About 13 percent of U.S. high school biology teachers teach creationism as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” according to a new report in the Public Library of Science Biology journal.
The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers across the US in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2% said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject.
However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48% – about 12.5% of the total survey – said they taught it as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species.”
It seems a bit high, but I am not shocked by it,” Linda Froschauer, past president of the National Science Teachers Association based in Arlington, Virginia, told New Scientist.com “We do know there’s a problem out there, and this gives more credibility to the issue.”