Re: Is Evolution a Fact - I Don't Know

Penny Nickels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>  I'm a high school science teacher.  Our textbook has less than
>  half  a  page about  evolution. When my  students ask whether
>  I believe in evolution, I just tell them it isn't about me, it's your
>  decision. You must make up your own minds _after_ studing
>  all sides.
> 
>  My Nickels worth.

You clearly aren't an English teacher, that is for sure.

There are disputes in every field of science - that is what makes
science progress. But to teach students from the get-go all sides of a
debate in science, and to imply that there is no agreement or solidity
to scientific results, is to confuse them and ill-prepare them for later
study. Science teaching is, as Terry Pratchett and colleagues have
written, a form of Lying to Children. You *cannot* teach all of a
subject at once, and you *cannot* teach naive students enough for them
to make a sensible decision about disagreements.

But this is not about whether evolution happened. On that there is no
scientific dispute at all. None. The issue is merely whether or not
processes other than natural selection have formed the diversity of life
through evolution. There is *no* controversy to teach here. So if you
teach it, you are not Lying to Children, you are just lying, whether you
know it, or not.

And possessives take apostrophes; ask your English teacher colleagues
how to use them.
-- 
John Wilkins
DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
wilkins.id.au