This was quite an interesting article I read in the Guardian today, I honestly had no idea that primary education in Britain could leave evolution from the curriculum. That's quite a big aspect of science to miss out on when studying biology as it is one of the fundamental theories.
So what do you think, should evolution be taught in British primary schools or not?
I think, like it or not, Evolution is one of the main underlying theories in science and should be taught. It's like teaching maths without geometry or English without Shakespeare.
On the origin of education
To deny the importance of teaching evolution is to fail to grasp a basic truth about children
Ed Balls received a letter this week from 26 of the country's leading scientists – including Richard Dawkins, Harry Kroto, John Sulston – warning of their concerns that the proposed new primary school science curriculum does not even mention evolution.
I was happy to add my name to the signatories. To omit evolution from the education of five- to 11-year-olds would be to miss a great opportunity. Children are often fascinated by fossils and wildlife. While many are too young to appreciate the concepts of "deep time" – that the Earth is some 4.6 thousand million years old – and the logical rigour of natural selection, they have powers of observation and a capacity to be engaged by the names and structures of organisms that put many adults to shame.
Some will be suspicious because the letter to the secretary of state for children, schools and families was organised through the offices of the British Humanist Association. And it's a coincidence (I think) that news of it emerged at the same time as many of us were being regaled by a breakfast TV clip of what are becoming known as "Richard Dawkins's atheist summer camps" – but I am strongly in favour of children being taught about evolution in school whether or not they or their parents have a religious faith.
The great majority of people with a religious faith successfully combine it with an acceptance of evolution, as I do. Nevertheless, there is a substantial minority – perhaps about 15% of people in the UK – who are creationists. The views of such people can be respected without us failing to teach evolution in schools. We do not want to go down the path followed by many schools in the US, where evolution doesn't get a look in.
This year is Darwin200, the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, his magnum opus and the most important biology book ever written. What many people don't realise is that the sorts of observations that led Darwin to accept evolution and come up with the theory of natural selection are just those that can be made by schoolchildren.
Indeed, the Wellcome Trust has funded some wonderful Darwin-related activities being undertaken this year by hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of children. Kew has sent a treasure chest of activities to every state primary school as part of The Great Plant Hunt, and there are activities for secondary students, too.
Why do I feel so strongly that evolution should be a part of every child's education? In large measure it is because Darwin enables us to see ourselves in a new light. For all that we are the most special of species – with our unrivalled capacity for language, for thought, for morality and for reason – we are not wholly distinct from the rest of creation. We share a common ancestor with every mammal, with every animal; indeed, with every organism.
There doesn't have to be a link between an appreciation of this web of life and our behaviour towards our fellow creatures, but, thankfully, there often is. By now it's a truism that we live at a time of almost unparalleled species extinction. Seeing ourselves in an evolutionary light may yet help us slow this terrible trend.
And then an evolutionary perspective on life can help us more rigorously assess our strengths and our weaknesses. We are the product of a mechanism that puts us first – that's what natural selection is all about – but we also have the evolved capacities to seek after truth, beauty and goodness: that's what being human is all about. This should start in the primary classroom.
