No, I'm not saying high schools are more sophisticated -- the opposite, actually. In college classes discussions may be had in state-sponsored schools on topics and proposals that would be impermissible in high schools for establishment clause violations. I don't think there's a lot of litigation in the area, but generally college professors, especially with tenure, have a lot more leeway. There is rarely a firmly established set of guidelines or teaching objectives. In college we look a lot more to the results, rather than the processes.
For example, college courses have been teaching the Bible as literature and history for a long time -- that's where we get the better books in Bible studies. Has anyone ever complained about these?
In my biology courses professors would frequently use Darwin's methods, setting a question, such as "evolution of the eye seems, at first glance, absurd" -- and then they'd proceed to lay out the evidence and make it clear that what seems absurd at first glance is solidly evidenced at second and subsequent looks. If creationist kids are bothered by those courses, they can find another major.
The MCATS do not test on high school biology, except perhaps as Advanced Placement Biology courses get closer to the college stuff. The AP Biology exam is 30% based on understanding evolution. I'd expect a college biology major not narrowly dedicated to molecular or botany to have a solid understanding of phylogeny and ontogeny, and be able to answer a question like, "Relate what you know about the common understanding that 'phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny -- or is it the other way around?" So I think it's not reasonable to suggest that one line reveals any high school curriculu, when that one line is found in an outline to prepare college students who are assumed to be close to a bachelor's degree and who are aiming for a career in medicine.
Especially evolution is important to medicine, and it's probably best if medical doctors understand the errors of evolution history as well as the basic theory. Health and public health are rife with stories of goofs that led to evolution of newer and hardier breeds of germs and the insects and vermin who carry them. Keeping to the old Hippocratic Oath standard of, "First, do no harm," becomes more difficult the more we know and the tougher diseases become.
Ed Darrell
Dallas
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 8/20/2005 8:31:03 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:And, in any case, it's a college level exam. There is no way this outline could be presented as evidence of what high school texts and curricula say.You seem to be suggesting that the level of biological sciences education is more sophisticated and update in the high schools than in the colleges. Perhaps. I don't know. I do know that evolutionary sources are quick to dispel concerns that they still proceed on a recapitulationist model such as suggested by Haeckel. But if that recapitulationism is rejected, why not say something different than the discredited old saw. Otherwise it gets, despite its decrepitude, an undeserved intellectual nod.Jim HendersonSenior CounselACLJ_______________________________________________
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