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How do you teach biology without including evolution?

McIntyre 6 Nov 9
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You can't- not satisfactorily, anyway. If biology is the study of life, then what would be more fundamental than learning about how life got here in the first place, and why it is the way it is today (in other words, evolution)? You COULD teach biology without evolution, but it would be so much more meaningless.

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This is one of my real bugbears. I once told a creationist that not discussing evolution in a classroom is equivalent to child abuse. It didn't go down well, but it certainly made them think! I've learned to be more subtle recently 🙂

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same way they print newspapers : lies and omissions

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Why would you want to? If a "teacher" panders to biased pressure they are doing the students a grave disservice. If you do it to keep your job, you need a different job.

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You explain that there must be a creator, because life can't just spontaneously appear from nothing, but somehow God just appeared which destroys that argument.
Then you ask the students to either write a 1000 word essay on the scientific basis for God just always existing, or a 100 to 500 word essay on how life came to be.

Allan Level 5 Nov 9, 2017
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As a former biology teacher, I say that you CANNOT teach the subject without addressing evolution. Way back in the mid 1960s, My principal asked me not to teacher about evolution. I responded that I did not have the right to withhold scientific information. His response was, "It's your ass, not mine." I went ahead and taught a full unit on evolution and heard no complaints from my students or from the community.

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You can just describe characteristics, physiology, and behavior without discussing genetic relatedness, and speak of natural selection as a relationship between genetics and environment. Basically just leave out the "all life is part of the same family tree" part of it.

Once upon a time there were two fish. Let me tell you about one of them. You don't need to hear about the other one because I don't believe in the other one.

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Biology can't be taught without including evolution, because evolution works. When biologists work with developing new strains of life forms, they are using the principles of evolution so in order to teach a student who wishes to work in this way it is essential.

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