I remember the peppered moth being my introduction to evolution. (And that was in rural Georgia in the 1970s. I distinctly remember the pictures from my textbook.)
From the article:
[quote]
The evolution of the peppered moth over the last two hundred years has been studied in detail. Originally, the vast majority of peppered moths had light coloration, which effectively camouflaged them against the light-colored trees and lichens which they rested upon. However, due to widespread pollution during the Industrial Revolution in England, many of the lichens died out, and the trees which peppered moths rested on became blackened by soot, causing most of the light-colored moths, or typica, to die off due to predation. At the same time, the dark-colored, or melanic, moths, carbonaria, flourished because of their ability to hide on the darkened trees.
That’s a nice real-world example of natural selection that made an impression on me as a lad.
I remember the peppered moth being my introduction to evolution. (And that was in rural Georgia in the 1970s. I distinctly remember the pictures from my textbook.)
From the article:
That’s a nice real-world example of natural selection that made an impression on me as a lad.
True–I remember that as well. Still, I think I might stick with discussing evolution in terms of the anoles and crickets: I figure if kids can see the animals and study their traits over a couple of weeks, the modifications to their bodies engendered by predation pressures might be a lot clearer.
I prefer to keep my distance from Darwin himself, simply because creationists euphamize evolution as “darwinism” in order to marginalize it as just the opinion of one man.
Apart from most children that age not necessarily having an understading of very long time scales, I’d recommend discussing a competing early theory, Lamarckianism, and explaining why it was abandoned.
If you don’t do that there’s a danger that some of your students might understand your explanations in a neo Lamarckian kind of way.
Because (1) Jodie Foster’s line in the movie was meant to be a childlike over-simplification by someone who doesn’t really understand what she’s talking about and (2) evolition isn’t lineal, but tangential. If it were lineal, humand would be the only animal life form on the planet. But it’s tangential – a successful species branches out into another form to adapt to certain conditions. This branching out creates the “rich diversity” referred to by the OP.
Assuming FriarTed wasn’t whooshing, this is the kind of question that comes up when evolution theory isn’t taught in public schools. That will change only when communities start caring more about their kids getting a decent education than about perpetuating their own superstitious worldviews via the public school system.
“d&r” means “duck and run”, as in, he was asking a stupid question to rile everyone up and then running out of the room before he could be pelted with rotten fruit. In other words, not a safe assumption :).
Teaching about Lamarckism would be interesting, but honestly, I’m going to be really really lucky if I can get them to grasp the basic idea of natural selection. Introducing a second complex theory just to show them what a false theory looked like would probably doom any chance of their developing a clear understanding of natural selection, however basic; they’d be likely to forget which theory was correct and which was incorrect.
