For the second time this semester, two of my grade 2 students started fighting about evolution. We were on about monkeys and one kid says "Humans come from monkeys." Then the next kid says "No! Humans come from God!" The two looked like they were about to come to fists.

So I calmly explained that they were both wrong. Humans and monkeys share a common ancestor; one doesn't come from the other. Parental calls be damned, Christian elementary school be damned. This is 2009, and I can't in good conscience nod and smile while some poor kid tries to convince me that humans don't share a biological history with the rest of the animal kingdom. "God didn't make people. Your church is honestly wrong about that," I said. What would you have done? Was that a bad idea? I'm supposed to be a teacher and I don't want to use my authority to re-inforce (even tacitly) that kind of thing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Oh boy, here we go! lol Keep us posted on what happens next. Hope you don't get into trouble. :)
9:19 PM
Anonymous said…
Religion is deeply personal and to overstep that child's beliefs (not to mention what his parents taught him) is a bit risky.
6:08 PM
Max said…
True and yes... it's risky and a shade questionable. But the origin of the human species shouldn't be a religious topic. Christians (and those of other religions) may want it to be, but it simply isn't. If some student of mine was taught by his traditional Hindu parents that the Earth was flat and rested on the back of a massive turtle, I'd say no without hesitation.

Religious sensitivity, in my own opinion, has to take the back seat on well-confirmed scientific knowledge.
2:24 AM
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