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“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” wrote the late Ukrainian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who found evidence for evolution by studying the genetic varietals of fruit flies. To most scientists, Darwinian evolution is the unifying principle of biology, as solid and significant as Newtonian gravity or Copernican heliocentrism. But you wouldn’t guess it from its place in Canada’s school system.

In all but one provincial science curriculum, evolution is relegated to a single unit in a Grade 11 or 12 elective course taken by a sliver of each graduating class. It would not be a stretch to say the majority of Canadian high school students graduate without ever encountering Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Only Quebec, which rolled out a new curriculum in 2004, includes evolution among key concepts in elementary school science classes and mandates a full unit of evolution in a compulsory Grade 7-8 science class.

Science teachers across Canada have expressed regret about the near-absence of evolution from their curricula, but politicians have been reluctant to address the issue. Patricia MacNeill, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Education, says much of the onus is on teachers and boards to introduce the topic themselves. “It doesn’t mean the topic wouldn’t come up in earlier science classes,” MacNeill says.

Canada’s provincial governments take a similar approach to private religious schools, which are allowed to teach creationism as an alternative to evolution in science class. The curriculum at faith schools is designed on a stakeholder model, where sensitive issues such as sex education and evolution are dealt with according to the wishes and expectations of parents. As such, there is little assurance that the more than 63,000 students in Canada’s Christian schools are taught about evolution, but considerable assurance that they’re getting a taste of creationism.

It should come as no surprise, then, that some evangelical private schools in Quebec teach creationism as a “better theory,” as the Ottawa Citizen reported in October 2006, or that the public school board in Abbotsford, B.C., taught “creation science” alongside evolution for over a decade.

Aside from being all but snubbed in the Canadian curriculum, evolution runs into other problems in the classroom. Leesa Blake, vice-president of the Science Teachers’ Association of Ontario, says those who teach evolution feel “threatened” by parents or students to teach an alternative, or ill-equipped to handle the topic.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:

It would be incredibly ambitious to expect evolution to be universally understood among high school students in Canada.

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I disagree. The basics of evolution are pretty simple. I personally think that at the start of a unit on evolution they should play the 7 part PBS series on evolution (and possibly the unofficial 8th part on the Dover trial) for two reasons. First it is a good introduction not just to what evolution is, but the history of its development, and the wide variety of modern uses of the theory. Second, and more importantly in my opinion, it would make it harder for the religious nutter students to protest, interupt and disturb every single thing the teacher tries to teach which in the case of the single day my highschool biology tried to teach us evolution was the case. He gave up, and I can't say I blame him.

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Originally posted by Trevormkidd:

I disagree. The basics of evolution are pretty simple. I personally think that at the start of a unit on evolution they should play the 7 part PBS series on evolution (and possibly the unofficial 8th part on the Dover trial) for two reasons. First it is a good introduction not just to what evolution is, but the history of its development, and the wide variety of modern uses of the theory. Second, and more importantly in my opinion, it would make it harder for the religious nutter students to protest, interupt and disturb every single thing the teacher tries to teach which in the case of the single day my highschool biology tried to teach us evolution was the case. He gave up, and I can't say I blame him.

The most popular first year University biology textbook is Campbell's "Biology." I have the 7th edition and the units dedicated to evolution run over 300 pages, and the rest of the textbook is linked to evolution on almost every page. I am not asking for that type of knowledge. However, the McGraw-Hill "Highschool Biology 12" has almost 100 pages on evolution (the pages are also considerably less dense than Campbell's) and I see no reason why I should not have been taught that information in highschool.

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Trevor,

You may not find the basics too difficult, but from what I've seen you are a scientifically literate man. Do you remember high school where many could not understand logarithms or memorize which country was on which side in world war II?

That book you refer to, does the 12 mean it's for grade 12? And then is it only for the top students of the grade 12 class, those who are still taking science classes?

That PBS documentary would take up 8 hours of class time, or so I estimate as you said 8 episodes. I had a biology class in grade 9 (high school) and in second year CEGEP, and in both those cases 8 hours would have been over 2 weeks of lectures, a substantial fraction of the time. What do you propose cutting out of the current biology curriculum, or of the curriculum of other subjects, in order to make room?

ETA: At the time many quebec high schools had a second high school biology class in grade 11. Ours didn't have it because it was an optional class and our school was too small, sort of like how we didn't get to derivatives in high school math class.

[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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It would not be a stretch to say the majority of Canadian high school students graduate without ever encountering Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
That book you refer to, does the 12 mean it's for grade 12? And then is it only for the top students of the grade 12 class, those who are still taking science classes?

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Yes, I agree that the text I mentioned would be only for the top students of the grade 12 class. But, it is almost 100 pages and would give them a decent understanding of evolution, other students though who take biology classes at a less advanced level should still be given a basic understanding of evolution.

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That PBS documentary would take up 8 hours of class time, or so I estimate as you said 8 episodes. I had a biology class in grade 9 (high school) and in second year CEGEP, and in both those cases 8 hours would have been over 2 weeks of lectures, a substantial fraction of the time. What do you propose cutting out of the current biology curriculum, or of the curriculum of other subjects, in order to make room?

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[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: Policywonk ]

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Those remarks ring a bell for me as well. I ignored the study of biology in high school, having much keener interest in Math, Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences. It was only years later I realized that the reason I found the teaching of Biology so boring was that the guiding thread that helped to make sense of it all was missing.

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That's a very interesting way of looking at it.

I also remember a religious studies course (early 1970s, they had changed the name from catechism) in grade 7 or 8 where the nun teaching us went on at some length about evolution not being incompatible with Catholic doctrine [nun voice]Genesis is a parable children, the important thing is at some point God infused humans with a soul[/nun voice]

I wonder, do the Catholic boards in Ontario suffer from the same disfunction about teaching evolution as the Public boards?

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Originally posted by bagkitty:
I wonder, do the Catholic boards in Ontario suffer from the same disfunction about teaching evolution as the Public boards?

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This stuff is somewhere in the vein of that email that goes around saying, that the Holocoaust is "not longer taught", in this or that jurisdiction, univeristy, college, or high school, because it offend Muslims and they are preassuring the establishment. The most recent version of this ended up in the UK.

Of course, it was bollocks, and ignorant fundamentalist fearmongering, as is this thread.

[ 22 September 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

"The Sophisticated Nanotechnology of the Cell Reeks of Design" Michael Behe

[ 22 September 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]