Earlier this year, Georgia became the focus of criticism by scientists and ex-presidents when the school superintendent attempted to remove the word evolution from its science curriculum standards. In an e-mail discussion of the issue, I came across the assertion that Florida does not include the word evolution in its own science standards. I contacted the Florida Department of Education and received the latest Florida Curriculum Frameworks on CD. The CD is divided into five sections:
A search of the contents of the CD reveals one mention of the dreaded e-word and it is not in the science standards. It is contained in the Curriculum Frameworks section of the CD. The sentence containing the word evolution is as follows:
Students should also learn the fundamental characteristics of living things, the functions of cells, the mechanisms of evolution, and the process and importance of genetic diversity.
However, the essence of evolution is found in the science standards in a limited way as follows:
Processes of Life Standard 2 for grades 6 - 8
knows that generally organisms in a population live long enough to reproduce because they have survival characteristics
knows that the fossil record provides evidence that changes in the kinds
of plants and animals in the environment have been occurring over time
Processes of Life Standard 2 for grades 9 - 12
understands the mechanisms of change (e.g., mutation and natural selection) that lead to adaptations in a species and their ability to survive naturally in changing conditions and to increase species diversity
What is in a word? Is it important that the word evolution is found in the science standards? What is behind the opposition to the removal of the word evolution from Georgia's state standards?
As pointed out by a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation report release in 2000, there is a lot more at stake than the presence of the word evolution in Florida's science standards. The report gives both Florida and Georgia a failing grade of F for its handling of evolution in its science standards. The report claims that Florida and Georgia covers biological and geological evolution so inadequately as to render the science standards useless on the subject. It also gives a F to Florida's and Georgia's science standards as a whole.
Why is the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation so down on Florida? After I compared the science standards for Florida to the same standards in California, I can understand the level of frustration with Florida as found within the report. The Florida science standards for the following grade levels are as follows:
Kindergarten
- 2nd grade
3rd grade -
5th grade
6th grade -
8th grade
9th grade -
12th grade
The California science standards provide a considerably more complete coverage of evolution than the corresponding science standards in Florida. As early as third grade, evolution is hinted at by the following standards:
3rd Grade - Students know when the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce; others die or move to new locations
4th Grade - Students know that in any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
Starting at 7th grade (except for 8th grade), there are complete sections in
the standards dedicated to evolution.
Here is a sample of the individual standards within these sections:
Students know the reasoning used by Charles Darwin in reaching his conclusion that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution
Students know how independent lines of evidence from geology, fossils, and comparative anatomy provide the bases for the theory of evolution
Students know how natural selection determines the differential survival of groups of organisms
Students know the effects of genetic drift on the diversity of organisms
in a population
California does not shy away from the subject the way that Florida does. Not only is the coverage of biological evolution more complete in the California standards, but the also the evolution of the Earth and the universe is more adequately covered. It is important that Florida school children understand that everything we see around us did not just pop into existence several thousand years ago as argued by creationists. The universe and everything in it evolved (!) over billions of years through processes that involve both random chance and nonrandom natural laws. In the same way that democracy and freedom in our country cannot be understood without understanding how these institutions evolved from the American revolution to the present day, present day biology cannot be understood without the thorough teaching of biological evolution in our schools. If our school children are not thoroughly taught evolution, we might as well throw away our science textbooks and teach them science using the Bible.
Everyone who loves science should flood the Florida Department of Education and members of the Florida legislature with letters asking them why Florida science standards are so poor. If we believe that science is important to the future of our state, our country and our world, we should demand that its conclusions be taught in this state without any hint of reluctance and embarrassment. Even if we accept the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, we should acknowledge that even the most uncertain of scientific theories provide us a more reliable understanding of the universe than any other type of knowledge.
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© 2004 Curtis Wolf