Do you have a good understanding of evolutionary principles? Were you even taught evolution in grade school? Depending on your state of origin, or which grade school you attended within your state, you may have missed a vital part of your education: learning the scientific principles of evolution.

In his article “Good and bad science in US schools” (Lerner, 2000, p.1), Lawrence Lerner claims: “One-third of US states have unsatisfactory standards for teaching evolution” (p.1). Lerner, a professor of physics and astronomy at California State University, investigated the curricula of grade schools across the United States and assigned each state with a grade based on their treatment of evolution. His results showed that thirty-one states (two thirds) do a satisfactory job of teaching evolution, with ten of those thirty-one states doing a very good to excellent job, receiving a grade A. However, the remaining one third of US schools do a less than satisfactory job of teaching evolution, with six states receiving a D grade, and thirteen states an F or worse.

Lerner appraised each state’s science standards with respect to their overall quality by using previously published assessment guidelines: “State Science Standards: An Appraisal of Science Standards in 36 States” and “The State of State Standards 2000” (Lerner, 2000, P.2). He used twenty-five criteria in five categories to evaluate the quality of curricula, with evolution being only one of many topics covered in his appraisal (P.2).

In his journal, Lerner expressed concern over the results he found, claiming that failure to teach evolution at a satisfactory standard could seriously damage the teaching of all scientific disciplines (Lerner,2000,p.1) According to Lerner, “almost all science is the study of the evolution of systems in time” (p.1). He says that evolution is the central organizing principle behind all historical sciences, and that without evolution, science students will only be learning a “stultifying heap of disconnected facts” (p.2).

Concerns over unsatisfactory teaching standards in grade school extend to collegiate level studies of evolution. Will students with little to no background in evolution choose classes in that field at college? It is probably more likely that students with a prior knowledge of Darwinian principles will take further courses in this field at University rather than students with no prior exposure to the role of evolution in science. Grade school students need to be prepared for collegiate studies by learning the fundamentals of evolution, just as they do with any other scientific discipline.

Lerner claims the poor teaching standards of evolution in grade levels is caused by outside pressures on the school: “K-12 instruction is subject to considerable intervention from people such as school board members and legislators with no expertise in, and often little or no knowledge of, the fields whose curricula they govern” (Lerner, 2000, p.3). Schools often surrender to the pressures placed on them by public figures by taking evolutionary theory out of their curriculum or by replacing it with less controversial curricula that implies Darwinian Theory but fails to address it directly. For example, Lerner found that even when assessing the 31 states that do a satisfactory job of teaching evolution, of these states only 9 treat human evolution explicitly (p.5). Furthermore, the remaining states either do not deal with human evolution at all or they address only the implications of it as a science (p.5).

The outside pressure put on state-maintained institutions to teach evolutionary theory is arbitrary in the case of science. Science is undemocratic, in that those who don’t have the scientific knowledge to voice a claim opposing evolution, cannot stop it from being taught in schools (Lerner, 2000, p.6). Students deserve to know the scientific theories that are accepted by academics. It’s a schools duty to explain to students the accepted knowledge of the science world and the methodologies behind the various scientific phenomena (p.6).

Clearly, there are inconsistencies across United State’s science programs. The standards for teaching science vary from one state to the next, leaving some students ill prepared for collegiate studies in evolution. Every student has a right to know the consensus of scientists on any particular issue, in particular evolution (Lerner, 2000, p.6). The study of how things change and evolve through time is central to understanding not only human evolution but all areas of science. Students need and deserve to be taught evolution in greater depth through grade schooling to prepare them for further collegiate studies.

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