In junior, middle, or high school, in other words?
The other day, for no reason I can identify, I chanced to think about a river tour I went on as part of CLUE (Creative Learning in a Unique Environment), a special class for egghead kids which Memphis City Schools ran in the late 70s. During this tour, our guide-- high school a biology teacher employed by MCS–mentioned that the Mississippi’s pollution was likely to have deleterious effects on the fish. Having only recently started reading about evolution in the family encyclopedia (it was probably World Book), I asked if it was possible for the fish to adapt to the environment by mutation; the teacher said no, mutation was always bad and could never lead to anything beneficial Not mostly bad; always. I got the same line the rest of my time in MCS; teachers either avoided the topic of evolution or outright denied it. Only when I started at Christian Brothers High Schooll was I taught anything about the topic in school (which is not to say I knew nothing; I had a library card and a skeptical inquisitive mind). But in a public school in Tennessee, 30-35 years ago, it wasn’t happening.
Which brings me to the thread topic. Americans: what were you taught about evolution in school before the college level?
If you are willing, please give the approximate time you were in school, as well as the city and state if you are comfortable, and specify whether you attended public or private school.
Valdosta GA circa 1967-1972 —Every life form evolved from earlier life forms; before there were any mammals there were dinosaurs and old-fashioned fishes and mammals evolved from those earlier life forms. And before modern humans there were older species more like apes and we evolved from them.
Misconceptions (not necessarily taught to me but not corrected by what they did teach): that adaptations made by individual animals (or plants for that matter) could be passed on directly to their offspring; that challenging circumstances somehow caused the adaptive changes as well as winnowing out the less-well-adapted unchanged versions.
Despite being smack dab in the middle of the conservative Bible belt (and we had proselytyzing students come into classrooms to talk to us about being saved, we had Bible readings in public school, we had prayer in the classroom, so make no mistake about the presence of religion), evolution was not, at that time, blackballed by the religious community. Los Alamos NM, circa 1973-1077 —Evolution is a fact, just like gravity. And you can see the evolution of the horse, from the Eohippus cat-sized thing up through the modern horse (we don’t have quite that complete a fossil record for other species but this one is an excellent illustration of gradual progressive change). More specifics on natural selection — that mutations were random and that evolution is the process of selecting among the overall population incuding the mutations for the traits that best insure survival (and progeny). Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic with an overview of the different lifeforms in each. Also, in history class, Darwin himself and the Scopes trial in the US were covered.
You’d expect the atomic city, nuclear science city & all that, to be considerably less enBibled than Valdosta GA but actually Los Alamos draws its nuclear scientists (or did, at any rate) from small towns, conservative communities. Lots of churches in Los Alamos. And Christianity was becoming politically powerful (in the Jerry Falwell model, born-again Bible-thumping know-nothings) in the mid to late 70s in a way they had not been in the 60s and early 70s. So it kind of evened out.
There were people who expressed disbelief in evolution, ranging from “sorry I don’t believe the mutations are just random, that’s God doing stuff” to “bullshit, it says in the Bible the world is only 4004 years old”, but they weren’t our teachers. (I encountered some in Sunday school / church and among other students in casual conversation).
I attended grade-high school between the years of 1962 and 1972 (skipped two grades along the way). I went to a university laboratory grade school and a Catholic high school, both of which were located in northern Indiana, nestled close to the IN-MI border.
Since my grade school was an educational laboratory school, we were taught the most advanced ideas of the day. We were taught evolution at its most scientific in a very liberal setting. My Catholic high school was affiliated with the same university, run by the same religious order who ran two universities, one junior college and our high school. Science, as taught in that high school, also included evolution at its most scientific. While there were definite religious overtones present in other subjects, our science was pure.
Catholic schools (Nuns) 1-12
1948 - 1961
Grade school, both theory’s. We had a very progressive Irish Pastor who was ahead of his time in many ways & some younger Nuns so … Grades school 1-6 was confusing for those with fundy parents. My parents were cool, I had 2 Uncles that were Catholic Priests + Ft Mac so I learned how the two theory’s could co-exist.
I still have no problem with the scientific method & religious beliefs.
I had the same experience. We were taught evolution in science class and the bible in religion class. I went to Catholic school in the 1960’s. It never was an issue.
Bethesda Md. 1960-69, Philadelphia Main Line 1970-74. Straight Darwin. Not well explained, lot’s of cart following the horse, but no creationism or other nonsense.
Mixture of public and Catholic schools in both MA and RI. Always taught evolution, but in Catholic schools we did have Religion class where the Bible stories were told (in elementary school). I went to a Catholic (all boys) HS for my sophomore year, and Religion class was more like sociology. We spent one week viewing every Sex Ed film the Brother (we had Brothers, not Priests as teachers) could get his hands on. We were kind of weirded out by that.
Public elementary school, I was in sixth grade in 1969 when we had a unit on evolution. It was presented positively as the science showed the evidence, until one girl raised her hand and asked “What if you don’t believe in evolution?”
The teacher (being about 70 years old it seemed to me at the time) was stopped cold in her tracks, having never had a student ask such a question. That was the first time I had heard that evolution as a controversy. Even in Lutheran Sunday School evolution was explained as just seven very long days, but evolution was true. This was in the upper Midwest.
I went to public school in northeast Ohio in the 90s. Just straight-up evolution.
We did have a middle school science (biology?) teacher who was a religious man, but I don’t recall him ever going on about creationism. He gave us lectures about how it was bad to curse, that’s all.
I was also raised Lutheran like JohnGalt. Never really had creationism brought up to us. My confirmation teacher was an engineer.
ETA: I did one my 7th grade term papers on Human Evolution*, and another one on DNA. I was super-into Human Evolution at that time and have been ever since. That was back in the day when you had to research stuff on microfiche in the downtown Public Library. And it was typed on an Underwood typewriter I got from my father-- built circa 1940.
*Titled: Early Man; you won’t find it published anywhere.
I attended Indiana public schools during the late '90s and early '00s and can’t recall being taught evolution specifically. I remember genetics, punnet squares, meiosis, cell biology, anatomy, ecology, Linnaean taxonomy, that sorta thing, but no underlying theory.
Somewhat similar, I should add. The “evolution” stuff was very minimal. Nothing compared to how much time we spent memorizing all the taxonomy in Kingdom Animalia. I think we learned more about Human Evolution in our World History class-- a few pages at the beginning of the first chapter of the text.
Public school, southern New Mexico. Started grade school early 1970s, graduated high school in 1985.
As far as I can remember, evolution was assumed. The creationists didn’t really start making noise until I was in college. Sex education (covered briefly in Civics class in 9th Grade, and Human Biology class in 10th Grade) was much more controversial than evolution.
Looking back, the official curriculum sidestepped the question. In elementary school, we learned about volcanoes and plate tectonics, but the implications for biology were left unspoken. We learned kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species, and how different groups were related, but I think the actual evolution was left mostly unspoken. (Though it seemed to me to be fairly obvious.)
On the other hand, the school libraries all had good science sections. If you wanted to learn about it on your own, it was easy to do.
10th Grade Biology. THis was 1968 and the BSCS books were used, which did use evolution as a given, but I truly cannot remember any details.
Was also going to Catholic Church and “CCD” classes at the time (I got better) and can’t remember anyone arguing about it. Never remember discussing it at home. Wasn’t until I was out of college that I even realized that there was a controversy.
Different strokes; my brother got the same education (in fact, went on to a PhD), and is a very conservative Lutheran (whichever sect is the most fundy, that’s him) and I’ve found creationist literature at his place…
We did learn about evolution, and I don’t remember any shilly-shallying about “some people believe” and so on. I was in gifted/AP courses, and I don’t think “the earth is 5,000 years old” would’ve gone over well with our parents, most of whom were professors, doctors, and lawyers.
In college, the professor had to make the speech to the class: “I don’t care what you believe, but for this class the correct answers for the tests and quizzes are science and evolution as presented in the textbook and class lectures.”
I was in Catholic primary school from 1965 until 1973. We got an age-appropriate outline of what evolution is.
Jesuit high school from '73 through '77. More on evolution, although I elected more humanities courses than science courses. And my school was more focused on humanities (particularly classics) anyway.
I was never, at any point, taught that the Genesis account of creation is literally true, or that science in any way conflicted with religion. In fact, I never even heard of creationism, until I was in college. I just didn’t know, at all, that there were people who believed that the earth is only 6,000 years old or anything like that.
Evolution was the most likely answer science had for how we came to be. Stuff about Mendel squares (which I see is actually a Punnett Square but we were told Mendel) and chromosomes and a brief look at failed theories like spontaneous generation or Lamarckism. Light and dark moths during the Industrial Revolution, a little anthropology with Lucy and stuff.
Our biology teacher did lead into the section with a “Some people believe that we were placed here by God but this section of class is about the science” disclaimer.
Public school ~1990 (ninth grade), NC, medium-sized town: we had a chapter in our textbook about evolution. Teacher completely skipped it. (I read it on my own, in any case.) I heard the teacher say at one point (I think this must have been out of class, off the record, but it’s just possible he actually said this in class) that he wanted to teach it, he just didn’t want to get into fights about it. We did do Mendelian genetics, Punnett squares, some discussion of DNA, taxonomy, etc.
We also skipped the entire portion of the textbook dealing with the human body, under the vague excuse that we would get that in Health Class. In Health class, we also skipped it, saying that we would go over it in Biology. In retrospect, clearly no one wanted to be responsible for teaching us about the human reproductive system…
60s to mid-ish-70s, public school, small rural district at first and then a large suburban district outside a major city for high school – and the short answer is yes. It probably began in very basic and simple terms around the 3rd grade and continued in various forms through science classes all the way through graduation.
Surprisingly enough – back then I was part of one of the stricter Russian Orthodox sects. We touched on it around 4-6th grade Sunday School of all places and maybe a couple times after. And as backward as our town and religion was, when I got older it shocked the shit out of me. They were fairly supportive of the theory as factual and the great age of the Earth as a planet and admitted to the contradictions found in the Old Testament. But it was basically written off as one of those “Divine Mysteries that we may not fully understand until we enter the Kingdom”. It may have helped that we grew up around fossils and coal and stuff but in retrospect it gives me a lot more respect for “old” Father Fyodor.
