By Susan White
Local educators disagree over the impact of the Ontario government’s new policy that limits the teaching of evolution in schools.
In the current program, only one OAC advanced biology course deals with evolution in detail.
Under the new curriculum, which eliminates OACs, a similar course will be offered at the Grade 12 level.
Rev. Brian Kopke, minister of the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa, says this isn’t enough.
“This is not teaching kids about the process of development and growth around us,” he says.
The minister says he hopes the high school system will eventually take a more balanced approach to science, but adds it might be difficult because of protests from religious fundamentalists.
Kopke suggests one solution is to offer both evolution and creationism and let the students make up their minds. He also says students should be taught about all religions, not just Christianity.
“I really believe there is a narrowness to the education system,” he says. “We need to broaden that.”
Cam Wyndham, chair of the biology department at Carleton University, agrees, saying all science courses as of Grade 11 should teach some aspect of evolution.
He says students “get the bare minimum” of information about evolution in high school.
He adds he’d like to see them have a more comprehensive understanding of the process of evolution.
“It’s not just dinosaurs and fossils,” he says. “Evolution is occurring every day.”
Wyndham says as long as students have a good knowledge of the basics of evolution and can back it up with good examples, he’s happy with the current curriculum taught in the high school system.
Susan Hewitt,is head of the science department at Lisgar Collegiate Institute.
She says she’s satisfied with the current curriculum.
“By the time people graduate, those who study science all the way through do get a good balance,” she says.
Hewitt admits, however, that students who only take the minimum requirement of two science courses miss out on many important concepts, not just evolution.
She says another course to teach evolution would have to come at the expense of another subject.
Dave Ross, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, says the high school curriculum is designed to teach students what they’ll need to know once they leave high school, whether they’re heading to university or into the workforce.
He says the ministry consults experts in various fields about what students are expected to know and bases the curriculum on that information.
Ross says there are many opportunities apart from the OAC course for students to study related topics — such as understanding organisms — in preparation for learning more complex theories.
Kopke says he hopes to overcome the shortcoming in the teaching of evolution by setting up extra-curricular classes to teach both children and adults about evolution and other such theories.
The first meeting of the New School for Saturday Science was held earlier this month. Kopke says one idea that arose at the meeting was the creation of “teaching teams” that would lecture at schools, science clubs and colleges.
“There is still months and months involved,” says Kopke.
While classes won’t be offered until next spring, he says he expects to start raising public awareness about the issue within four to six weeks.