What happens when one side gets out of control

Little Green Footballs reports: ◼ Romania Removes Theory of Evolution from Schools

Romania’s withdrawal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum could be evidence of a growing conservative tendency in teaching. Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue, distorts children’s understanding of how the world came into being.

Meanwhile, religious studies classes continue to tell Romanian children that God made the world in seven days.

The theory of the Origin of Species and the evolution of humans is no longer present in the compulsory curriculum, through a nationwide decision made under the previous Government in 2006. Before the change, Darwin’s theory was taught to pupils aged 18 or 19 years old. This was also in the curriculum during the Communist period of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Information on natural selection, how fish turned into lizards and, more or less, a summary of the first 4.5 billion years of the world until man walked the earth is now optional.

“We don’t teach the theory of evolution anymore,” said one 38 year-old Bucharest-based biology teacher.

But the Minister of Education, Cristian Adomnitei, argues that biology is taught within the context of evolution. "This subject can be found implicitly from middle school to high-school," the Minister tells The Diplomat. "Do you think that the studies about the world where we live, its evolution or genetics can ignore the evolution theory? This is impossible."

But Remus Cernea, president of Solidarity for Freedom of Conscience, is unimpressed by the Ministry's position on implicit learning.

"How can the evolution theory be implicit?" Cernea says. "The evolution theory is either present in the curriculum and in the text books and is studied by everybody, or not present in the curriculum and nobody studies it."

Meanwhile, in religious classes, pupils are taught that the world was created in seven days and God made plants on the third day and the sun on the fourth. Textbooks claim the first man was Adam, who was 'made of ground', and that Eve, the first woman, was made from one of her husband's ribs.

"The Romanian state, whether it intends or not, offers pupils a unique perspective on the world, the religious one, without any critical scientific or philosophical offset," argues Cernea.

Biology has been cut from two hours to one of teaching per week for the final two years in many high schools. In place of evolution, kids are taught more about human ecology and the environment, subjects which one biology teacher says children find boring.

"Kids find out what really happened from the Discovery channel," she adds. "They don't really believe the world was made in six days. Well, I hope they don't."....
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