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 think you're being a little too simplistic. They bred animals and crop plants for certain traits (dogs, sheep, etc.) They knew that physical traits of both parents could be passed to the children. OK they didn't know of sperm and eggs, but the concept of "seed" certainly shows some concept of heredity. >>
You're right, although there were some interesting side-trails. There's the biblical story in Genesis 30, where Jacob used a rather -- um -- unique breeding technique:
<< 37 Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38 Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. 40 Jacob set apart the young of the flock by themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-colored animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself and did not put them with Laban's animals. 41 Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, 42 but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. >>
I guess Mendel missed some details!
Sounds rather Lamarckian doesn't it?
It is curious that priests and pastors railed against women having the right to vote all throughout the 19th century. Priests and pastors were, of course, males, and maybe concerned about preserving a privileged position.
In Biblical times, no one had a clue about how reproduction worked. Yes, a male ejaculate was known--it was regarded as like planting a seed in the soil. The women was regarded as the soil, to provide nourishing environment, rain, and such. Mother earth. An ancient idea pre-dating monotheistic cults by 10,000 years or more.
The idea that a women would provide equal genes, could have sexual pleasure, would be equal in politics is very new. There is nothing in the Bible to support women having a right to vote.
Now this is a WAG, but I suspect that the Ghost of Madame Blavatsky has been banned.
I wish I had been here for the hoopla in RT. "Fashionably late" doesn't fly in Freeperland. :-(
Is mlc dead?
And was she a theosophist?
I think he generates them in situ.
I don't follow how this contradicts physics and aerodynamic engineering, other than violating Occam's razor.
I'm busy with making a cake to auction off for the Boy Scouts, so I apologize for not having a pun ready at hand in the meantime.
Cheers!
Now to muddy the waters further :-)
Antony van Leeuwehoek and his Little Animals, by Clifford Dobell, an older Dover book that can still be had. If anyone likes this guy it's a great read.
Leeuwenhoek looked at spermatozoa from frogs, fish, insects (flies) birds and humans. This approximately 1677. His discoveries caused a revolution in the thought of reproduction and he did speculate on how these sperms were involved. So far, I have not been able to find out exactly what he thought.
Hey, it's true, that "essence" is worth at least $500 a month for 21 years!
Well the Bible, as we know, is hardly a text on genetics, but the idea that the birds were imprinted by environmental factors certainly is close to Lamarck than anyone else I can think of.
The quote said "in heat" - is that KJV? I've never heard a bird person say birds went into heat.
Take a deep breath, and step away from the keyboard.
Whatsa matta? Can't you just wing it?
I mean, its just plane easy coming up with these puns. You don't need no flight of fancy, you don't have to make a big flap about it, just get your props and spin your tail and off you go!
(How many angels does it take to hold up the latest 747? That's a big 'un!)
Yes.
<< Well the Bible, as we know, is hardly a text on genetics, but the idea that the birds were imprinted by environmental factors certainly is close to Lamarck than anyone else I can think of. The quote said "in heat" - is that KJV? I've never heard a bird person say birds went into heat. >>
Not birds -- goats, cows, and sheep. "Flocks" of sheep. Jacob had made an agreement with his father-in-law Laban that they split up the flocks. Jacob was to take those that looked a certain way. So -- he engaged in this unique "breeding" technique to create more of "his" kind of sheep, and make himself rich at the expense of Laban.
It's the New International Version. The KJV just says, "When they looked at the rods they conceived."
Giving rise to the Orthodox commentary on artificial insemination: "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
My error, it doesn't say birds, but animals. So what "kind" were they?
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