I took this course in the 9th grade although most students were 10th graders. But I would already have been familiar with evolution from my readings in Scientific American, and popularizations by Desmond Morris (“The Naked Ape”) and I don’t think I was reading Robert Ardrey (“Territorial Imperitive”, “The Social Contract”, “The Hunting Hypothesis”, etc) until the summer before my senior year of high school. Biology was a college track course at that time. My senior year, I took a 1 semester Anthropology course, I was very disappointed that it was cultural rather than physical anthropology, so there was no evolution there, but any physical anthro coverage would probably have been out-of-date anyway, since the field was popping at the time.

Today’s kids are spoiled, I could only dream of the footage and shows available on the Science, Discovery, National Geo and Animal Planet channels, not to mention the internet. If the freshman at UT don’t know the basics, it is because they don’t want to, so why are they in remedial bio? The schools may have gotten worse, however, they could turn off a lot of students in my time as well, but the libraries, television and the internet are all much better resources.

I didn’t take any biology at university. The Selfish Gene can be read in a couple nights. I assume a course based upon it would include a lot of coverage of the relevant peer review literature.

i am interested in what you learned about evolution in high school. I went to a pretty top-rated public high school, Torrey Pines in CA, and I really can’t remember what it was we learned about evolution. But, I know that reading past the basics was not necessary for the material. I am not saying no one should, but think about the average high school science class. The Selfish Gene is a course on its own. When I learned about the “weaknesses” of evolution, like I mentioned before, it was in an upper division evolutionary biology class taught by the renowned Christopher Wills at Univ. of San Diego, CA. It was very complicated and sadly, I got a C. I took this class because I was a bio major. But, at a high school level, for general educational requirements, there are many more things that these kids need to learn before dwelling on this. I TAed freshman at UT in remedial bio classes and I can tell you that many of these kids were very unprepared and did not know the basics of ALL science material. We need to spend as much time teaching our kids the basic science tools so that they can later become decent scientists.

It there is pressure to dumb down the courses and teach the basics then drop evolution, because as fun as it is, it isn’t one of the basics. Most the of kids will never need it again, it is poor important that they learn the organ systems and metabolic and homeostatic pathways so that they will be able to read the Physicisans Desk Reference and be literate about their own health and medical care.

General Relativity has weaknesses too, since we’ve had to hypothesize “inflation” and dark energy for big bang cosmology, and will be in real trouble in a couple of decades if we don’t find dark matter. Quantum Chromodynamics has weaknesses, for instance “physicists still don’t know distribution of the virtual particles inside the proton or the origin of its spin.”

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1121/2?etoc

I currently don’t see anything in evolution that I would characterize as a weakness, but it has had weaknesses in the past, and it is embarrassing to single it out as needing protection.

The poll is useless either way, but I loved that they had no problems with the other poll of the 700 PhDs , that was sponsored by the DI, to support their argument. The bottom line is that these kids need to learn the basics of science. I mean really, how much do you really learn about evolution at this level, barely anything. It isn’t like they are discussing bottlenecks or punctuated equilibrium.

And, true, strengths and weaknesses would not affect other disciplines. Why? Because those don’t directly negate the entire founding of the precious literal interpretation of Genesis. So, who care about discussing the weaknesses of Newtonian gravity and compare it to Eisntein’s. Not that it would happen because, as I mentioned earlier, these kids aren’t equipped for those discussions yet.

“Do “weaknesses” advanced by proponents of creationism or intelligent design represent valid scientific objections to evolution?”

Note, that this is not the weakness statement being considered, and is not all weaknesses, just those put forward by the propoents. When a report is as biased as this one is, one shouldn’t just accept the authors conclusions, but should look to the basis. If the authors have a basis for their conclusions, they chose not to disclose it. I have not been able to find the raw data or the complete survey questions at Dr. Eve’s web site. Dr. Eve claims TFN caim to him for “an unbiased survey”, it appears TFN made a poor choice. He gave them the conclusions they hoped for, but without the data to support them.

Scientists for a Responsible Curriculum in Texas Public Schools

A strong science curriculum is an essential part of a 21st-century education and should be based on established peer-reviewed empirical research. In 2008-09 the State Board of Education is revising the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) curriculum standards for the sciences.

Scientifically sound curriculum standards must:
• acknowledge that instruction on evolution is vital to understanding all the biological sciences;
• make clear that evolution is an easily observable phenomenon that has been documented beyond any reasonable doubt;
• be based on the latest, peer-reviewed scholarship;
• encourage valid critical thinking and scientific reasoning by leaving out all references to “strengths and weaknesses,” which politicians have used to introduce supernatural explanations into science courses; and
• recognize that all students are best served when matters of faith are left to families and houses of worship.

We, therefore, call on the Texas State Board of Education to approve science curriculum standards that prepare Texas students to succeed in the 21st century.

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As the statement correctly notes, “strengths and weaknesses” is a political ploy to introduce creation pseudoscience, which was the subject of the poll. It would have been preferable if the language of the standards was specifically addressed (the final wording was changed the weekend before the hearing so the actual wording would have been impossible to poll), but the intent was properly examined. Furthermore, while polls are useful, the real metric is that no data refuting evolution has been presented in any peer-reviewed scientific research papers, so there is no secular reason to include trumped-up “weaknesses” in the curriculum.

Scientists Reject Teaching the So-Called ‘Weaknesses’ of Evolution
Opponents of evolution have targeted the Texas science curriculum standards as a test case for their newest strategy forcing public school students to learn about so-called “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory. This survey of Texas scientists roundly rejects this strategy: 94% of Texas scientists indicated that claimed “weaknesses” are not valid scientific objections to evolution (with 87% saying that they “strongly disagree” that such weaknesses should be considered valid). Clearly, the latest shift in strategy from promoting intelligent design to pushing “weaknesses” of evolution has not made any significant inroads into the science community. Just as with intelligent design, the vast majority of relevant university and college faculty in Texas do not buy into the “teach the weaknesses” concept now favored by supporters of creationism.

http://www.tfn.org/site/PageServer?pagename=2008BiologyReport