I am amazed with what some state about high school science education.
I was in graduating class of 45 students. Our high school required two years of science. Every student took Earth Science in the ninth grade and Biology in the tenth. Biology included a lot of study on taxonomy, so the students understood how different species, families, and orders were related. We spent several weeks on .mendelian inheritance, so we actually understood how traits and mutations get passed along, and finally we spent time on ana6omy, so students might know what was going on inside their body.
Of course, 70% of the class had farm animals at home and participated in selective breeding programs, so we took to genetics eagerly.
Advanced students were offered Chemistry as a Junior, and Physics as a Senior.
I graduated in Podunk rural Idaho in 1974.
Most people involved in agriculture understand evolution. Selective breeding of plants and animals has gone on for thousands of years. Pretty much all crops and live stock in production today are the result of carefully chosen mutations by humans for certain traits. I always thought it would be interesting to plant some of the crop seeds found in burial tomb's from thousands of years to compare to today's plants.
Yes. That's micro evolution. But selective breeding of plants (using an intelligent agent and not merely random processes) has not converted barley into grapes, or even into wheat, for that matter. And selective breeding of dogs has not converted them into cats or elephants. It has given variation within a type, but that is all. No new species. So, plant and animal breeding do not prove the grander claims of evolution. Quite the opposite: they confirm that species are extremely resistant to change and vary only within the parameters of their type, even when intelligent agents try to intervene for maximum variation.
