I thought that maybe this topic was losing it's emphasis on education, so I thought I'd reel it back in. Perhaps my experience with evolution in the classroom is fairly relevant, since it was only two years ago. I live in Southeast Tennessee, home of course to the Scopes Monkey Trial, so when evolution came up in my Biology class, I was a little nervous: my teacher was a Southern Baptist and my principal got his degree in Theology...
As a side note, I strongly favor evolution and agnosticism over any creationist view.
My teacher staunchly refused to let on to his personal views, that is, until he made it obvious. He gave only one sentence that let onto his opinion, and no more. Without evolution, he said, one would have to throw away a lot of modern Biology, and I smiled quietly to myself. I was especially pleased that he had also made sure to point out his deep faith as a sign of the non-exclusivity of religion and evolution.
The actual discussion of evolution itself was fairly vague. He discussed the basics of mutation and the history of Darwin and the monk in the garden with his peas....well the name evades me; I'm not trying to look dumb. When it came to alternate theories, he did discuss the big generic "Creation and Divine Theories." The mostly unnamed beliefs were put forth as apples and oranges with evolutionary theory, unable to be proven or disproven by science.
I think that my Bio teacher had a good approach, and I hope more people have had that experience. The jist is, Evolution is substantiated, and creation usually can't be, due to the very nature of it. Anyone agree or disagree with him?
™ Version 4.2