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."
Actually Genesis is much older than 2000 years right? Supposedly Moses received the Torah (first five books)from God about 1500 years earlier than your claim (meaning Genesis is 3500 years old).
Give it up, Patrick. Without Quebec it's all over.
So I wonder what brand of fundie missionaries have been preying on the Inuit?
A link to a fictional story written by someone who likely has a personal agenda is not a legitimate souce. I didn't find any foot notes in the linked 'story'.
Yes, we've lost the Eskimos.
Thanks for the ping!
And yet people keep holding up the bible as some sort of science book...
If the Inuit creation story is a cool as their flood story, I wouldn't want to give it up either.
"Monkeys, she said, came into being after unions between early mindless humans and primitive mammals tens of millions of years ago when matter was more plastic and barriers between species were not as pronounced. Later, perhaps about 5 million years ago, this act was repeated by degenerate (but no longer mindless) beings of the human stock with the descendants of the earlier hybrids. "
This is commonly referred to as the "Arkansas Theory."
"The result was a variety of semi-human beings with more or less apelike traits. Esoteric tradition describes these beings as "apes" who resembled humans much more than anthropoid apes do. It also tells us that humans eventually waged war on these semi-humans and exterminated most of them, letting only the most beastlike live.'
And this is the rather controversial adjunct to the Arkansas Theory, known as the McCoy/Hatfield Hypothesis.
I guess the folks up there have their own beliefs on how we came to be....
....as far as evolution? there just not Inuit.(sorry..bad pun)
Now be fair. Maybe you really don't know what you're talking about. Maybe it is you who is being close-minded by refusing to consider the evidence.
Pop quiz: List three mechanisms for genome modification. To give some range to this please provide one occurring at one specific point, one involving a larger fragment of DNA, and one involving a major change to a chromosome. If you can't answer this off the top of your head, then you definitely don't know enough to debate the topic.
Why are you picking on Elsie's bible quotes?
The giant Inugpasugssuk waded into the ocean to hunt seals. His penis stuck up out of the water so far away that he thought it was a seal putting its head up, and he struck it by mistake. He fell backwards in pain, and that raised a wave that flooded the whole district of Arviligjuaq. [Norman, p. 233]
Bur Harry Potter actually talks to snakes. It says so right in the book. So it must be true that there are talking snakes.
Only in Parseltongue though. :-)
Seriously I know the earth is billions of years old. I'm even of the opinion that God used evolution in some sense perhaps beyond my understanding. I can accede that on almost every living creature because there is nothing that would necessarily contradict that Biblically. However, my faith, my heart, and my head tells me that it's different when it comes to humans. And yes it's faith. Should I not be allowed to teach my children the way that I want them to be raised? Not wanting to argue, just looking for an honest way to allow both versions to be taught to all children.
Nice try.
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