An evolutionary moment in the schools

Dr. Wade Worthen

A South Carolina state Senator recently stalled the adoption of state education standards because he wanted students to have the additional opportunity of studying scientific arguments that would appear to discredit Darwinian natural selection.  In an op-ed for The Greenville News, Furman biology professor Wade Worthen writes that the essential point of the standard is for students to appreciate the cause-effect relationship that exists between natural selection and evolution. And that is particularly important since natural selection is an observable process and, like many natural processes, consciously used by humans to achieve particular goals.