Sometimes we should worry about our fellow countrymen

According to a recent poll, 54% of Britons believe that Creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary theory in science lessons!

The story, as reported in the Guardian is here.

Thankfully, the government seems to have come up with a reasonable response:

The UK government has been quick to denounce creationism and intelligent
design as unrecognised scientific theory that did not meet the requirements of
the national curriculum, but it has said that young people can "discuss
creationism as part of their religious education classes".
Neither the
primary nor secondary school science curriculums mention creationism or
intelligent design.

Perhaps creationism could be taught in science with the purpose of demonstrating that there is no evidence for it. This may be a useful exercise in teaching children how an argument or theory can fail when there is insufficient evidence to support it. However, from memory, enough went wrong in the school science lab when we were trying to prove things that did stand up to scrutiny. That seemed to take enough time as it was; surely there isn't enough time in the classroom to take apart an argument which doesn't meet scientific criteria?

Teaching of evolution in the primary curriculum

There was a petition recently as follows:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to include the teaching of evolution by natural selection in the new national primary curriculum.”

The PM's office has now responded (the following answer follows a load of old flannel about needing scientists for the country's growth, etc):

The proposed new primary curriculum has been developed in consultation with a wide range of key stakeholders including primary head teachers, teachers, subject specialists and learned societies. The development of the scientific and technological understanding area of learning was directly informed by the outcomes of the consultation exercise to ensure that it contained the scientific knowledge, skills and understanding considered essential learning for children aged 5 -11.

The National Curriculum science programmes of study cover evolution explicitly in Key Stage 4 (age 14 -16). The understanding of evolution is underpinned by extensive knowledge about the living world. This underpinning knowledge and understanding for evolution is carefully developed in the primary curriculum and at Key Stage 3 (age 11 -14). In both the current primary programme of study for science and in the proposed programme of learning for scientific and technological understanding, variation between individuals and groups, classification and interdependence are all introduced. At secondary level these areas are developed further and genetics, selection and evolution are all included. In this way the fundamental concepts underpinning evolution are developed, leading to a fuller understanding at Key Stage 4.



Or, to put it briefly (if I'm reading this properly), the answer to the petition is "not quite".

Okay - so they've made their decision on science.

"key stakeholders", "outcomes of the consultation exercise"?

When is someone going to teach the PM's office some plain English?