The Oklahoma Education system is now adding biological evolution to its curriculum as an expansion of its initiative to battle climate change. This proposal for the new state scholastic standards is a first in Oklahoma.
Just last week, the approval of the new standards for fine arts and science came from the Oklahoma State Board of Education. Relatively, other academic standards will be endorsed by the governor and Legislature before the next school year's implementation.
However, as The Oklahoman reports, evolution will not be addressed as life's sole origin when introduced in school. This was according to the director of curriculum and instruction for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, Tiffany Neill. Instead, high school students taking up biology will discover how organisms change and adapt to their surroundings over time. Neill added that this scientific theory is fundamental to biology courses for college, as well as each Advanced Placement course.
ALSO READ: Polar Bears Resorting to Cannibalism, Experts Say
How Biological Evolution is Taught and Applied
As the educators were developing the new standards they expressed their intention to teach the students how biological evolution is applied to mutations in bacteria and viruses. This would then relate to either agricultural or medical concepts like viruses becoming resistant to medicines, specifically, antibiotics. Already included in the standards of the state are ancestry and natural selection, which were already passed in 2014. Despite the strong proposition, teaching biological evolution directly is optional, and not compulsory.
Essentially, academic standards undergo thorough review and revision every six years. According to Neill, the Board directs schools on which core ideas students should be able to demonstrate understanding. Aside from this, schools, teachers, and districts will independently decide the manner of teaching those standards.
Neill also boasted of the hundreds of university and public school science teachers in Oklahoma who helped in the development of the 2020 revisions. Incidentally, biological evolution is said to have accounted for three of the most essential features of the world around every human being--the similarities among the diversity of life, living things, and many traits of the physical world people inhabit.
Expanding Lessons on Climate Change
Additionally, scientific standards expand lessons on climate change, as well, into middle schools. Earth science requirements in high school already mention human impacts on long-term climate. As soon as the latest revisions get approved, public schools will be able to start including climate change in their seventh-grade classes. Also, earth science students will be able to study records of change in worldwide temperatures along with the effects imparted by humans towards the environment.
An expert on the standards said that the weather happens every day, every month or every year. However, the climate is quite a longer duration and perceivably, there are still individuals who will confuse them. The science expert also added that for the students to be "scientifically literate in a global market", it should be guaranteed that they are aware of that. Remarkably, only 35 percent of the students in Oklahoma have advanced proficiency in science. This was reported by the latest Oklahoma State Report Cards.
