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Not only in America, teaching evolution is under attack. Indeed, future Turkish children will likely not learn about evolution in school, as soL international reports:
İsmet Yılmaz, the Minister of National Education in Turkey on Friday announced the new curriculum draft for school. After the draft is finalized, textbooks will be published based on the new draft to be used starting from 2017-2018 academic year.
The new curriculum draft brings some radical changes:
[...] Evolution Theory is excluded from Biology courses. The related unit named "The Origins of Life and the Evolution" is replaced with "Living Beings and Environment".
This is actually not the first strike against evolution in Turkey:
In 2013, the government had made a regulation, which let the Intelligent Design model to be included in the curriculum besides the Evolution Theory.
Also at Turkish Minute: Gov't removes evolution theory from new school curriculum
Related: What is Turkey's problem with Darwin?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @01:16PM
Fine I'll throw out a devils advocate opinion and see how it fits reality.
is replaced with "Living Beings and Environment"
Scientific study of the environment and its future (as opposed to radical leftist propaganda) is more important than evolution.
Lets Americanize it for fun. Given two alternatives which would improve the lives of all Americans more?
1) It'll never matter to any decision you make in your life but to pass the class you must agree with the opposite of a doctrine you hear on Sundays which also pragmatically appears to never matter to any decision you make in your life. But seeing as they disagree you get to argue like all hell and generally be disruptive to learning and/or religious indoctrination.
Remember we're talking about universal education. Faith based doctors won't be successful, but general ed isn't for docs. A close analogy to "our" line of work is say my wife's hair dresser as an article of faith does not believe in the quicksort algorithm, simply just doesn't believe faithfully in it, how does that impact either her and her job and life, or how does her disbelief impact me or my job and my life? In a live and let live sorta way?
2) Since we tossed the whole origin problem in bio class we can talk about how even the dumbest farmers know carbs and especially overdosing on grains make farm mammals really sickly and extremely fat and then they die young (or get sent to the slaughterhouse early). Now class what human dietary insight might you gain from that especially with respect to the bullshit human killing food pyramid that was designed and paid for by grain farmer election donations, and how might you change your diet in order to live better and longer? Or insert more human reproduction lessons for the kids somehow too stupid to use protection... Or if you want to piss off some (only some) of the religious fanatics tell the kids that if God created the earth then shitting on his environment is the same as shitting on his face so scientifically studying the problem will result in less shit on Gods face than making environmental decisions based on politics.
I'm just saying, you got X hours to fill teenage brains full of mush, you might feel holier than thou if you push evolution but frankly the kids are better off knowing something else.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday January 31 2017, @01:46PM
Or if you want to piss off some (only some) of the religious fanatics tell the kids that if God created the earth then shitting on his environment is the same as shitting on his face so scientifically studying the problem will result in less shit on Gods face than making environmental decisions based on politics.
That's my preferred interpretation. It's right there in the supposed instruction manual, right up front where you can't miss it. Genesis 1:26–28 MSG:
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”
Humans are god-like, so it's up to humans to figure out how to be stewards of this planet until the king returns in the 3rd part of the trilogy during a smashing scene with some lovely acting.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 31 2017, @05:08PM
Revelation 11:18 NIV
The earth is naturally self destroying. The climate has always been changing. The destruction of the earth is not caused by man. Climate change is not caused by man. Etc.
Oh, wait. Maybe that's not what it means by "destroying those who destroy the earth".
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @01:52PM
An interesting and valid comment - I'll mod you up after replying.
You are quite right: "It'll never matter to any decision you make in your life" Given this, why should evolution *not* be taught? Answer this question, and we have the motivation behind Erdogan's decision.
My hypothesis: It's all about power. If you allow people to learn that there are universal truths that do not depend on the power structure within their society, then those people are less dependent on that power structure. They might even think to overthrow it (ahem...sadly, just tried and failed). On the other hand, if you bind their knowledge to religion, which is interpreted by people, who are closely tied to the government? Then you create sheep. Easily led sheep, because questioning their government would first mean questioning their knowledge. And people are loathe to question what they know and believe.
This is the root of Islamic culture: Turn religion into the political structure. People will do crazy things at your command, because they are also doing those things for their religion. That's why such cultures are anathema to civilization, to democracy, and to human rights.
tl;dr: Erdogan wants to be a dictator, and he is smart enough to play the long game.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:23PM
My hypothesis: It's all about power. If you allow people to learn that there are universal truths that do not depend on the power structure within their society, then those people are less dependent on that power structure. They might even think to overthrow it (ahem...sadly, just tried and failed). On the other hand, if you bind their knowledge to religion, which is interpreted by people, who are closely tied to the government? Then you create sheep. Easily led sheep, because questioning their government would first mean questioning their knowledge. And people are loathe to question what they know and believe.
I quite agree. If you read the story "What is Turkey's problem with Darwin?", you find this passage:
Wrestling over the theory of evolution in Turkey goes back to the late Ottoman Empire, which saw a period of relative freedom of thought. Self-declared “materialist” Ottoman thinkers, among them Abdullah Cevdet and Suphi Ethem, translated the works of evolutionary scientists, including the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. In turn, some Islamist Ottoman thinkers, like Ismail Fenni Ertugrul and Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi, wrote refutations of the “school of materialism,” raising arguments that also challenged the theory of evolution. In other words, they wrote dissenting opinions instead of calling on the government to silence opposing viewpoints.
In the more secular Republican era, the theory of evolution entered school textbooks and popular culture. It was often used in making ideological claims, going beyond a mere scientific theory. In the 1970s, the Marxist left adopted Darwinism as a cornerstone of its dialectical materialist philosophy. The right, perhaps understandably, began to see Darwinism and atheism as almost synonymous concepts. From the 1980s onward, translations of books by the “new atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, added fuel to the fire. In response, Islamic creationism exploded in Turkey, often using arguments borrowed from Christian creationists in the United States.
From the Ottoman period onward, the theory was used to challenge Islamic philosophy and the power of certain clerics. The fundamental problem here is that Islam purports to be not just a justification of human morality, but an explanation of the world. Evolution is one of the key sour notes in Islamic explanations of the world and how it came to be.
I don't believe Erdogan is playing a long game. He's following old tactics that have been around long before he was. The original Mohammad was the one playing the long game.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:41PM
I don't disagree with your analysis and conclusion of of the hypothesis, but... if he had a dislike of universal truths he'd be burning philosophy books, physics books, math books, history books, geology books, it would be quite a book burning party.
Of course specifically going after evolution today and getting boatloads of world wide press coverage doesn't force, imply, or prove he's not removing algebra from middle schools (oh wait thats only stupid Americans doing that) or replacing history books with copies of Mein Kampf quietly last week or next week while not getting world wide journalist coverage about those topics. Or as another alternative maybe its been illegal for a long time for Turkish kids to read Plato or Kant.
Another aspect of my devils advocate which I didn't realize was multiculturalism. In the USA nothing brings financial donations and fundraisers and social signalling and holier than thou on all sides than a nice evolution debate. But Turks aren't and don't have to be Americans and just because we get all agitprop on both sides of the argument that by no means forces another cultural group to care equally. I know the Americans are all pissed off about this, but Turkish culture is the property of Turkey (kind of like how American culture used to be the property of Americans but I digress). USA people have a long tradition of making fun of ethnic cultures that care about stuff we don't care about, so turn about being fair play, there might be non-STEM Turks LOL at the dumb americans fighting over teaching evolution in schools. Or maybe not. Seems a reasonable theory. This disconnect between what USA journalists care about vs what Turk civilians care about was inspired by American fake news outlets going into Trump-insanity in recent weeks while the general population via polls show a general response of "that's exactly what we elected him to do, cool".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:07PM
He's not replacing them with "Mein Kampf", but as TFA says he indeed is changing quite a bit of what they learn about history. In particular, learning about Atatürk (the person who created the modern, secular Turkey) will be reduced.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:49PM
Oh. My. .
This is an absolute brilliant argument, and I had never thought about it from this perspective before. Now that you've said it, it makes so much sense, and does an excellent job of explaining the motivations behind a lot of the decisions made by the religious right in general. (Not just Turkey)
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:19PM
While I agree with your idea, I need to nitpick:
> This is the root of Islamic culture: Turn religion into the political structure. People will do crazy things at your command,
> because they are also doing those things for their religion.
I'm expecting that a few hundred years' worth of God-Anointed European Kings would disagree with the suggestion that it might be only an Islamic thing. They might have to fight a few Asian ones to figure out who can claim the copyright, with the Middle-Eastern guys sulking and the South Americans laughing in the background.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:13PM
The question is, do you want to teach kids to make rational decisions in their life, or destroy their ability to do so?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:20PM
Continuing in Devils Advocate mode, its the classic teach a kid how to swim by tossing in the deep end or the shallow end. Surely the firestorm of evolution would be tossing the kid in the deep end, we can probably agree on that. Perhaps teaching the same skills in a much more mellow scene of scientific environmentalism might teach more skills. "Is it rational to poop in your own drinking water? Lets talk this one out in class discussion." is probably much less emotional riot producing than "BTW your religious leader authority figure is an idiot"
Or an alternative Devils Advocate reply might be that we've infantilized adults such that if they're not rational decision makers by the time they're in high school they're never gonna be one, OR try the opposite of high school kids are famous for making dumb irrational decisions about violence sex drugs school friends enemies romance and damn near everything else so giving them another beach to fail when storming it isn't very helpful. The kids who are trying to figure out "Eh, heroin, what could possibly go wrong?" are just going to F up evolution vs creationism anyway. They got enough stress on them already.
(Score: 3, Touché) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday January 31 2017, @05:25PM
Hmm, I don't think your metaphor makes much sense. It's not like this:
Deep end == learning evolutionary biology
Shallow End == religious dogma
It's more like this:
Evolutionary biology == deep end
Basic biology == shallow end
religious dogma == trying to learn to swim by banging plucking your eyebrows.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:55PM
Subject drift. We're talking past each other. You're talking about a biology class curriculum on the deep or shallow end and I'm replying to OP claiming it would be a teachable moment with respect to rational decision making on the deep or shallow end.
Because all debates about evolution end in a rational resolution LOL. Well, it would be nice, however incredibly unlikely.
(Score: 1) by JavaDevGuy on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:22PM
Well if you want to get out of your locality, broaden your mind, and work in the wider world it probably does matter that you know how the world works and don't follow superstition as your guide to the universe. Once the magic is taught as science it becomes easier to attack geology, then space science. Next thing you know you have superstition replacing reality and a bunch of people who think the earth is a few days old and flat... not acceptable.
Whatever the stripe of superstition stand up to it, it's patent nonsense and damaging lives.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @05:50PM
OK that's the western social signalling response which sounds really good to westerners (like us) and probably has some aspect of truth to it but has the problem of being very optimistic and absolute in isolation.
First the targeting is wrong, these are all Turk school kids. Not the one Turk kid who will go to Stanford to say politically correct things to eventually open a dotcom startup. Most will be urban laborers, craftsmen, moms, drivers, maybe cannon fodder. Most people don't leave their locality or broaden their mind or work in the wider world and there's nothing wrong with that, especially since the economy can't find work for a large fraction of people already trying to do that. As already stated in the devils advocate position, this is for all kids not future doctors or future biologists, who DO need to know more of whats up.
Surely most of the kids are just going to see a temporary short term authority figure of their teacher arguing with their long term authority figure of their religious leader and plus or minus teen rebelliousness and aren't going to get much out of the time expended other than maybe some sophistry skills. So they're not really going to learn anything.
Meanwhile, speaking of teen rebellion, most learning no longer happens in school anyway so any kid susceptible to learning evolution will do their learning outside school as usual. Good luck stopping them with modern technology at their disposal. Its not 3000 BC anymore.
Well, kids mostly forget everything they learn in westernized daycare/school anyway. However you have to be realistic and if you wiped out a dozen hours of controversial argument that educates almost no one, it could be replaced with a dozen hours of environmental "... and thats why you should vote against installing the new municipal water system intake downstream of the chrome plating factory" or "... and that's why you don't pour used motor oil down the drain" type stuff.
Sure, in an absolute sense where kids are educated infinitely for free and actually learn stuff, sure burn thru the arguments and teach them something irrelevant to most of their lives. But in a relative sense, isn't there more important stuff to teach them?
I'll just come out and say it. IF the kids learned evolution, which they won't, it would still be a better investment of time, with better societal outcomes, to teach them cholera and malaria prevention theory and convince them to stop dumping motor oil down the drain.
I'll toss out an analogy. I like programming. I like automata theory. It sure would be nice to teach all Turk kids automata theory complete with 3sat proof memorization and stuff like that. But there just isn't enough time in the day, rounding down to none of the kids will use that information, and there's better things for a kid to learn.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:38PM
But maybe if they understood evolution, they'd understand why abuse of antibiotics, or stopping to take antibiotics as soon as the symptoms are gone, is an extremely bad idea.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:57PM
As a fellow Demon yourself, Maxwells in particular, you can see how as a Devil's Advocate I am obligated to point out that evolution isn't useless, just less useful than the proposed replacement in the curriculum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @08:20PM
Ugh, take your backwards ideologies and stuff em' in the closet. Maybe you can keep the door closed the rest of your life and let the rest of us be free to make humanity better instead of falling back on fear of the unknown to maintain religious power. Evolution is no longer a theory except by the strictest scientific interpretation, and that in no way furthers your case. Only backwards bumpkins or educated morons think evolution is a progressive conspiracy and public education would be doing a disservice by not teaching it. The search for truth, where we came from, where we're going, all that stuff that religion likes to take over, well evolution is a pretty big part of humanity's history. Once your sky fairy has evidence equal to evolution, THEN we can talk.
PS: I realize you're not dumb like the full bore creationists, just apparently sympathetic to their cause, but they deserve no quarter. They can teach their children their own beliefs, but don't try bring that stupidity into public education.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday January 31 2017, @05:51PM
You can make the same argument about many subjects that are taught in schools (paraphrasing: "it doesn't matter if kids are taught this specific area of knowledge") and it will be true for large proportions of the population.
What makes evolution different is that real scientific knowledge is being replaced with falsehoods.
But back to the question of whether it matters or not if certain subjects are taught: it would not matter if you could identify with 100% reliability and at a young age those kids who will grow up to be hairdressers, etc.. It's easy to look back, not so easy to make predictions. How well did Einstein do in school?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:42PM
Contrary to common myth, very well. [gizmodo.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:42PM
What makes evolution different is that real scientific knowledge is being replaced with falsehoods.
Continuing on in devils advocate mode, I can't personally vouch for the curriculum but it claims in writing to be replacing the evolution unit with an environmental sciences unit. Assuming good faith the kids are getting a similar sized bucket of "real scientific knowledge" just a somewhat less controversial topic.
They may of course foul up the environmental sciences unit, although we're assuming they won't foul up an evolution unit...
I don't think the problem of how to handle potential Einsteins in the classroom is solved anywhere, so thats not a Turkish problem or a specific policy problem, and is a bit off topic for high school graduation reqs. Surely not every grad needs to be prepped for Einstein work especially when their economy can't employ them anyway. I think one thing we can agree on is the appearance of an Einstein is unpredictable and not providing an environmental sciences unit is just as likely to prevent an "Einstein of the superfund cleanup technology" from appearing as it is to stop an "Einstein of evolution" from appearing. Didn't we already have an "Einstein of evolution" appear anyway? That would imply we need an environmental sciences one more than an evolutionary sciences one, so careful going down that argument path.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:50PM
You seem confused between what is basic science (evolution) and what is more the realm of specific vocational knowledge (environmental cleanup). We should ensure that children get a grounding in basic sciences. Obviously there is not time to teach every area of vocational knowledge.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:39PM
As the devils advocate for this topic I salute you, no sarcasm thats currently the strongest rebuttal I've seen all day. So far. Not bad.
It needs more justification than "I sez so." Personally I'm not even claiming you're wrong, although as the Devils Advocate I officially have to declare no presented evidence means none exists and mere sophistry will get you nowhere sir.
Also just to be fair I believe the actual environmental topic was unspecified, could be ecology in general or mine runoff in particular or just tree hugging or how to clean up oil spills vocationally. To be fair we should cut both sides the same slack. So compare basic biological topic of evolution to the basic biological topic of ecology. Two basic concepts of biology enter the cage fight, only one leaves alive... Which is more worthy, more important, more rewarding, more deserving, more needed? I donno man you can go thru life not knowing where life came from, but you can't live long in a ruined ecosystem. I mean where would you rather visit, an island of PHD in Ecology neo-druids where its a natural paradise although no one knows where species come from, or a Wall-E like dystopia wasteland where nothing is alive and the air is choking (sounds like China, LOL) but hey at least we got really good genetic engineering, if only the environment were not so toxic.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 31 2017, @06:33PM
That's a lot of words.
Here's a much simpler rebuttal: Teach science in science class.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:51PM
That's a pretty good rebuttal. No sarcasm. "Don't micromanage" is almost always very good advice.
The only devils advocate counter-rebuttal I can provide is in a highly religious culture, no micromanaging means their equivalent of devout rural Mississippi kids are going to skip the evolution unit and do enviro and their progressive urbanites kids will end up skipping the environmental unit and doing the evolution unit and I kinda thought the whole point of a national standard for education was producing a standard commodity product and this kinda ruins it, uni and employers can't assume a kid has exposure to non-micromanaged topics. Possibly this is one of the weird/rare examples where micromanagement and regulation actually provides a net gain. Better to know for certain at the uni admissions level that all the kids know or don't know certain topics rather than guessing based on the last name of their science teacher on their transcript if they know evolution or if they know environmental sciences WRT pre-reqs.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 31 2017, @07:28PM
> I'm just saying, you got X hours to fill teenage brains full of mush, you might feel holier than thou if you push evolution but frankly the kids are better off knowing something else.
Monsanto, Amgen and med schools do need people who understand how organisms change when you tinker with their environment or genes.
God doesn't play CRISPR.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 31 2017, @09:29PM
Scientific study of the environment and its future (as opposed to radical leftist propaganda) is more important than evolution.
We can get both:
That way, evolution education will stick around if it confers a reproductive and/or survival advantage over creationism education. Students/teachers learn about the environment and get to see natural selection occur in front of their eyes. Win-win!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:23PM
We can get both
Continuing the devils advocate analysis, in that specific case yes just toss a 3rd subject out instead, but in general education is a zero-sum game and given X hours of class per day, X days per year, X years per life, every hour spent on topic Z is implicitly stating an hour of topic Z is more important than an hour of every other topic under the sun.
You wanna add evolution something gotta go. Gym class? Art history? Football? Long division? Environmental sciences? Computer science?
I'm thinking evolution is pretty low on the list of life skills for the general public. I'm not saying its worthless, anymore than say automata theory is worthless. I bet teen kids could learn automata theory, if they invested the time. It might or might not be more useful to the general public, thats a good debate.
Remember we're talking about the general public here. Not MD programs or even nursing programs. Not geologists or archeologists or geneticists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @08:30AM
Gym class? Art history? Football?
I'll go with those three. Gym class is teaching those who aren't already fit to hate exercise, and football splits people up into the bullies and the bullied.
And hart history? Completely useless.