No Darwin please, we’re in Nunavik

A Salluit teacher received national attention last week for an article in the most recent edition Québec Science magazine that details his experience teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to students at Ikusik School.

Alexandre April said he received an official reprimand from the local school committee after he showed his class an animated series about civilization, called “Once upon a time there was man…” [Il ét ait une fois l’homme].

Evolution is usually part of the science and technology course taught in Grade 7 and 8 throughout Quebec.

April, a biology teacher, said the official reprimand followed an earlier warning from school administrators not to teach evolution.

“As soon as I spoke about any period 6,000 years before our own, I was considered to be in the wrong by the school administration,” April told the French-language magazine.

The theory of evolution developed by British scientist Charles Darwin says complex creatures evolved from simpler ones over time by “natural selection” — that is, when the passing of characteristics, which help survival, from one generation to the next and over time can change a dark brown grizzly bear, say, into a white polar bear.

Critics of evolution say “creationism,” or the belief in the biblical creation of the world as described in Genesis, is a better explanation for the diversity of the world’s species.

The theory of “intelligent design” is also presented as an alternative to evolution. Intelligent design asserts that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a process such as natural selection.

“Most teachers don’t want to make waves,” April told Québec Science.

“It’s already hard enough to work in an Inuit community because you’re isolated and in a minority. No one wants to upset people, so it’s easier to give in. But it’s still a public school and students should have the right to the same education as others.”

April does not plan to return to teach in Salluit next year.

Annie Alaku, the school director, and Charles Roy, assistant director, did not want to speak to Québec Science.

But the Kativik School Board is supposed to follow the same curriculum as everyone else in Quebec, according to the provincial education department.

Gaston Pelletier of the KSB told Québec Science that there were “more urgent questions in Nunavik than the teaching of evolution.”