Score one for science

I am extremely pleased to announce that I have personally and directly brought about a small victory for science in our schools.

My little sister, a Junior on High School, informed that, last year, her biology teacher stood before the class and informed them, point blank, that evolution is a myth. Furthermore, she then ignored the state curriculum that explicitly requires natural selection to be taught. What she filled it with, I can’t be sure. I can only be sure that it was not “Intelligent Design” or any other such nonsense. This, of course, was my first question of my sister.

After having heard this, I called the person in charge of the county science curriculum to enquire as to the official stance on this (at the time, I honestly did not know). Before answering my question, she seemed curious as to why I was asking. When I relayed my sister’s story, she seemed genuinely appalled and dismayed. The suspicious tone in her voice upon my asking about the county’s stance on evolution was no doubt due to a fear of an imminent argument with a fundamentalist quack wanting their child taught religion in school. In any case, she informed me in no uncertain terms that evolution was, in fact, part of the curriculum and intimated that she didn’t see how the teacher in question could possibly have taught any biology in the class, as evolution is the unifying theory that holds biology in its entirety together. She said that she would look into this and get back with me.

That was last week. Today, I received a call back and was informed that the teacher in question had been “spoken to” and that, as a precautionary measure, there would be meetings held with the science departments of every school in the county to clarify and reinforce the policy of teaching science in the classroom, not superstition. My phrasing, of course.

So, I feel pretty good about that, I must say. I’ve done my part to help students of Charlotte County, Florida receive the education to which they are entitled.