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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  4386 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Here Is What Louisiana Schoolchildren Learn About Evolution

The thing is, its only marginally worse than what high school students in typical public schools learn, which is next to nothing. They probably are taught that there is a such thing as evolution (which many probably already know), and that there's also something called natural selection. But ask any of them to make a distinction between the two. Or to discuss specific ways in which evolution occurs. They will fail, and its not their fault (completely, anyway). High school biology books intentionally avoid "controversy" by shying away from the most important concept in biology. Instead of teaching about evolution and then branching into every other biology subtopic from there, they threat it as if its just one of many topics that should be covered, on par with, say, naming the organ systems of the body. There isn't another analogy in any other science that I know of. It would be like treating the periodic table as just on component among many in chemistry, or pretending that that laws of motion are a small piece of the classical mechanics curriculum. We can all sit in judgement of the backward and silly ways evolution is treated in podunk Louisiana, but those in glass houses...