Posted on 05/22/2006 8:14:10 AM PDT by RightWingAtheist
A high school science teacher vowed yesterday to continue telling his Inuit students about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, despite complaints from parents in the northern Quebec community of Salluit.
Science teacher Alexandre April was given a written reprimand last month by his principal at Ikusik High School for discussing evolution in class.
Parents in the village 1,860 kilometres north of Montreal complained their children had been told they came from apes.
"I am a biologist. ... This is what I'm passionate about," said April, who teaches Grades 7 and 8. "It interests the students. It gets them asking questions.
"They laugh and they call me 'ape,' but I don't mind. If I stopped, they would lose out."
April, who is leaving the town when his contract runs out at the end of the school year, said the principal first told teachers last fall not to talk about evolution.
Debate over the teaching of evolution in Salluit - a village of 1,150 located along the northern coast of Quebec, between Ungava and Hudson bays - is pitting an increasingly religious Inuit population against a Quebec education system that's becoming more and more secular.
Although April, 32, won't be punished, his reprimand has outraged Quebec's scientific community.
"What he's doing is right and it's best for the kids," said Brian Alters, director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University. "Science should not be de-emphasized for non-science."
Over the years, controversy over the teaching of evolution has erupted in Pennsylvania, along with U.S. states in the so-called Bible Belt. In November, the Kansas State Board of Education approved science standards that cast doubt on evolution.
But with heightened religious fervour among the Inuit and Cree in northern communities, some observers suggest Canada might have its own Bible North.
Molly Tayara, a member of the Salluit school's volunteer education committee, said she'd tell her four school-age children to walk out of a lesson on Darwin.
"The minister (of education) may have come from apes, but we're Inuit and we've always been human," she told The Gazette in a phone interview.
"Most of us rely on God's word. ... God made Adam and Eve and they weren't animals."
Legally, Inuit schools in Quebec's north must teach evolution, as it's part of the provincial curriculum. After April's story came out this week in the magazine Quebec Science, Education Department officials immediately called the school to ensure the curriculum was followed.
Topics like reproduction and diversity of species are part of Science and Technology, a course for Grades 7 and 8. Darwin's work, based on the premise that humans and other animals have evolved over time, is further covered in Grade 11 biology - an elective course.
"We want the curriculum to be applied. We're just saying the theory of evolution could be taught more delicately to students," said Gaston Pelletier, director of educational services for the Kativik School Board, which serves northern Quebec's 14 Inuit communities. "We have to respect their view."
I read the link....In a single word. Codswallop!
Here is a good site to get started:
http://www.talkorigins.org/
New Age much?
Here is where you miss the boat. A theory is not a belief system unlike religion. A theory is a model that best fits the observed and accumulated evidence.
Then you follow it up with a link to an article, which about midway down goes off into a treatise on continental movements vis-a-vis Atlantis?
Can you imagine how low your scientific credibility is at this point?
I understand at least state has recently made it an absolute right for science teachers to discuss theories on the origin of man.
This is what science teachers will say when they aren't muzzled.
Actually I am very open minded on the subject. I took a hard and long look (we are talking years here) at the overwhelming accumulation evidence and could no longer deny the fact that evolution is real and observable.
The universe started about 3 hours ago. I woke up late........sorry about that.
Possibly not. But your link sure was.
Not so unknown. Many links out there showing the evidence for human evolution.
No wonder my radio telescope only started receiving signals from space about three hours ago. You need to set your alarm clock!
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The Theory of Evolution is based on observable facts. It has none of the characteristics of organized churches or religion. In particular, it has no invisible entities that are supposed to make things happen--no pixies, no demons, no magical gods, no spirits...
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