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."
If you missed the reply, it was Transformation, something I missed, and Transfection.
Obviously someone doing a quick google lookup, grabbing the first entry, and failing to realize it didn't answer your question.
Did Sedna also carry a salt cellar?
Transduction.
Of course, the correct answer was transsexual, transvestite, and Transylvania.
Oh, so I should have said chimpanzee instead?
So you're the son of god?
I'm a child of God, yes.
Wouldn't make you the Messiah?
You want to know, read the bible.
the truth of the Bible is certainly supported to a far greater degree than any other ancient text, by archeology and by bothe sacred and secular historians. It was also written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit over many hundreds of years by many authors; and is both internally and externally consistent in all that is contained therein.
Name another such work that even remotely approaches the reliability of the Bible. The only on I can think of that any group mentions is the LDS and the Book of Mormon, which was allegedly translated by one man and was so poorly written that over 3000 substantive changes have been made ove the last one and one-haf centuries.
I know of no one who holds up the Bible as a science book, but there is nothing in science that is inconsistent with the Bible.
In adition, not all 'science books' contain good science.
I knew that. I learned all my biology at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Almost anything written as history by the Greeks or Chinese or Egyptians.
If it's pre-verted, you evilootionists will be familyar with it, fer shure.
lol! A mod deleted the reply? I definitely agree mistaking transformation or transfection with DNA sequence change deserves deletion, but I wouldn't have expected the mods to agree.
I'll assume you're joking here...
This thread looks like the Western Front in The Great War.
The Iliad is remarkably reliable. The geography, the nations involved, the military tactics and equipment, etc.
So you're saying that if only rose tinted Erica's world, she'd still be with us? Seeing as how that keeps you safe from trouble and pain and all...
At first I thought the poster had requested the deletion to avoid embarrassment. Then I realized she was nuked. I wonder what her former freeper name was?
Yeah, I was just wondering about that. It must be the return of a bannee because so far I hadn't seen her post anything bannable.
That's a wonder. If my parents dropped me in the ocean and cut off my fingers and then their descendant tried to bug me for food, I'd tell them to go jump. :-D
Which one is the third?
Genesis, Matthew, and Luke.
I was going to give her credit for actually trying to make an argument.
Maybe we could ask the mods to swap her for a more completely useless troll.
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