NYT: A Georgia teacher's lonely battle over evolution

[DeepModem Mom]

Evolution's Lonely Battle in a Georgia Classroom
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: June 28, 2006
DAHLONEGA, Ga.

OCCASIONALLY, an educational battle will dominate national headlines. More commonly, the battling goes on locally, behind closed doors, handled so discreetly that even a teacher working a few classrooms away might not know. This was the case for Pat New, 62, a respected, veteran middle school science teacher, who, a year ago, quietly stood up for her right to teach evolution in this rural northern Georgia community, and prevailed.

She would not discuss the conflict while still teaching, because Ms. New wouldn't let anything disrupt her classroom. But she has decided to retire, a year earlier than planned. "This evolution thing was a lot of stress," she said. And a few weeks ago, on the very last day of her 29-year career, at 3:15, when Lumpkin County Middle School had emptied for the summer, and she had taken down her longest poster from Room D11A — the 15-billion-year timeline ranging from the Big Bang to the evolution of man — she recounted one teacher's discreet battle.

She isn't sure how many questioned her teaching of evolution — perhaps a dozen parents, teachers and administrators and several students in her seventh-grade life science class. They sent e-mail messages and letters, stopped her in the hall, called board members, demanded meetings, requested copies of the PBS videos that she showed in class....(A parent)requested that her son be permitted to "bide his time elsewhere" when evolution was taught.

Ms. New explained that evolution is so central to biology, the boy would be biding elsewhere all year long. Practically every chapter in her Prentice Hall textbooks — "Bacteria to Plants," "Cells and Heredity," "Animals" — used evolution to trace the development of life starting with bacteria, green algae and gymnosperms....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/education/28education.html

[TygrBright]

1. So. She's retiring a year early because the constant sniping...

...has worn her down.

Fine. Now maybe they'll declare victory and scuttle back under the sink.

We can only hope, eh?

I was particularly amused by the bit where the principal called the State Ed Dept. to verify that evolution was on the standards list.

If I was a GA Curriculum bureaucrat I'd trot out a line saved lovingly for just such an occasion:

"Of COURSE evolution is on the standards list, Principal. What do y'all think we are-- just like those dumb hayseed hicks in Kansas?"

heeheehee...

appreciatively,
Bright