Oh Canada!

Brian Alters is in the news again. If you remember, he is the one who applied for a grant to determine the effect of ID in Canadian schools and was turned down because the committee felt that there was not sufficient justification for the idea that "evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct."

In an article in the Toronto Star, Alters now warns that the problem is not relegated to small town America and that many school teachers simply do not teach evolution for fear of getting flak from parents. According to the story, 1/3 of public school teachers report getting requests to teach ID or creationism from parents. The story notes:

The situation has become such a concern to scientists that an international team of biologists has put together a new journal to help teachers prepare lesson plans on evolution.

"We've got to teach the teachers," says Daniel Brooks, a University of Toronto evolutionary biologist behind the journal, to be launched in the fall by European academic publishing giant Springer.

That sounds like a good idea. The article also quotes Kent Hovind, who argues that evolution should be taken out of the schools, even if ID cannot be taught. For those of you who are not familiar with Kent Hovind, go here and here. His web page, at DrDino.com is here. As Alters puts it:

"You can't teach biology without teaching the one thing that unifies the whole discipline."

Yup. Theodosius Dobzhansky was right.