Central New Jersey, late 1970’s, junior high school. We spent a couple of months on evolution, and creationism was never brought up at all. Evolution wasn’t mentioned much in high school biology, but creationism, not at all.
(Before that, in fifth or sixth grade, we learned about genetics for a couple of weeks, and again, no creationism.)
Oddly, we were made to learn four different theories about why the earth looks the way it does in junior high. (Although religion wasn’t a part of any of them.) One was Continental Drift. I remember having to cut out pictures of the continents and fit them together on a piece of paper. Another was something called isostasy, and I’ve forgotten what the other two were.
Wasn’t continental drift pretty much accepted as fact by the late 1970’s?
Interestingly, when I was in my teens, I was a creationist myself (I was raised Baptist). But my public school science teachers were pretty straightforward: “This is evolution, and how scientists believe it works. I’m not telling you that you have to believe it, but I am telling you that you have to learn it.”
I remember writing at least one biology paper in which I argued in favor of the biblical account of creation but also being careful to display my knowledge and understanding of evolution - so my recollection is I got an okay grade (although didn’t convince anyone).
By the time I started college I was growing more skeptical as I realized that my Christian faith did not depend on a literal reading of Genesis. Ironically, my “conversion” to evolution was cemented when I went to a Creationist v. Evolutionist debate and realized how stupid the creation arguments were.
Anyway, for a point of data: New England public high school, mid-1980s, taught the basics of evolution by teachers who tried really hard not to step on anyone’s toes about religion.
I’m 54 and went to a Catholic elementary school and a Catholic high school from 1966-1975.
From the earliest biology classes, Darwinian evolution was treated as fact, not as a mere “theory.” When we did our 5th grade re-enactment of the Scopes trial, it was made very clear to us that Darrow was the good guy.
I don’t really remember it being something that was taught in elementary(1978-1984) or middle school (7th grade- 85-86). Not that they taught creationism or any other nonsense in lieu of evolution, but rather that the science education at that level wasn’t so much concerned with evolution at all. I remember more basic science education like about osmosis, and the interior of the cell, plant anatomy, and stuff more around that level of knowledge.
However, in my first year in high school (87-88), we took Biology 1, and were taught about evolution by a Jesuit priest like it was God’s word handed down on stone tablets. There wasn’t any dickering about intelligent design or creationism whatsoever. Evolution was how the world works, and that’s just how it was.
Even at that, we didn’t get a lot of evolution. That had to wait until biology and physical geology classes in college.
Was a long time ago, bit IIRC it was taught in biology class. It wasn’t very good teaching, like most other things in high school, but there wasn’t even a hint at creationism in my classes (this would have been in Tucson in the early 70’s). I’d say that the class was the equivalent of what we received in history…pretty much boiler plate gloss with no real depth or much interesting. Based on my own kids schooling, I don’t think it’s really changed much.
Private Christian school for children of the fundamentalist non-denominational church. Graduated high school in 1987. What were we taught about evolution? Lots of things, for example;
[ul]
[li]It was all a lie by secular scientists doing the work of Satan to lead us from God.[/li][li]Pretty much everything mentioned in this Jack Chick tract was The Truth. I’m not kidding, we were given this tract specifically. Our church also had a large display in the vestibule full of Chick Tracts.[/li][li]To shut-up and stop asking questions about these things and instead to go pray more for God to give you Faith to see the truth before my eyes.[/li][/ul]
I went to a Catholic high school and took biology in 1999-2000 and evolution was presented as factual, no ambiguity about it. Our bio teacher was associated with Carnegie Mellon University, which is a pretigious institution, so he wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything to make it more palatable for the religious folks. Fortunately, Catholicism doesn’t really have a problem with evolution and nobody I knew ever objected to it.
I was taught straight Darwin, and so far as I remember, my teachers failed even to do what would now be called “teaching the controversy”; I really had no idea that there were people out there who thought the world was created in six days until years later.
Southern California, public schools, early 1970s. Small town.
Nope. The subject was not taught, ever. Not one word of it. Absolutely none.
(There was one biology teacher who held informal “seminars” out in the garden greenhouse, where, completely independently, he’d go over the basics of the idea. But it was sub rosa – haw! I make a pun! – seriously, it was all hush-hush.)
Public school in New York. I graduated in 1969. I don’t remember being taught evolution per se, but I suspect I was, and I read lots of books about dinosaurs and primitive man (not together!) and don’t recall hearing anything in school that conflicted with my general evolutionary viewpoint.
I seem to remember creationism being treated as an old discredited theory like phlogiston and spontaneous generation.
I also went to Hebrew school, and “history” started with Abram. While we read Genesis, no one pretended the creation story was factual.
Southern Illinois, from 1987-2000, I was taught absolutely nothing about evolution.
Sophomore year I had a geology class with a really cool teacher who flat out said “Evolution is true, the Earth is billions of years old, and if you don’t like that you aren’t fit for any science class, let alone mine”. But his class was geology, not biology. We learned about the age of the earth and the really long timescale of the processes that create the geological features we see, and he went into how fossils were made, but nothing about natural selection or descent with modification was taught.
I vaguely remember something about how Lamarckism was wrong in junior high but any comparison to natural selection was brief and not memorable. And I took honors biology! (Which probably should have been called “Honors Dissection”.) I learned everything I know about evolution from Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, mostly, with supplemental material picked up from various sources to round it all out.
I’ll tell it in reverse chronological order, since that’s how my memory works best. Most of this was in a suburban Detroit area public schools.
In high school in the Early Oughts, I was in AP biology classes that explicitly taught evolution, from the history of Darwin’s discoveries and early theories, to the Modern Synthesis and the basics of quantitative population genetics.
In middle school, I can’t recall whether I was specifically taught anything about Darwin or evolutionary theories. I do remember a fair bit of comparative anatomy, e.g. circulatory systems of various invertebrates, fish, amphibians, and land animals.
In elementary school I can’t remember anything relating to evolution at all. I did do a science fair project, where I did my best to examine acquisition of antibiotic resistance. (I didn’t have any antibiotics, nor any bacteria, so I really was just killing bakers yeast with over-the-counter athlete’s foot and yeast infection treatments…)
My parents raised me as an atheist, to be argumentative, and with as many Stephan Jay Gould writings as I could handle. I have a very specific memory of visits to the [del]natural history[/del] Dinosaur Museum where there was a sort of interactive evolution game where you “won” by picking the right adaptations that let you survive mass extinctions and evolve into modern animals. Therefore, while I can’t specifically recall what I learned earlier in school, I’m certain that nobody ever told me that evolution was false, or religious creation of any sort was true.
Similar time period, public gade school, Catholic middle/HS, straightforward Darwin as per the consensus at the time in the latter (so, no Gould). Was not part of the curriculum before 6th grade in the PS in those years.
Not that it was made a HUGE BIG DEAL, it was just presented matter of factly, and there was more focus on cell biology. Only one year Bio required in HS per state standards.
(of course the RCC has accepted that the story of the Days of Creation is an allegory for a long time…)
New Jersey and Iowa public schools, 1982-1995. In both places, evolution was taught as fact, and the only comment that was made was that some people have religious beliefs that say otherwise, but that science class is for learning science, not religion.
There was an increasing amount of detail given with age, up to 10th grade, when we had Biology. Our teacher gave a rundown of creationist/intelligent design beliefs very briefly, to indicate where they conflict with the evolutionary theory he had taught in detail. Then he asked the class if anyone wanted to share information about beliefs he hadn’t covered, or if they felt his characterization was unfair. The religious kids who rejected evolution (there were a few) just affirmed that his summary seemed fair. The teacher let students ask whatever questions they wanted, and would answer “science says X, ask your parents or a religious authority for more detail about how religion views that issue if you’re curious.”
Most of the kids, even those from fundamentalist homes, had figured out some rationalization about how to reconcile science/evolution with their religion. Nobody asked to be excused from the lesson.
However, some of the teachers made mistakes in what they taught us, especially when answering student questions. Some of this was because evolutionary theory had been refined since they were in school, and they weren’t up-to-date enough. Sometimes the teachers just didn’t have a deep enough understanding. And a couple of times, urban legend was taught as fact. But I’m pretty sure these were all honest mistakes, as most public school science teachers don’t have Ph.D.-level understanding of the subjects they teach. All of our teachers probably fell into the category of “non-fundamentalist Christians,” although some were more devout than others.
Massachusetts private schools, late 90s early 00s.
I wasn’t very good at biology and don’t remember it so much, but I do remember Punnett Squares and evolution was definitely taught as just part of biology. No mention of creationism or any consideration of religious object.
In high school I got to take a class specifically on evolution, though more focused on how it impacted scientific thought and society in the 19th century rather than the biological mechanics. Read On the Origin of Species and a bunch of other stuff. It was a great class.
BSCS biology in high school, Northern California public schools from 1955-1968, we never even heard the word creationism. I remember raising fruit flies.
Several people used something similar to this, “or any other nonsense in lieu of evolution” and it was always the word ‘nonsense’ and no other word???
Why the unnecessary ridicule? I see no anger or any overt arguments even hinted at in this thread. Why the insulting words about people who are not even in the thread?