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."
People-are-stupid-all-over alert.
OR
"it takes one stupid person to know a stupid person" alert
Huh?
Nothing new...
Most humans STILL believe in 'superstitions'!
One man's trash is another's treasure...
I feel for you!
My wifey had me make her a tree circle flower bed, 3 blocks high - 145 blocks total.
Plain ol' dirt wasn't good enough, so 5 trailer loads (140 bags) of topsoil later it is full. I've still got quite a few loads of cobbles (hen egg to cantalope size) to remove from the rock weed garden around the edge of the house.
Have you heard about the snake that was so poor...
...that he didn't have a pit to hiss in.
Barney...
is that you?
Good grief! You should tell her what the "top" in topsoil means.
Gosh, you're right. How dare those liberal socialist/communists require us to protect our children with car seats!! It's our Constitutional right to turn our children into missiles when we lose control of our vehicles!!!
They can't turn our kids into mindless drones! Only WE can turn our kids into mindless drones (by way of collision-induced head injury)!
You should have taken my advice.
I'm an evo, which you would have known if you had only paid attention.
The old *it takes one to know one*. I haven't heard that in a long time. Who better to know.....
Nothing like someone else deciding for me what's best for my kids and having the ACLU to back them up in having it forced on us through the judiciary.
Yep, you survived without a safety seat. So did I. But thousands of other children did not.
But don't get me wrong - I believe that you should be allowed to remove yourself and your offspring from the gene pool, if you want to. Just make sure you keep your windows rolled up when you allow your child to bounce around inside your car, so he doesn't injure me or mine when he flies through the air in that wreck.
OUCH!
I'm blessed: relatively flat land, an ATV with a dump cart and a swampy ol' hole to dump in.
Of all the objections you could have to government intrusion on our lives, you choose one that makes more sense than many? What's that about?
Sorry if I don't have the confidence that you have in parents' judgement when it comes to keeping their kids safe. Without regulation, more children would die. According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, children are still dying while unrestrained. Imagine how much worse it would be if there weren't laws enforcing the use of restraints.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSF2003/809762.pdf
Starting to regret I've only got enough left for probably today and tomorrow.
Ah...
The ol' "God is bad for killing 'innocent' babies" tangent.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.