Me, too. 12 years of Catholic school, graduated in '88 in a far suburb of Chicago. One thing I’m glad about, being stuck in a religious upbringing, at least it was a Catholic one where science is embraced.
I attended International schools as a kid and I don’t recall the term “creationism” ever coming up until I got to public high school in the US (1976-80 ) and even then it was dismissed with a chuckle.
In biology in tenth grade in the late 60s. It was accurate as to the knowledge at the time. The teacher did say that NYS law required he call it a theory and not a fact, though.
Because any other explanations for how we came to be are nonsense. There are legitimate arguments about the mechanisms of evolution, but Creationism, Lamarckism, and their ilk are nonsense.
Even if a school was teaching the legitimate belief in Last Thursdayism it still doesn’t belong in a biology class.
I graduated from high school in 2000 and attended school in Northern Virginia. I don’t recall ever hearing anything other than evolution. I was raised at home as a YEC. Interestingly, I don’t recall even having any conflicts learning the very basics of evolution in elementary school or middle school, but I very specifically remember covering evolution in depth in 9th grade Biology. It was that teacher that turned me off, because he literally spent a whole period on a rant about how anyone who denied evolution was a moron. It hadn’t even been a thought in my mind until then, as what I learned at home and at school were just compartmentalized and that made me actually compare them and it was a massive turn-off that he was such a prick about it. But I didn’t cover evolution any more after 9th grade since I went on to Chemistry, Physics, AP Chem, and AP Physics and skipped AP Bio since I only needed 2 college science credits for my intended future CS degree and I was still uninterested thanks to that former biology teacher.
Whenever I hear about people teaching creationism in school, even after that bad experience, it still seemed weird. Even if I was at a point where I didn’t agree with it, I didn’t have an illusions that it wasn’t the scientific consensus.
Raised in Kentucky, went to high school from 1996 to 2000. Learned about evolution during three years of biology, was never taught anything else nor ever suggested that evolution was in question.
I know I was taught the Theory of Evolution in high school, about 1984. I know it didn’t seem like new information at time, so, I’d probably heard about it before, but not in school.
High school in Northern Idaho in the mid 70’s, and the word “evolution” was never uttered.
I was in the Memphis City School system my entire scholastic career (until College, that is), graduated 1976. My first exposure to evolution in school was the 8th grade. This was west-Memphis, pre-busing. My Jr. High School had a bit of a progressive, college-prep bent. The subject did come with a disclaimer that some religions had different beliefs, but the class was not to address religious beliefs, but the scientific issues. If I recall correctly, the evolution of man was not discussed much, only that of the lower animals. In the 10th grade, when I took biology, not only did the teacher not pull any punches with a disclaimer, but began with assuming the students had been exposed and understood the material I had been exposed to a couple of years earlier. This proved not to be a valid assumption, as I recall.
My 10th grade year was the first year of [forced] busing [to achieve racial equality in the classroom]. My biology teacher also taught the advanced/AP courses (although I was not in advanced biology). She did not adapt well to the change in the student profile. Forced Busing had strange effects such as Paul Finebaum (Sports Analyst) graduating from “Christian Brothers” High School. It also resulted in a large number of capable and talented teachers leaving the Memphis City School system.
Regardless, while I never was in the CLUE program (I was too old, my sister was, though; I’ll have to ask her if she was exposed to evolution in school), I can attest that there were HS Biology teachers in the early 1970’s that would have responded to the OP’s question with, “Yes, it would be possible that mutations could help the animals adapt, but it would probably only occur after the majority of the existing species had died out and left a large niche in the ecology of the river. These new creatures would likely be completely different from the ones we currently have”, which is how she would have put it.
I attended Chicago suburban public schools, and my husband attended Catholic schools for K-12, in the 70s and early 80s. Both of us were taught evolution as part of our science classes since grade school. I never even knew there were people who believed in creationism until I read Inherit the Wind in sophomore year English class. Even in religious ed/CCD we were taught that the Adam & Eve story was a parable.
An Air Force brat, my grade school and high school years were spent all over the place: Minnesota, Iowa, Newfoundland, Iceland, Mississippi and Georgia. Do not recall any reference to creationism anywhere. Was taught evolution as the method by which species diversity and change. I do remember there was a general tendency to say that species evolved TOWARD something, that there was a general tendency toward larger size, more diversify and more intelligence. I remember when I started reading Stephen J. Goulding and others in my 20s that I was startled by the concept that evolution has no particular direction, it’s all very random … the bush analogy of evolution, rather than the ladder, as Goulding described it. I don’t know if I picked up on the notion of evolution as having a natural progression from what I was taught or on my own, but it was there.
I was in 9th grade biology class in a suburb outside Buffalo in 1981. My teacher explicitly said we were learning evolution and if we wanted religion that we should go somewhere else.
He the taught us about natural selection and the idea that characteristics that were beneficial ultimately got passed along through survival and how this lead to speciation.
Er, Stephen Jay Gould
Bolded and struck-out is WRONG. It should be east-Memphis. Move away and even geography issues get confused. Memphis ends at the Mississippi River to the west. Sure, there is a West Memphis, but it’s in Arkansas and would never be part of the Memphis City School system
Public HS, Philadelphia (1950-54, 202nd class). I took tenth grade biology in 1951-52. The first term was botany and I’m not sure much if anything was said about evolution. The second term was zoology and the teacher in that course had posted on the wall of his classroom a strip that said in 200 point (at least) type, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. I now realize that this is considered a wild over simplication, but the way he explained it was a bit different from how it is often understand. He said that during our embryonic development, we pass through phases that resemble our biological ancestors during their embryonic develpment. Needless to say, evolution was simply assumed and nothing was said to suggest there was any other explanation.
I just googled to learn that the stage play, “Inherit the wind” was still 3 years in the future (and the movie version 8 years). So we really did not know that it was controversial.
9th grade biology, 1999. We were taught evolution and evolution only. Or as my teacher put it, “we will not be studying creationism in this class. That is theology, and you’re welcome to take it as an elective as a junior or senior.” San Antonio, Texas
Sure, but I assumed you meant some part of the city north or south of downtown. That’s why I wasn’t mocking you.
South Carolina, from (generalized date range) 1980-1998:
Public kindergarten and first grade: don’t remember any science at all, actually. Must have been some, just don’t remember.
Homeschooled, 1st - 4thish (no grades, we were weird) Still not much science. Inorganic chemistry and mechanical engineering and limited geology are what I remember. General idea of evolution presented as a fallacy that could be rebutted with “correct” interpretation of the relevant physical evidence. Mostly dealt with the rebuttal process.
Private christian school 4thish - 8thish (still no grades, going by rough age)
Various christian curricula; Bob Jones, ACE, maybe Abeca? Again, evolution presented as a fallacy with immediate and (at the time) obvious christian biblical rebuttal based on (laughable) scientific interpretations supporting the young-earth theory. However, got a bit more specific on the idea of evolution; learned about Mendel’s peas and Darwin and fossils and carbon-dating. Learned that they were all Satan’s tools and wrong wrong wrong, but learned about them.
Different christian school 8thish-9thish (still no grades)
ACE curriculum. Science? Who needs science! We have Bible Class and (I shit you not) NATURE Class instead! (We walked down the cul-de-sac every day, even when it rained, and were supposed to be admiring God’s creation, rather than yearning for death as a respite from the SC heat in freaking long-skirted WOOL UNIFORMS!
Rural public school, 9-12 (yay, grades again!)
Didn’t come up in chemistry, was written about pretty clearly in the book for biology (thank god for actual clearly-written textbooks: I think perhaps it was Saxon?), but was quickly elided over or prayed away by the teacher whenever it came up.
Examples:
We had a single class session and one very minorly-graded “pop quiz” that we all walked through together, where the teacher led us all in prayer, and said that he HAD to present this information to us, but that we all needed to be led by faith and follow our consciences as to whether we answered the questions on the quiz “correctly” or “rightly.”
Whenever speciation came up, there was a lot of talk about “adaptation” vs “evolution” or “little “e” evolution” vs “big “e” evolution” which was a load of nonsense about how obviously little things like beaks or skin color or dog breeds could change, but everyone could see that an alligator and a person are just too damn different to ever turn into one another. There was a lot of ignorance (or purposeful ignorance) about the time-scales involved, even by the teacher.
Basically I just eye-rolled through the whole thing, because I was in my hateful stage about then, and while my classmates got their families to pull them out of the biology classes, I was forging my mom’s sig to get myself out of the “required” (haha) sex-ed film classes that only the dirty-minded boys wanted to attend.
ETA that I was in college before I had a teacher brave enough to try the “science not theology” approach, and even then, in Bio 101, there were a couple of girls who actually got up and left the class when their precious commentary on Biblical Literalism was shot down with no mercy. It was AWESOME.
Public education in Texas, graduated with the class of 1966.
Don’t remember details of early science curriculum. Always supplemented by books Mom bought. First from the Weekly Reader Book Club was Roy Chapman Andrews, All About Dinosaurs. Various publications from Time/Life (including the magazines), so I knew the basic concept of Evolution. We were Catholic & we learned not to take the Bible literally. (Despite the occasional “invocation” at a special event, there was no Bible reading & no daily prayer in school. We did have Christmas pageants in Elementary school; in 6th grade, we sang the last verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic in honor of Civil Rights. In a district run by a Sundown community (where we did not live.))
Biology I in High School briefly mentioned Lysenko in the first unit–history of science. Not a bit of Creationism. Alas, that inspiring teacher had a health problem & Biology II was taught by a Coach-Teacher. Still nothing but Evolution. But anything on Reproduction above the level of slime mold was cut out of the textbook…
Here is alinkto the Kansas state science standards (in pdf form) on natural selection and evolution. Go to page 91.
Here is a segment:
Students who demonstrate understanding can:
HS-LS4-1. Communicate scientific information that common ancestry and biological evolution are supported by multiple
lines of empirical evidence. [C larification Statement: Emphasis is on a conceptual understanding of the role each line of ev idence has relating to
common ancestry and biological ev olution. Examples of ev idence could include similarities in DNA sequences, anatomical structures, and order of appearance of
structures in embry ological dev elopment.]
HS-LS4-2. Construct an explanation based on evidence that the process of evolution primarily results from four factors: (1)
the potential for a species to increase in number, (2) the heritable genetic variation of individuals in a species due
to mutation and sexual reproduction, (3) competition for limited resources, and (4) the proliferation of those
organisms that are better able to survive and reproduce in the environment . [C larification Statement: Emphasis is on using
ev idence to explain the influence each of the four factors has on number of organisms, behav iors, morphology , or phy siology in terms of ability to compete for limited
resources and subsequent surv iv al of indiv iduals and adaptation of species. Examples of ev idence could include mathematical models such as simple distribution
graphs and proportional reasoning.] [A ssessment Boundary : A ssessment does not include other mechanisms of ev olution, such as genetic drift, gene flow through
migration, and co-ev olution.]
HS-LS4-3. Apply concepts of statistics and probability to support explanations that organisms with an advantageous
heritable trait tend to increase in proportion to organisms lacking this trait. [C larification Statement: Emphasis is on analy zing
shifts in numerical distribution of traits and using these shifts as ev idence to support explanations.] [A ssessment Boundary : A ssessment is limited to basic statistical
and graphical analy sis. A ssessment does not include allele frequency calculations.]
HS-LS4-4. Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.
[C larification Statement: Emphasis is on using data to prov ide ev idence for how specific biotic and abiotic differences in ecosy stems (such as ranges of seasonal
temperature, long-term climate change, acidity , light, geographic barriers, or ev olution of other organisms) contribute to a change in gene frequency ov er time,
leading to adaptation of populations.]
HS-LS4-5. Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in
the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of
other species. [C larification Statement: Emphasis is on determining cause and effect relationships for how changes to the env ironment such as deforestation,
fishing, application of fertilizers, drought, flood, and the rate of change of the env ironment affect distribution or disappearance of traits in species.]