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."
Do Hindus think cow eaters are 'bad'?
Someone has an idea of what their 'perfect' god would be like, and I'm being asked to sign off on it.
Because it wasn't in the original.
As an adjective; it is a judgement call: something that a GOD would do.
Why?
Them are FIGHTIN' words: designed to get a rise.
WATCH OUT for the swinging pendulum!
WHY?
"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many fake religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
( Charles Darwin in his Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Dover Publications, 1992, p. 62. )
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
"I think that generally (& more & more as I grow older), but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."
( Quoted from Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 636. )
Well, Charles; perhaps you can take solace in the fact that fake concepts have just about taken over vast areas of 'christianity' today. Why we even have blockbuster movies that proclaim fiction and folks gush over them as if they are true.
What? You don't know what a movie is? It's kinda like a play that can be seen over and over again; exactly the same the 100th time as the first.
I find it interesting that there is a correlation between the rise of the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, when so many of the discoveries that set the stage for modern science were made; and the beginning of the deterioration of the modern education system, which occurred at about the same time as the legal battles to get evolution taught in the schools. Now lest anyone accuse me of implying that evolution is the cause of the downfall of education, I did not say that. However, it can certainly lay to rest the fear that many have that teaching creation in the public schools will destroy their intellectual quality. If there is a correlation, then by that reasoning, reintroducing creation should result in their improvement. At the very least, it can be shown that it won't harm it.
It's not so much a matter of "proper subset" as it is an attribution of fanaticism from those who are blind to their own. The teacher referenced in this article ought to have free course in presenting his ideas regarding history, philosophy, and science, but he has absolutely no right to have his ideas go unquestioned - whether by individuals or by the community at large - if/when he presents them as anything more than reasonable conjecture.
So you're saying there's nothing inherently wrong with killing babies?
Does your hatred for Christians know no bound?
Havent been here long have you ?
When did you stop beating your wife?
*Sigh* this was a good thread until The Usual Gang of Idiots had to ruin it.
One fact that remains clear, and said in respect of course, is that the truth is told only one time, a misconception or flaw is told many times. I usually put this another way for another issue, but I softened it up.
Oh no......I was doing good until I got to your post. I'm in the Congo right now and almost every day, my lunches are sardines, bread and ........yes, banana's......you didn't have to remind me. :)) /sarc....
I just haven't discovered which ameoba or primate were my ancestors. If I found the ameoba I might be able to find the monkey species that went extinct which was my great
X 100,000 Great's that evolved into a Scotch/Irish human. :))) lolololol.....this is too much fun.
well, I read the other day that the ACLU joined with the ABOL..(Another Bunch of Losers).......:))
Well, it does sound nutritious..... if nothing else.
uggggg......after a while, you don't want nutritious......Well, if anything, by the time I leave here I might be able to climb trees better......without IBUprofin....:))))
Bull. Einstein denied the existence of a personal god.
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