# Americans: what were you taught about the theory of evolution in school (but before college)? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 5, 2015, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082 "2015-08-05T17:48:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![gytalf2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ac91a4/32.png) [@gytalf2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gytalf2000)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/81 "2015-09-09T16:48:05Z")
I attended public school in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, USA from 1967 to 1977 (1st through 10th grade). We were taught that life had evolved over time. I read voraciously from the start, several grades above my level, and had a great interest in paleontology, anthropology, history, archaeology, and the like, so I had a pretty good grasp of science. (This was in spite of attending a rather conservative / fundamentalist type church, the so-called “Church of Christ”). I always assumed that evolution was accepted by all the “smart kids” who actually read books outside of the required reading for school. That was usually the case. I knew that several kids and their parents didn’t believe “that they came frum no stinkin’ monkeys”, and that included several of the people who attended my local “Church of Christ” congregation. Some of the conservative Baptist folks felt the same way. But they were looked upon as being not very bright – certainly not truly educated! When we moved to Nashville in the Fall of 1977, my mother insisted that I attend the “Church of Christ”-run private school. The people there seemed nice enough in their own way, but considered evolution to be a lie perpetrated by “thee ol’ debbul”. But I suppose that is a different story, altogether… ---
**Author:** ![llcoolbj77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/82 "2015-09-09T20:10:37Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Fairfax County, VA public schools, early 1990s: I think we got a pretty good overview of evolution in ninth-grade biology; we may have gotten something earlier, but I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure we also had to write a paper about whether schools should teach alternative theories in that same ninth-grade biology class, and if so in what context, so I guess the teacher would have had to introduce the idea of the _existence_ of said theories, but I don’t really remember the details of what she said. > > We definitely had to read the Book of Genesis (_all_ of it, along with Exodus, Job, the Song of Songs, all four Gospels, and Revelation), but it was in AP English, assigned alongside Edith Hamilton’s _Mythology_, and presented as “you really need to know about all this stuff in order to make sense of the last two thousand years of Western literature.” My high school was pretty awesome. Fairfax County, VA Public Schools - Late 90s. Pretty much the same. But I also took AP Biology. There was a heavy emphasis on evolutionary mechanisms. Not even a whiff of creationism. I did not take AP English (and wish I had). They had a great curriculum. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/83 "2015-09-10T19:07:43Z")
It didn’t come up until seventh grade pre-AP “Life Science,” where our teacher explained that evolution wasn’t this evil thing, and just meant that organisms change, and that we didn’t need to bring religion into it at all. Then we just discussed older animals that were extinct and how they evolved, covered the genetic squares, discussed natural selection, but didn’t get into speciation. Though we did disprove Lamarckism. By the time I took AP Biology, we did all that again, but didn’t really go any further. We wound up skipping a lot of chapters in the book, and since I don’t remember what was in them, I don’t know if it was a time issue or a content issue. Graduated 2003, so 2001 and 1997-1998. Smallish town in Northern Arkansas. Public school. (I did got to a private Montessori School up to fourth grade, but we didn’t really cover evolution or even much science.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/84 "2015-09-10T19:40:56Z")
I was on the textbook review committee for our school district when they redid biology texts. I had less than an hour to look at them so I just looked at how they handled evolution. The book for the continuation school over-simplified things, but the rest were very good, with the text used for Honors classes having a full page interview with Richard Dawkins. The texts were chosen by a committee of biology teachers. I don’t know for sure how evolution was taught, but the material was there at least, ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/85 "2015-09-10T19:51:45Z")
Grew up in rural Southern Indiana and attended high school in the early 90s. I went to a private merit-based school and was taught evolution in great detail. I was told, “Some people think evolution is false, but it is actually true. The notion of evolution is not incompatible with religion; if you think about it, most religious stories are metaphors or didactic mechanisms, so if you use basic common sense, evolution happened and the world was NOT created in 6 days.” From what I can tell, my public school friends went into Darwin and Mendel, but more in a “history of science” way rather than, “this is evolution, genetic variation exists for these reasons and is actually a good thing” manner. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2015, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082/86 "2015-09-12T00:25:22Z")
Public schools in Springfield, Illinois in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Evolution was taught as scientific fact, creation was not once ever mentioned at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-what-were-you-taught-about-the-theory-of-evolution-in-school-but-before-college/727082.md?page=4)