A Reflection of Biological Education in the United States

This issue concludes the NABT’s celebration of its 75th Anniversary. Since my term as ABT editor will also be over at the end of this year, this will be one of my last official opportunities to share my ideas about biology education. First I will tell you a little about myself, and then I will share some reflections on biology education past, present, and future. I was always interested in a career in teaching, and biology was my favorite subject. During my senior year in college as a pre-med biology major, I was sent a military draft notice. The draft board gave me three choices: (a) graduate, and we send you to OCS and you will go to Vietnam; (b) graduate and go to med school; when you finish you will go to Vietnam, as we need physicians badly; or (c) get certified to teach secondary science as a critical industry, and you are deferred indefinitely. The decision was a no-brainer. I began a 12-year career teaching high school biology in San Jose, California, the next year. My classroom curriculum emphasized evolution, ecology, genetics, and the human body. My students said that all I ever emphasized was sex and evolution. Well, why not? I also taught about every science except physics, and my favorite class was a six-week summer session in field ecology with lots of field trips. After teaching biology for just a few years in the late 1960s, I attended an NABT Convention in San Francisco. One of the featured sessions was a debate over evolution versus creation. Speakers on the evolution side included none other than Theodosius Dobzhansky, who made his now famous statement, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” The creation side was represented by Duane Gish from the Creation Research …