Wow, that is some strange stuff.
Among other courses, I used to teach marine biology in high school. It was my favorite course to teach, as it involved some earth science, zoology, chemistry, and environmental science. Then, courses like that were cancelled, replaced by the dumbed down "Living Environment", the libtard version of biology. They didn't cover bones, muscles, eyes, skin, the structure of the ear, etc.
I had obtained a big cow femur bone split the long way by my butcher, boiled it and let it dry out. You could see the interior spikes of bone (spicules) criss crossing within. That made a really great lesson on nature's architecture, with its economy of materials yet great strength. I had followed up that lesson with having the kids test the strength of cylinders vs. square hollow columns, having them pile books on top to see which was stronger, and then looking at acrylic hollow cylinders and square hollow cylinder through a polarizing filter so they could see the stress lines from the corners of the square cylinder. This was the answer to the question I posed at the beginning of the activity: why are the long bones of large animals round, not square? The kids did their tests and could then answer the question for themselves. I then had a follow up lesson about how man uses the principles of nature's architecture---different kinds of bridges use the principles of the spine opposed by the strength of abdominal muscles, submarines are modeled on sharks, including their steering pectoral fins, etc.
In those days, kids were very involved in their lessons when I had a lot of hands-on activities I designed. Then along came the libtards/politicians poking their nose where it didn't belong, dictating that we should follow untested "progressive" curricula. The "new" version of biology only covered DNA technology, ecology, and a smattering of human biology such as circulatory systems, etc. Gone were the wonders of the body such as I mentioned above. Gone were the interesting labs, replaced by paper labs. Gone was the intense teaching, replaced by dividing the class into groups of 4 and handing them out handouts with a few paragraphs and some questions they had to answer (COMMIE CORE).
In addition to the grotesque version of "biology" we were then forced to teach, we then were forced to apply a ferocious grading curve to the state exams ("Regents exams"), so you only had to answer about 36 of 72 questions to pass. It was nauseating. Then they started harassing the veteran teachers to force them out, so they could replace them with 2 newbies for the same price, newbies who were thrilled to name all the new acronyms rapid-fire and utilize the intellectually bereft Commie Core.
I was so blessed to have enough years in to retire and get away from the horror movie teaching in NYC schools had become, the fraud committed, all the interesting stuff vacuumed out of the new way to "teach". No wonder they are turning out hordes of illiterates who can't add 3 + 5 without a calculator, who cannot tell the time from an analog clock, who cannot read cursive writing. The loss of such knowledge and its ramifications will be quite destructive to society. I think it already is.