Evolution in the Classroom Attacked AGAIN!!!

     Among all the controversial topics in science education, the teaching of evolution has to be the one that rouses the most fervent emotions and elicits the most crazed debates.  To the mainstream scientific community, evolution is fact and the controversy surrounding it is about how it occurs instead of whether it occurs.  Evolution is a reality!  To the creationists, however, evolution is practically heresy because it directly challenges their view that God created all the perfect specimens ever existed.  Evolution is a problem to the creationists also because it reduces the human species to just one of many competing for survival rather than upholding the view that the human species is that special creation by God.

     While the teaching of evolution in public schools is seldom an issue in liberal states such as New York and Massachusetts, the situation is entirely different in the more conservative states such as those in the South.  Recently the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution made news again when the Texas Board of Education postponed the approval of a biology textbook because one person on the review panel expressed concern that the textbook erroneously presented evolution as fact instead of theory.  This reviewer, Ide P. Trotter, is a chemical engineer who is also honored as a "Darwin skeptic" on the website of the Creation Science Hall of Fame.  In accordance with his religious views, Trotter questions the validity of evolution in favor of the religiously-infused Creationism.

     Teaching evolution in public schools has always caused much controversy in the more conservative Southern states.  In 1925, the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee brought the issue into the national spotlight for the first time.  While I respect the personal religious views of individuals, the repeated attempts at shoving evolution out of the classroom or undermining the effective and accurate teaching of it have to stop.  From a purely legal perspective, this obstruction is clearly a violation of the separation of church and state as guaranteed by the Constitution.  More important, however, this obstruction hampers the education of our students, deprives them of a thorough and comprehensive understanding of biology, and curtails their true potential in the real world.  This obstruction has to be stopped.

     Here's to hoping that the textbook will be approved during the final review. 

The textbook at the center of the controversy

The link to the New York Times article that talks more about the issue can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/education/texas-education-board-flags-biology-textbook-over-evolution-concerns.html?_r=0

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