Evolution and Education :: Science Teaching Argumentative Essays

Evolution and EducationWhenever various debates have taken place in parts of the realm regarding whetherevolution should be taught in schools, I have always observed the situation with a degree of incredulousness neither the parochial education I authoritative in elementary and middle school nor the public education I received for high school ever attempted to dissuade us from teaching about evolution, and while none of my classes ever taught evolution with as much depth as Ernst Mayr attempted to convey in What Evolution Is, both systems taught it as a fact one that we took for granted. The debate on the use of the word evolution in the Georgia school system initially appeared to me to be a manifestation of more anti-evolution tendencies, although Superintendent Kathy Cox has not commented on the theory of evolution itself the unfortunate truth, stated Cox as her rationale, is that evolution has become a polemic buzzword that could prevent some from reading the proposed biology curriculum (Gross A10). Whatever her own beliefs on the subject are, however, the elimination of the term evolution may pass on cool comfort to the theorys detractors, but its overall effect is merely to hamper the students understanding of what evolution entails.In place of evolution, Georgias proposed replacement is biological changes over quantify it hopes to convey the meaning behind the word without using the word itself (Gross A10). Mayrs own definition seems to be rather similar when he states, Evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms over cadence, but a word expresses more than what a clipped dictionary definition can allow (Mayr 8). When evolution is used in effortless parlance in a non-biological context, adaption is often an unspoken yet important component of it. If one speaks of evolving as a person or evolving in his grapheme as team captain, there is a sense that one is moving from a less-adapted state to becoming better suited for whate ver it is one does. It implies that there is a development of certain qualities to be better suited for the environment an individual may find him- or herself in, not simply changes over time for the sake of change while there is indeed a degree of randomness in how a species may evolve (or come to destruction, as the well-adapted dinosaurs did when a meteor struck and indelibly altered the environment), for the most part the changes are not entirely due to chance.