Why stop at science? If any part of any class on any subject offends any religious group - that's it! Strike one, you're out!

Not really. You need to know genetics to understand the mechanism or the details, but all you need to know to understand the principle is that children are similar, but not identical, to their parents.

They did something like that with 'Merchant of Venice', exept when its the PC police banning stuff we have to listen.

That's like saying that someone who knows that magnets stick together understands the EM force, or that a student who can tell you that plants produce energy from the sun understands photosynthesis. Parroting back the end result of a process is not understanding it, without knowing the underlying principles you are preforming the same function as a tape recorder. Something my physics prof told us springs to mind:

He's right you know, a person who can only punch numbers into a calculator has the same level of math proficiency as a trained monkey. And a student who understands nothing beyond "organisms evolve in response to environmental pressures" really doesn't understand anything at all. You cannot understand any principle without knowledge of the mechanism behind it.

No, because similar-but-not-identical-children isn't the end result of evolution, it is the assumption going in. You can have a reasonable understanding of evolution just taking that as a given, and working from there.

Not that I'd advocate skipping basic genetics.

What should I eat? Well, what were people probably eating while our current design was being shaped by the forces of our environment, and what were those forces likely to consist of? For instance, an automobile was designed to run on gasoline, so I'm not going to put kerosene in it and expect it to run properly. So, by that same basic reasoning, I can understand so many things about my own body simply by grasping the basic concept of evolution. No advanced genetics required. And, hell, I think I just invented evolutionary biology! Wow, good thing I wasn't ripped-the-fuck-off and not taught this crucial concept at the foundation of so many areas of modern scientific thought.

Lay it on me Flint, what revelations about your body do you garner from studying eating habits. Please don't feed me that crap about vestigial organs, I laughed out loud in class when my teacher tried to tell us the vermiform appendix has no function in the body. (It's primary function is the manufacturing of B lymphocytes and in the production of IgA antibodies in young children. It is also an absolutly critical part of the endocrine system during the development of the fetus)

You want to hear everything I was taught in science class?
I don't have the time nor I expect do you.
Besides, I can't tell you what I was taught, only what I learned. ;)

That's not what I said. I said I can determine what my eating habits should be, by understadnding evolution.

I can determine what is healthiest for me to eat by understanding what I was designed to eat. I accomplish this by understanding the basic pribciple of evolution, nothing advanced, just the basic principle. By this same token, I can determine what kinds, and what type of exercise are appropriate for an organism of my species. It consists of the daily survival activities that I would have to be participating in, if I weren't sitting in an air-conditioned office and having ready access to nutritionally dense food sources. This example of how evolution enhances your personal decision-making process is the easist to grasp, because it is useful on a day to day basis.

But there are other, perhaps more interesting fields, based on the foundation of understanding evolution. For instance, Evolutionary Psychology - why do we have the type emotional structures we do? And, knowing this, what insights can we gain about ourselves and how we interact with others. Evolution helps us understand that, as well as anything else about oursleves that we explore with that line of reasoning.

I agree with much of that but

The Caveman Diet

Doesn't make sense to me, because:

Humans are designed to live about 35 years. You're designed to reproduce and then to get out before you're a burden to the tribe. Nature doesn't fight cholesterol or cancer well because there is no point to keeping the aged and infirm around. Just eat a balanced diet and hope for the best.

I haven't heard of the Caveman Diet, or what it consists of. My point was that an understanding of evolution is a powerful critical thinking tool that can be applied in many areas. To "cut the whole section out" of schools, simply because of pressure from religious groups, would be an extreme disservice to the children have a responsibility to educate.

another "useless chapter"
 

ok, no scientist worth his salt will tell you that the theory of evolution is in the same realm as the theory of gravity. Quantum mechanics would be a better comparison.

But, if religious activists had a problem with gravity, would we "cut the whole section out so everyone will stop bitching" ???

I really couldn't care less about either the bitching or the fact that some people want it pulled. In a well operated public school system where students are being given a detailed, well rounded science education that deals more with actual information than general theories (drawing from my own experience) evolution can play a productive role. But that's not the case and the fault doesn't lie with one set of people. Kids are not getting a good grounding in science before being exposed to more advanced topics like evolution. Take, for instance, kids who are being taught principles of quantum mechanics such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle without knowing more atomic theory than being able to name the parts of an atom and the four basic forces of the universe. You end up with students who have bizzar and erroneous understandings like "the reason you cannot know both the position and momentum of a particle is that by measuring the state of the particle you change it's velocity by an amount proportional to the accuracy of the first reading". And those are the top 0.1% of the class. The teachers and school board proudly tell everyone what a great education the kids are getting with all this exposure to advanced ideas, but it's just a delusion to impress parents and make themselves out to be more than a glorified daycare.

My point is that the addition of evolution to the highschool cirriculum was not only pointless, but harmful because it displaced topics more vital at that low level (yes, highschool is only a low level of education meant as preparation for higher topics).

American science classes are already the laughing stock of developed countries, but it's not because some of them don't teach evolution. It's serving as a scapegoat for an already pitiful effort on the part of all but a few students and teachers. Learn to walk first (used metaphorically) then run.