see the entire article, please go to http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/01/few-high-school-biology-teachers.html

I teach freshman and sophomore university biology-- the overwhelming majority of students either don't have any real clue about what evolution is or how it works, or they have faulty impressions. Of course, popular culture and infotainment television programming are probably just as much to blame as shoddy high school biology curricula.

It usually teaches survival of the fittest by individual, not also by group. Most evolutionary effects of survival of the fittest is more about a community, and not even about genetics.

There are some examples of where someone might have more compassion by genetics and be a better survivor, but there are far more examples of the society they are in giving them the knowledge or nurturing to form abilities to be successful with the entire part of society they are in.

Or you can be the smartest person, but if you are a dick, you have to also be a liar and able to hide that. Hence why if you want to make society better, expose the liars, since they are the assholes that cause much of the problems now, and if you like evolution, latter also.

However, I have not seen an operational organization that has chosen to correct the beer and travel money issue that is due, so their fitness is definitely in doubt.

granted that was a long time ago, but I know they still do, at least in NYS they do. It's on the NYS Regents (son-in-law teaches there), so I suppose they have to.

"Science, Evolution, and Creationism", free online, by the National Academies Press.

Is there a better book I can give them?