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."
Consider Constantine, he was a grotesque tyrant, put off being baptized until he was on his deathbed, now he's a saint.
Just because the Catholic church calls someone a saint, doesn't necessarily make them one. On the other hand, just because you call someone a grotesque tyrant, doesn't necessarily make him one either.
God decides whether he was a saint or not. Water, Baptism doesn't save you. And deathbed baptisms were apparently common in the 4th century.
One minor correction: at that time there was no Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant - just Christians and heretics.
True. But you assume Constantine was a saint, because the Catholic church evenutally designated him as one and/or because he was baptized and/or because he declared Christianity the state religion.
I understand he allowed and protected worshippers of other religions than Christianity, just not witches and spiritists. So he did practice some religious tolerance.
As opposed to drowning infants in a Swiss river because you disagree with their parent's interpretation of the Bible?
You'll end up catering to homosexuals.
You mean as opposed to declaring "righteous" incestuous child molestors like Lot, or sending Mideanite grandchildren of people whose grandparents taught your grandparents to dance around a golden calf off to be garroted or enslaved, depending on whether they are virgins or not?
You'll end up killing your disabled, because they are inconvenient.
As opposed to killing off hundreds of thousands of useless, annoying old women because the bible says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"?
Pot, kettle, black?
The bible confirms that there are, in fact, spirits, that they can, in fact, be contacted for good purposes, and that, therefore, mediums may very well be doing a legitimate useful business.
Thanks for all the helpful information. Where would we be without alert spiritists such as yourself?
I'll alert the National Science Foundation of this incontrovertable evidence for the existence of spiritual possession.
And was that a yes? How do you normally expect to prosecute people for performing witchcraft and spiritism? Voodoo dolls?
That's a religeous opinion--to those of us who wish the state would restrict itself to prosecuting tort crimes against person and property, it looks like you recruiting the state to do your religeous wet work.
And, likewise, just because the catholic church says a just morality can only arise from the bible, doesn't necessarily make that true, either.
Eh? Israel did not subscribe to the Laws of Moses? Did they eat bats?
Regardless of the purpose in contacting them, and regardless of whether they help or not. Contacting them is strictly forbidden by God and it is evil to do so.
If I was lobbying to change our laws, then I would be recruiting the state. The only reason it was brought up, is that you asked if it would be moral, and I issued a qualified yes.
Your misreading it. I didn't say it was not a crime. I said the crimes were equal.
The Bible itself agrees with you. Morality also arises from our conscience. Hindus won't be condemned because of what the Bible says. Hindus will be condemned because they did things they knew were wrong.
Those that never did anything against their conscience will not be condemned. Unfortunately, God who knows the future, has already weighed in, that none of us achieve that.
Personally, I think the whole catholic tradition of declaring past Christians as saints is a bit silly. All true Christians are saints. But only God knows our hearts as to whether we are true Christians.
Yea, well, God says not to eat pork, and to kill old woman who dabble with supernatural forces, and that marrying my niece isn't incest, and that it's a good idea to deliver the virgin 10 year old daughters of neighbors you've invaded and slaughtered into slavery. It's possible that a rational person might not consider this an irresistable argument.
Oh, indeed. Torquemada, for example, wasn't doing anything against his conscience. Neither was Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao. The all thought they were doing the most honorable thing they could with the challenges and limitations they were faced with. As a christian religeous argument about morality, this seems pretty much out on the ragged edge of bizarre.
I didn't realize you had such outstanding powers of mind reading across time. Why don't you report that to the National Academy of Science too.
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