Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution

E volution is famously controversial, despite being as well established as any scientific theory. Most people are familiar with the dismal statistics, showing how a large fraction of Americans at all educational levels do not accept the theory of evolution [1], how efforts to teach evolution often fail to have an impact [2], and how constant vigilance is required to keep evolution in the public school curriculum [3]. Even worse, most people who do accept the theory of evolution don't relate it to matters of importance in their own lives. There appear to be two walls of resistance, one denying the theory altogether and the other denying its relevance to human affairs. This essay reports a success story, showing how both walls of resistance can be surmounted by a single college course, and even more, by a university-wide program. It is based on a campus-wide evolutionary studies program called EvoS (http:⁄⁄bingweb. binghamton.edu/~evos/), initiated at Binghamton University in 2002, which currently includes over 50 faculty members representing 15 departments. Enthusiasm at all levels, from freshmen students to senior administrators, makes EvoS a potential model for evolution education that can be duplicated; the basic ingredients are present at most other institutions, from small colleges to major universities. In this essay, I will briefly describe the basic ingredients at both the single-course and program levels. First, however, it is important to document the claim that evolution can be made acceptable, interesting, and powerfully relevant to just about anyone in the space of a single semester. The single course is titled " Evolution for Everyone " and does not require any prerequisites. The students who enrolled in fall 2003 came from majors as diverse as anthropology, art, [4–7]. Information gathered on each student at both the beginning and end of the course included religious and political orientation, prior exposure to evolution education, and an assessment of general thinking skills without reference to specific subject matter. In addition, students wrote short essays throughout the course that were submitted electronically and analyzed for words associated with cognitive operations using the software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count [8,9]. Finally, students assessed the course anonymously in addition to providing information associated with their identity. The details of the assessment are available from the author upon request, and the major results are summarized here. Acceptance of, interest in, and knowledge about evolution. Figure 1 shows the distribution of anonymous …