100 years ago, it would have been absolutely UNTHINKABLE to teach this subject.
Sadly, it still is pretty controversial today.
Lots of parents don’t want their children learning it. The Texas Board of Education only recently started allowing schools to teach it.
What subject is it, you ask? Evolution.
There’s a lot more I could tell you about the history of evolution (including the number of schools that are still choosing to teach creationism over evolution), BUT I’ll keep that brief, because there’s something else I want to touch on.
Some of us who believe in evolution or are open to hearing about it STILL GET IT WRONG.
For example: You might think that if a person “evolves” during their lifetime to have strong arms or legs, they’ll pass those traits to their offspring.
Wrong!
That’s not Darwin’s theory of evolution (the one that “evolution” actually refers to) — that’s a theory by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
A theory which, by the way, was later shown to hold no water. As this TED-Ed video says, “individual organisms don’t evolve at all.”
I count myself as one of those people who still had a ton of misconceptions about evolution, and I learned a ton from the following video that cleared up my confusion.
That’s why I hope that one day, all schools will be allowed to give us proper education on what evolution really is. If we’re going to have evolution taught in schools, we might as well have it taught right.
