Not many of the linge rats talked about "evolution" except as a given. In any case, if you are teaching kids the basics of science and want to get away from textbook talk, the last thing you want to do is to spend time on "grand theories." If you do, then what they come away with is the notion of "gravity" as something "essential" to matter, or more creduly as a "force." Easy enough to start with a repetition of Galileo's experiments, and try to get them to record and see the pattern of the results. Not so easy to go from these to the standard formulas. in part because Galileo used geometry, not algebra, but kids will surprise you.
I have an an 8th grader pick up a relationship I never saw until I got to college. That's because his mind was not cluttered up with a lot of badly taught math. But for most people, even the bright ones, "generalities" in the bad sense are just easy to go with. So most physics students graduate from high school with only a slight advantage over Aristotle.
Now if they can't grasp something as simple and demonstrable as dynamics, how the heck are they going to deal with something like evolution? Even assuming it is right. it is as counterintuitive as relativity theory.