Evolution for Everyone How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution 英文参考文献.docVIP

Open access, freely available online Essay Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution David Sloan Wilson E volution is famously controversial, despite being as well established as any scienti?c Demonstrating Success shift in the positive direction, so much that almost no one who took the course remained unmoved or shifted in the negative direction. The anonymous verbal evaluations speak more eloquently than the numbers: “This course provides evidence that evolution is evident in everything. It revolutionized my way of viewing problems.” “I have always agreed with evolution but I did not know how much of everyday life was affected by it.” “I came into the class not knowing a lot about evolution. I now have an entirely new outlook on how evolution can be applied to many aspects of life.” The positive anonymous evaluations are also re?ected in the before- and-after measurements gathered on each student, and become even more interesting when related to the background variables. Political orientation. Evolution has often been used to support conservative political ideologies, to the dismay of liberal thinkers. It might seem that politically conservative students would embrace the course material more enthusiastically than the liberals, but this was not the case. The course was equally effective across the political spectrum. The single course is titled “Evolution for Everyone” and does not require any prerequisites. The students who enrolled in fall 2003 came from 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