By JERRY COYNE - WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE
Added: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Original link
Previously discussed here on RD.net

The kerfuffle about home-schooling led to an invitation for me to do a brief segment on Overnight America with Jon Grayson. You can find the segment here.

I continue to get angry emails from home-schooling parents. Many of them are really exercised by my statement that the Apologia and Bob Jones biology home-school units are “promulgating lies to kids.” I can see how a parent would get exercised at the accusation that he/she is lying to their kids, but what I said was that the books are promulgating lies to kids. And they are—the publishers should know better. But if the creationism-pushing parents have had an opportunity to know better, by learning something about the evolution they teach (or don’t teach) to their kids, to their kids, then they too are guilty of promulgating lies. It’s as simple as that, because evolution is true.

Let me add, though, that I’ve received a (very) few supportive emails from home-school parents. It need hardly be said that these folks are home-schooling their kids for other than religious reasons.

Here’s an email that came only half an hour ago:

Professor Coyne,

“I feel fairly strongly about this. These books are promulgating lies to kids,” said Jerry Coyne, an ecology and evolution professor at the University of Chicago.

Uh, no they don’t. But you do. It seems to be part of your job description.

The home schooling movement arose because people were sick of outsiders having a dominant role in what parents teach their own children. What the “experts” think is more important than what the parents think.

TAGGED: CREATIONISM, EDUCATION, SCIENCE