And this is a school run by evil Pearson who controls all the textbooks, so that’s a bit of a comfort even as America’s educational standards slip down the tubes.
The bar is so fucking low.
In civilized countries there’s no need for all the pussyfooting about “cultural and religious beliefs” and reassuring sky-fairly-believers that the Theory Of Evolution module is merelly “introducing what the scientific standpoint is”.
Merely that such an intro was needed is itself an indication of how fast the US is regressing away from XXI century Developed Nation.
Religion doesn’t necessarily need to disprove evolution, most religious people just do.
What’s neat is some US states and/or school districts strictly enforce the teacher’s right to pick the study materials, for better or for worse. Which is weird to think about because they don’t even pay them fairly.
Yeah it’s not a point for science if the science teacher has to apologize for teaching science
That doesn’t look like an apology for teaching science to me at all. I’m not sure how you’re interpreting it that way.
It’s the preemptive justifying and excusing of something that should need no justification or excuses to be teached.
Are you not familiar with America?
Live there, got a similar preface in my bio class 20 years ago. This isn’t a victory. It’s continuing to baby people who refuse to live in reality.
It’s the country which maybe half a century ago for a while was considered a shinny example for the rest of us.
Nowadays, not so much (even the far right around these parts avoids copying the religious shit from America)
The point is this is the teacher saying “it doesn’t matter what you believe, we teach science based on evidence and that’s what your kid is going to learn if they want to pass this class.” It’s not an apology.
It’s a preemptive and unprompted justification, hence its existence implies that the authors believe they need to justify themselves.
I’m not criticizing the authors for it, I’m criticizing the environment that leads the authors to believe they need to justify themselves when teaching Evolution.
Generally people don’t justify themselves unprompted unless they feel there will be some kind of negative impact to themselves if they don’t do it.
So, it’s pretty shit that the teacher feels he or she needs to preemptivelly justify themselves when teaching an area of Science.
I live in a supposedly very Catholic country - Portugal - and teachers don’t go around explaining their actions and justifying themselves for even sex-ed (which touches tabu subjects) much less for Evolution, simply because even if some people disagree with it (very few, I might add), the teachers won’t be affected by any kind of pressure around it as the system is such that it’s not going to be loudmouth non-expert parents that define or change the Education curriculum - the only case of parents trying to block some kids from learning something around here (by forbidding their kids for attending specific classes) ended up with the kids being flunked and stopped from advancing to the next year, the parents suing, the parents losing their lawsuit (so the kids are still a year behind their cohort and still have to take that class in order to advance) and last I check the parents relented because they had no other option. The system simply doesn’t indulge that shit and public opinion is on the side of the system in this.
It’s a preemptive justification, hence its existence implies that the authors believe they need to justifying themselves.
Yes. Because otherwise religious asshole parents try to get them fired for teaching evolution. Do you really not know that?
Looks like an apology to me.
Probably the tone, diction
I feel like the tone of “There is NO option to opt out of this unit, it is required for all students to complete” along with “As as science class we will only focus on the scientific theory and evidence.” is suggesting that their religious beliefs are irrelevant when it comes to science, which is far from an apology.
Acknowledging that they have those beliefs and this might upset them is not apologizing to them, especially when the overall message is “too bad.”
Well others have told you why it’s an apology, you can disagree
I don’t think they really have. They’ve just insisted it is.
“They haven’t told me, they’ve insisted” … what
Not sure how you can insist on something without it being communicated but ya sure
Because they haven’t given any evidence for the claim?
Deeply depressing that this email even has to be written.
Yeah, it is only a sensitive topic because bigots overreact.
And why are we coddling bigots again
Because they break shit when they don’t get their way.
So do children, but when you give in, they learn that’s how they get their way and they do it more.
Because they are in charge.
Well yeah, but not good enough, and we should be more vocal about it before our right to speech is eroded
Love their phrasing. Really makes it difficult for anyone to object without sounding like a complete asshole.
And it’s just a little bit passive-aggressive, which I appreciate.
It’s well written message. What they did there was to not be an asshole in the first place. Respect pays off.
we understand this is a very sensitive topic
Ya wot m8?
In the American Dystopia factual things are upsetting to some people on the basis of conflicting with their preferred fictions. They are, unfortunately, numerous enough that the sane people here don’t always have the time or energy to argue with those who actively refuse to see reason.
‘Last Thursdayism’ is the key to ending the squabble on evolution vs creation.
Sure, Earth is a thousand years old or some shit; but you see, god is super sneaky, and made billions+ year long backstory for his fresh creation, so on day 1 the earth has topsoil, fossils, oil, critters in all stages of life including old cranky ones that still remember their childhood (which never took place, you see - that was pre-existence, but to the individual critter, pre and post creation of everything are indistinguishable.
Boom. Evolution is now compatible with creationism, we can stop bashing heads over that one now.
god is super sneaky, and made billions+ year long backstory for his fresh creation,
Now I can’t get this mental image of God sitting there with a typewriter writing incredibly detailed Earth fanfics long before he actually made anything.
Not the Christian God, he just filled out a DND character sheet. Under the character info he wrote “Looks old as fuck, but is actually really young”. And then in a different color pencil, kind of squeezed in sideways along the edge with an arrow that points back to the original sentence in a second line, “Full of random shit that could only be there if actually super super old!”
He will then use that sentence to explain away why he always seems to “know” something that could only be known if he was truly ancient.
Edit: Chatgpt was actually able to make an image I asked for without telling me it violated its rules, and at the same time looking something like what I asked for, what a miracle…
It would be easier just to set the rules and let everything play out. It’s a shame he wasn’t smart enough to think of that one.
Hell, when I was in Catholic high school, there was a world religions class, and we learned all sorts of stuff about all sorts of religions, without any snark or derision or sense of superiority. I still remember that there’s an eightfold path to union with Buddha, though I don’t remember any of the steps on that path.
I was even the “resident non-believer” in class discussions, and I only felt a little twinge of weirdness from other students (but not the teacher). I was already an outsider so I didn’t care. I suppose Catholic school isn’t as bad as generic Christian (read: evangelical) school.
Christian school kid here. It was so cringey.
“OK kids, let’s all have a giggle about how silly all the kids at public schools are because they think their ancestors were monkeys. We know the truth is that magical rainbow sky fairies created us and if we all believe this hard enough the sky faires will make sure nothing bad happens to anyone we care about but fuck those other cunts.”
Extremely case by case
Yup, I also went through Catholic grade school and received my first F in anything in the third grade. It was because I had a grievance with the way my ancient nun of a teacher explained heaven. I kept asking her about how the other ideas of heaven (nirvana/valhalla/ whatever else I had heard of be age 8) couldn’t all be the same place just viewed through other languages/cultures. She ended up slapping me and giving me a failing grade in religion.
I have continued to fail at religion as a lifelong practice. She helped cement some contrarianism in me to the point where I actually read the whole bible by 6th grade so as to be better prepared for debates.
Yeah. My grandmother sent my father to a Catholic school in part for the cult indoctrination… at least she has enough sense to be appalled about that specific school being one of the Catholic facilities involved in their child rape scandals at the time he was attending.
They could snark it up a bit by adding a disclaimer that some of the geology evidence will require teaching the earth is globe-shaped.
It’s only a sensitive topic if you’re on that gamma bronze age peasant whineset
Looks like a pretty bog-standard notice whenever evolution gets taught, at least in all my classes. Really shouldn’t have anything to do with religion vs atheism.
It’s stupid that such a disclaimer needs to be sent at all.
While I understand it is necessary to send out this kind of message, it is an example of coddling bigots and terrible people to avoid conflict.
Which is sadly something you kinda have to do a lot of in the world of education if you want to keep a position of being able to teach. Ironically, it probably wouldn’t be a real issue if the US had a more robust education system and understood the nuance of this stuff better
Not standard in the U.S. at all.
Must be a local or cultural thing then. Because it very much was standard everywhere I’ve been to school in the US, so much so that I actually notice when there isn’t a disclaimer. Bet we could draw an interesting map here that roughly mirrors the political and/ or religious distribution throughout the states.
May I ask which state, or at least which region, you’re talking about?
I mostly went to school in Colorado and California, but I think more important is I pretty much always went to school in conservatively rural towns of fairly liberal areas where the lines between politics or religion get kinda blurred with little pockets of extremism. Logically, those areas would probably have enough people squawking about science to warrant a message like this, but not enough to influence the broadly standardized curriculum.
I am in Indiana and it is technically an Indiana public school because the teachers are accredited here, but it is actually a national thing owned by Pearson. Basically an online charter school. But maybe they just send that out in Indiana?
Raised in a religious community, the closest we got in our high school was Earth Science and Biology (this one was taught by a christian fellow, too). I wasn’t exposed to Evolutionary discussion until college.
I had an anti-science argument with my counselor and tried to opt out of Earth Science in my first year. She said “you just have to take it”. I was at that stage where I was afraid to challenge my beliefs.
Within the next 4 years, I was agnostic. During college, and through an anthropology class, it was clear I was ill-informed.
At this point, I also wouldn’t consider my self “atheist”, because the community around it (on Reddit) became it’s own sort of religion that spent their days bashing on (primarily) christians. Religion, to me, is no more than parables that teach good morals.
The people on /r/Atheism are coming at things as getting away from oppression and abuse at the hands of religious communities. And they’re a small portion of atheists, not really representative of “the community”…which doesn’t really exist
Religion, to me, is no more than parables that teach
goodquestionable morals.Ftfy.
I’d like to see endosymbiosis covered. At this grade level they should have the structure of a cell down, and at least be able to define both chloroplasts and mitochondria. Mitochondrial evolution has continued within our cells and offers some of the strongest evidence, as well a form of evidence they are more likely to experience (23 and me, etc), in the form of genomic testing.
This is obviously a curriculum based on the historical way in which we established the theory of evolution, and while a traditional approach to science (to effectively teach it as historical anecdote), I don’t think it’s the most engaging. Students in this age range have their eyes roll like giant boulders off a cliff when confronted with the highly dynamic concepts of finches and peas. At the end of the day it’s the story of a dude who married his cousin and was fond of plant tropisms. Maybe more interesting when you are a bit more mature.
If you take it from the perspective of endosymbiosis, you get to tell a story of cells attacking or invading other cells, but how evolution didn’t stop there. And because evolution didn’t stop, that’s why and how we know everyone on the planet is related.
It’s probably a bit much for eight graders but I’ve also seen HIV being used as the central teaching element for evolution, about specifically how the virus evades the human immune response system by constantly evolving.
Just because there was some specific order white Europeans discovered some particular concept in, doesn’t make it necessarily the best way to teach a concept, nor is it a presentation of the strongest forms of evidence for that concept.
