BY DAVID TEMPLETON
Associated Press via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
During an Advanced Placement biology course in Easton Area High School, Jennifer Estevez’s teacher sped through the large chapter on evolution, focusing on one formula for the AP exam and the basics: survival of the fittest and natural selection.
In those high school years, she also would attend a Baptist leadership retreat where a speaker denounced evolution as false, unproven science.
Seemingly unimportant and even discredited, evolution fell off her radar. So the Easton student, who is a Baptist, arrived at Duquesne University last fall considering herself a creationist, a person who generally believes God created the world as described in the Bible.
But a college biology course convinced her that evolution was valid science with overwhelming evidence that all living things, including humans, evolved most likely from a common ancestor — over a period of millions, even billions, of years longer than that described in Genesis.
“In high school, a lot was not taught correctly, and it didn’t prepare me for college,” she said. “They should have gone into evolution in detail. The controversy should not be what is taught in school.”
Her experience represents the ill-kept secret about public school biology classrooms nationwide -- that evolution often isn’t taught robustly, if at all. Faith-based belief in creationism and intelligent design continues to be discussed and even openly taught in public school classrooms, despite state curriculum standards.
The U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts have ruled time and again that teaching creationism in public schools violates the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which often is referred to as separation of church and state.
A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette questionnaire this spring drew 106 responses from science teachers. It asked them to choose one or more answers to a question of what they believe in: evolution, creationism, intelligent design or not sure/other.
Ninety percent chose evolution; 19 percent said they believe in creationism, not defined in the questionnaire; 13 percent said they believe in intelligent design; and another 5 percent answered “not sure/other.” Teachers were allowed to list more than one option, so the numbers don’t total 100 percent. But the clear conclusion is that while most do, not all science teachers espouse evolution, with a notable minority speaking up in favor of creationism.
Many scientists and religious leaders say there’s no conflict in people believing in both a scientific and religious explanation of the origins of humans and other species. Fundamentalist Christians who read Genesis as scientific fact typically reject evolutionary theory.
Science is firm on its truth. The National Academy of Sciences puts evolution in the category of such scientific facts as the Earth orbiting the sun, living things being made of cells and matter being composed of atoms.
The state Department of Education sets educational standards requiring evolutionary science to be taught, save for how humans got here.
Carolyn Dumaresq, department deputy secretary for elementary and secondary education, said new state law requires students, beginning with the current eighth-grade class, to pass tests in algebra 1, literature and biology before they can graduate. That should help mandate the teaching of evolutionary science in classrooms statewide, she said.
Changing public opinion on this topic isn’t easy,
In June, Gallup found that 46 percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, and that view “is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago when Gallup first asked the questions.”
About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God’s guidance, while only 15 percent say humans evolved and God had no part in the process, the poll found.