In fact what I'd insist on being taught is that atomic decay is measurable and these measurements consistantly show that it would take 4.5 billion years for half the atoms in a mass of U-238 to decay into Pb-206, which when based on samples found in nature and samples of other isotopes wtih different rates of decay, leads to a scientific consensus that the age of earth is 4.55 billion years old.
Further, I'd want it taught that measurements in the shift of the spectrum of light to the red of various celestial objects indicate the universe to be at least 8 billion years old.
If a student should challenge -- say by asking how the age could be determined without knowing the initial composition of the sample -- the teacher could say "very good, Bobby. You get a bonus point for thinking." If the student should insist, the teacher could point out the measurments and challenge the student in return to study hard and grow up to try to refute them -- hence encouraging a love of science.
Now, evolution is a different story.
Student: How do single-celled asexual bacteria could evolve into multi-celled sexual creatures.
Teacher: Mutations
Student: What kind of mutations?
Teacher: They were mutations in the genetic code.
Student: Well, how did they happen? How do they work.
Teacher: I just told you. Mutations, so shut up. What are you some kind of anti-science fundamentalist?
And there you have it.
Great.
Student: How do single-celled asexual bacteria could evolve into multi-celled sexual creatures. Teacher: Mutations Student: What kind of mutations? Teacher: They were mutations in the genetic code. Student: Well, how did they happen? How do they work. Teacher: I just told you. Mutations, so shut up. What are you some kind of anti-science fundamentalist?
So you're against crappy science teaching. Me too.
When I was in high-school biology, we compared various green algae, from single celled ones, to multicelled undifferentiated ones, to multi-celled differentiated algae. You could see through the microscope that individual cells of Volvox looked very similar to single-celled algae like Euglena. It wasn't hard, therefore, to see how multicellularity could have evolved.
Oh by the way (sorry for the second follow-up), with zircons, for example, we know that uranium chemically incorporates into the structure and lead does not, so we have the initial composition.
It's disingenuous to expect a high school teacher, who's probably an english or political science major, to know anything about graduate level biology. The simple fact is that biology is a much larger and more complicated body of knowledge than radiometry, or physics in general.
You might as well expect high school teachers to be Biblical scholars. They're not educated to do that either.
I'd be satisfied if the science class simply taught observable, present-day facts: This is a cell, and this is how we think it works. Here's a fish ... dig the gills? The blood circulates because of the action of the heart muscle, and we can show it to you on film (not just with cartoons!).