Quebec community cool to Darwin

Montreal Gazette via Canada.com ^ | May 20 2006 | Alison Lampert

[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."

[Almagest]

<< Don't you find it strange no one reported millions of dead bodies (human and otherwise) after the flood? >>


The two "vulture-kind" birds ate them all up.

[thomaswest]

Re 130: However, I do not believe it is fair, nor right, for the majority of children to be taught one thing at home and then be required to go to school to be taught something else. In effect you are subverting the rights of the parents to instruct their children as they see fit. If you're going to teach one form of faith (evolution) then you should teach the other form of faith (creation). Let the kids figure it out for themselves.

Question 1: Do you agree with Christian Scientists' faith that has on some occasions let children die because the parents rejected medical treatment on the basis of religious faith?

Question 2: A few years ago near Attleboro, Massachusetts a baby died because the pastor had ordered that it was immoral to breast-feed the baby and immoral to use formula (the argument was complicated, to say the least, but the baby died). Agreed this is a cult. But one man's cult is another family's faith belief.

Question 3: My grandmother never believed in airplanes. She insisted that angels are needed to keep airplanes aloft. This contradicts physics and aerodynamic engineering.

How far do you want to go to accept every family's faith belief and "teach the controversy"?

And WHO is to decide what is a valid controversy and which is a cult belief? Do you want pastors and priests deciding, educators/teachers, scientists, popular vote on every issue? Which decider group will be most "fair" in your view?

[Doctor Stochastic]

The two "vulture-kind" birds ate them all up.

In Three Days?

[aNYCguy]

I think you'll find that mainstream historians don't consider claims of magical fruit, talking snakes, 600-year-old people, and worldwide floods to be, you know, historical.

I know of no one who holds up the Bible as a science book, but there is nothing in science that is inconsistent with the Bible.

People such as Kent Hovind give very popular lectures in which they hold up the bible as a science book. And I think you'll find that modern scientists don't consider claims of a planar earth to be entirely factual.

Of course, any rational person can see that the bible is not internally consistent.

[thomaswest]

Re 134: Problem is -- creationism -- especially YEC -- is not just anti-Darwin. It has to reject significant parts of chemistry, geology, astronomy, paleontology, archeology, and other sciences.

You make a very important point, which is usually lost on the creationists and IDers. Namely, that everything we think we know about evolution is supported by interconnected understandings from every branch of science.

Of course, creation by {poof} cannot be ruled out. But the interesting thing is that science has not needed {poof} for more than 300 years as we came to understand energy (and heat), to understand germs (vs. demon possession), to understand electricity (vs. Thor sending lightning bolts).

Quoting a devout anti-evolutionist on a similar thread who asserted that "evolution is a secular humanist, atheist materialist, anti-Christian, communist nazi plot to undermine moral values" and fluoridate the water supply.

[longshadow]

Quoting a devout anti-evolutionist on a similar thread who asserted that "evolution is a secular humanist, atheist materialist, anti-Christian, communist nazi plot to undermine moral values" and fluoridate the water supply.

Let no one violate the purity of your precious bodily fluids! Drink only rain water & grain alcohol cocktails!

[ahayes]

Perhaps the sheer ignorance of that reply was what caused her to get banned. :-D

[Almagest]

<< Quoting a devout anti-evolutionist on a similar thread who asserted that "evolution is a secular humanist, atheist materialist, anti-Christian, communist nazi plot to undermine moral values" and fluoridate the water supply. >>


And sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, Mandrake!

[Almagest]

Ya beat me!

[Almagest]

<< The two "vulture-kind" birds ate them all up. >>

<<< In Three Days? >>>


Well -- they did have twelve basket-fulls left over.

[thomaswest]

Re 135: That I, or any other human being, came from a monkey is a theory and has not been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Else it would be a fact instead of a theory.

I see that science is not your strong point, particularly with understanding biology. Before you post stuff that might embarrass you, you might learn enough to know that humans are on the ape branch of primates. Monkeys have tails; apes do not.

Of course, because we humans, apes, and monkeys have a common ancestor, in the course of human fetal development, human embryos do develop proto tails. These are usually resorbed in later fetal development and become the coccyx ( in a few cases, babies have been born with tails). The genetic information for a tail is present.

Haekel exaggerated the idea that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" and made errors. But the basic idea that HOX genes are highly conserved, that basic body plan is controlled in early fetal development and is common to all mammals (cf vertebrates), that earlier strands in evolutionary history express themselves in the course of fetal development is not in question.

There is no better explanation for proto-gill, proto-tail structures in human and other mammalian fetal development.

[dread78645]

I learned all my biology at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

"Well you got caught with a flat
Well how 'bout that.
Well babies don't you panic
By the light of the night
It'll all seem alright
I'll get you a Satanic mechanic
I'm just a sweet transvestite
From Transexual, Transylvania
Why don't you stay for the night ..."

[longshadow]

[thomaswest]

Re 146: I disagree with your premise that parents are to be elevated to gods in bringing up children.

It takes no thought, no understanding of anything, no sense of caring, no intellect whatsoever to make a baby. It has always amazed me that of all the babies born from nutsy parents how many turn out not so bad.

But the notion that parents are to be in control of every aspect of a child is nuts. We all know unfit parents. Society via the police or the church organizations always have had the right to intervene--either to protect the child from his/her parents or to protect society. Unfortunately, church organizations often enough proved unreliable and exploited kids themselves. I think it unfortunate that we now have only police to protect kids--it used to be that the community of neighbors and teachers would bring correction to families (parents and kids) who violated norms.

But the idea that parents should have complete control over their kids' upbringing and education is not a realistic position, given the number of cults and aberrant parents.

[Virginia-American]

That is so cool, having fossiliferous rocks around!

(You have, of course, following orders from ... someone ... , destroyed all the mammal and human fossils?)

[Virginia-American]

Give yourself a nod for that one.

Thanks. Usually when I think of a pun, you (or Greywhiskers) have already posted it.

[PatrickHenry]

Drink only rain water & grain alcohol cocktails!

And withhold your essence from women. Don't avoid women, longie, they sense your power; but you must deny them your essence.

[thomaswest]

Re 159: I think the opposite is true. I've done the calculation - there is enough H and O on Earth to make 26,000 ft. of water, but to get it would leave some mighty strange minerals that would have to go back to "normal" after the water dried up (like Si+4 and assorted things). The energy required to strip enough H and O from minerals to make 26,000 ft of water is incredible. I'd say an Ice Age was more likely, not boiling seas. But maybe that's what killed the dinosaurs. The poor babies just froze to death. And besides that could explain how some wooden thing almost the size of the Titanic could float and be seaworthy, it was stuck on ice. Don't you find it strange no one reported millions of dead bodies (human and otherwise) after the flood? So many questions, so few answers - and it will always remain thus.

LOL. Your post is a real keeper. It is rare--even from creationists--to see so much nonsense in two paragraphs. You win some sort of a prize.

Your problem is not with some "mighty strange minerals" that have {poof} qualities. Mentioning silicon in the 4+ valence state is cute--and a diversion, since earth life is based on carbon. Your problem, I think, is that you haven't a clue about what you are posting.

It is odd to remind a creatioinist about thermodynamics! Whatever "calculation" you might have done, you might want to get informed about the "latent heat of vaporization".

"Don't you find it strange no one reported millions of dead bodies (human and otherwise) after the flood?" The Bible is peculiar in terms of what it 'reports'. No writer was a witness to these supposed events.

Don't you find it strange that unborn babies were killed in this 'flood'? Don't you find it strange and a question of morality that newborns, toddlers, and zillions of innocent children were drowned and zillions of innocent souls were extinguished in this supposed flood?

The Noah's flood myth is not only bad science, but bad morality.

[microgood]

Unfortunately, church organizations often enough proved unreliable and exploited kids themselves.

You forgot to mention government organizations. The State of Washington system has a very high track record of physical and sexual abuse as well as many deaths in their system.

In 99% of all cases, the child is much better off with the parents than with the state: governaments do not care about the child, just whatever is easiest for them in the execution of their duties. This is also the same for the Court system, they do what is easiest for them, not the child.

Actually you said churches do not do that well, but they do far better than the state could ever hope. Look at drug treatment programs, the churches acheive success rates in the 70% range, where the recitivism rates in secular programs never reaches double digits. That is because they understand the "humanity" side of the problem, some the secular programs do not even acknowledge.

[microgood]

where the recitivism rates in secular programs never reaches double digits

OOPS. I meant success rates in secular programs never reach double digits.