Well, it looks like it’s actually happening. NPR reports:
At a news conference last month, Turkey’s education minister announced that new textbooks will be introduced in all primary and secondary schools, starting with grades 1, 5 and 9 this fall, and the rest next year. They will stop teaching evolution in grade 9, when it’s usually taught.
“Evolutionary biology is best left to be taught at the university level,” Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz told reporters. “It’s a theory that requires a higher philosophical understanding than schoolchildren have.”
That is really too bad. This development will not serve Turkish students well.
At the Center for Science & Culture, we hold that teaching the scientific controversy over evolution is the sound approach for biology education. There should be more, not less, on the subject. Allowing a free competition of ideas will only benefit a nation’s future scientists and scholars.