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When were you taught evolution?

This is a quickie - how old we you when you were first TAUGHT about evolution.

In the UK, it was in advanced biology - an optional class for school leavers and I was about 17 at the time - in 1980. (Oh god, I'm old!)

I didn't understand it: accepted it, yes, but didn't understand it.

Anyone who knows me well might find this surprising, because I didn't bother looking at evolution proper until a couple of decades back - while researching something completely different.

These days, evolution is taught in secondary schools (at least, it should be) which puts it in the age 11-16 or 11-18 depending on when the child started.

Dawkins thinks - and I heartily agree - we should introduce this cornerstone of Biology in primary science - so I wonder, how many people hear came to understand Darwin later in life?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Reason Voyager on October 16, 2011 at 10:29am

I think that it was 7th grade for me. I know that I learned about some of the basic ideas of evolution, but I feel that the approach was somewhat hushed. I do not recall direct statements such as- humans have evolved from earlier lifeforms. The focus tended to be safer topics that did not make a challenge to the asumptions of religion. I went to school in a very conservative and religious area.

I think that evolutionary biology should be taught from the very earliest grade school years.

Permalink Reply by PaleoAnthroEvo on October 16, 2011 at 4:03pm

I do not remember being taught evolution, and if it did happen it was a short paragraph in the 9th grade biology class. I cant say i would have been interested or aware of anything at that age. The first real comprehensive lectures i've actually had have been in college, in classes i chose to take.

Permalink Reply by Jonah Coronado on October 16, 2011 at 4:31pm

I was 14 years old, and they were teaching it. At first I was a little skeptical about believing it because my father(a theist) used to tell me not to believe that we came from monkeys, and the that was the act of Satan. But I really started believing it when I went to college on my intro to College Biology. At the same time that's when I became a Agnostic. 5 years later I came out of the closet as a Atheist.

Permalink Reply by Robert A. Torti IV on October 16, 2011 at 8:32pm

In the 6th grade is when I was taught evolution, I had already known a little about it though. My teacher laughed when one of the girls started freakin' out saying that God was the only truth and science was a lie. Then everyone started laughing when she said the Earth was like 8 thousand years old (or something like that).