Recently, "educators unveiled new guidelines...that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the Unites States" according to this article in the New York Times. Apparently these new guidelines take a firm stand on teaching evolution to students. My first thought was "yes, progress!..more students will be taught the threory of evolution". However, as I expected, the idea of teaching such contreverical subjects, like evolution and climate change, has already drawn hostile commentary. Additionally, while many states are expected to adopt the new guidelines within the next year or two, it will still take several years before schools translate them into thier curriculum. As such, schools will continue to postpone the teaching of evolution.
The thing that struck me the most, however, was how Judith Luber-Narod, a high school science teacher at Abby Kelly Foster Charter Public School, was hesitant about teaching a controversial subject so she thought, "how can you teach the environment without talking about it?". I found this very strange because I was skeptical to how a teacher was supposed to teach a topic, without ever actually talking about it directly...
Mrs. Luber-Narod came up with an experiment to try and stimulate global warming. She explained nothing about global warming itself, and only told her students to watch the experiment and come up with your own conclusion, as such not actually talking about the subject. While these students were exposed to the topic and forced to come up with their own opinion, do you think that is enough to substantially educate these students?
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