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Uproar in Turkey over removing evolution from biology class

FILE- In this Monday, April 3, 2017 file photo, a boy in his schoolyard looks out from behind a display of t-shirts printed with the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, offered for sale in the Black Sea region city of Rize, Turkey. Turkey has announced an overhaul of more than 170 topics in the country’s school curriculum, including removing all direct references to evolution from teenagers’ biology classes. Other contentious changes include teaching about jihad or holy struggle in religion classes, calling that the “love of homeland,” and a lessened emphasis on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic who is revered by Turkey’s secularists. Ataturk instituted the separation of state and religion, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has challenged that strict split with a more religious approach. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File) FILE- In this Monday, April 3, 2017 file photo, a boy in his schoolyard looks out from behind a display of t-shirts printed with the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, offered for sale in the Black Sea region city of Rize, Turkey. Turkey has announced an overhaul of more than 170 topics in the country’s school curriculum, including removing all direct references to evolution from teenagers’ biology classes. Other contentious changes include teaching about jihad or holy struggle in religion classes, calling that the “love of homeland,” and a lessened emphasis on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic who is revered by Turkey’s secularists. Ataturk instituted the separation of state and religion, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has challenged that strict split with a more religious approach. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)

By Associated Press September 17, 2017 1 min read

ISTANBUL (AP) – Students in Turkey are returning to school where they will be taught evolution for the last time in their biology classes. Next fall, evolution and Charles Darwin will be scrapped from their textbooks.

Turkey has announced an overhaul of more than 170 topics in the country’s school curriculum, including removing all direct references to evolution from biology classes.

Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz said the new “value-based” curriculum would teach evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection but evolution itself was too advanced for high school and would not be taught until college.

The upcoming changes have caused an uproar, with critics calling them a reshaping of education along the conservative, Islam-oriented government’s line. Some biologists say the move will leave Turkish students unable to understand even basic science.