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Should Your Child Be Taught Evolution?
A New Guide for Confused Parents and Teachers Has the Answer
For a printable version of this release, please click here.
September 1999 - True or false, evolution has largely been debunked, and scientists are increasingly accepting the Bible's literal interpretation of how life was created.
Despite polls showing that nearly 50 percent of the American population reject evolution (about the same percentage who incorrectly believe the sun orbits the earth), the answer is a resounding "false."
Marc McCutcheon, author of The Beast in You, Activities & Questions to Explore Evolution (aged 7-14; Williamson Books, 1999), says if you're debunking evolution with your child, you're doing him or her a tremendous disservice.
"Knowledge of evolution is vital throughout the school system and particularly at the higher levels. You simply can't learn biology and many other disciplines without a firm grounding in evolutionary principles," he notes.
A former science news reporter for OMNI magazine and author of 10 other titles, including Roget's Super Thesaurus (voted among the "Top Ten Reference Books" of the last several years by the editors of Amazon.Com, Dec. 1998), McCutcheon says the Kansas school board performed the equivalent of censoring slavery or the Constitution from U.S. history classes when it voted to eliminate evolution from the required science curriculum this summer.
"They're romping in the poppy fields of Oz," McCutcheon says. "Unlike kids in the rest of the nation, Kansas students might not learn why antibiotics become ineffective over time because that would be a lesson in bacterial evolution. Same story with insects that eventually adapt to withstand insecticides. (200 have evolved to resist DDT in just 30 years.) "I can think of a hundred extremely important lessons these poor Kansas kids will be missing out on. Simple things like, Why do so many of us have to have braces and then go on to have our wisdom teeth removed? Kansans will have to assume that God simply designed their mouths one size too small to comfortably fit all their teeth, a wholly unsatisfying explanation."
"If you teach your children evolution, if you offer other children a peek at an evolution book, if you freely state your beliefs in Darwin, rest assured you are not performing the moral equivalent of selling cigarettes to minors," McCutcheon says. "You stand on bedrock-sold educational ground."
Email me for "quotes," fascinating facts about evolution, a list of the educational institutions that staunchly support the teaching of evolution, and more. Review copies of The Beast in You on request.
Marc McCutcheon
DMMcCutch@cs.com
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