Popular Mechanics: Bill Nye the Science Guy

Science and reality doesn't care or even register about what you believe. Evolution will continue to be a fact, and it is inescapable. Just try denying evolution next time you go to the hospital! I wish teachers had more integrity and resources, and parents weren't allowed to spread Weapon Grade Stupid on their children...  So I really enjoyed reading what Bill Nye had to say on the subject.  I think a couple of key highlights are worth posting here.  I know it's a short article, so just posting these two questions/answers pretty much gets 1/3 of the article, but I encourage you to visit it and read more.

In a recent survey of 926 public high school biology teachers across the nation, only 28 percent of teachers taught evolution as a well-supported fundamental idea of science. Meanwhile, 13 percent openly supported "intelligent design" in the classroom, and 60 percent fell somewhere in-between. This majority presented evolution cautiously—by including non-scientific viewpoints, by limiting discussion to genetics, or by saying that students only needed to learn the material to pass exams.

What do you think about this?

Bill Nye, Executive Director of the Planetary Society: It's horrible. Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.

Should teachers be mandated to teach evolution as fact?

What other fundamental theory in all of biology is there? Intelligent design, as the judge in Dover, Penn., said, is "breathtaking inanity." It was so stupid it took his breath away. I agree with him. It's great to teach in history class, though. People believed the earth was the center of the universe. People believed the earth was flat. It was reasonable at the time, but we don't learn about those ideas in science class.

Read more: Evolution in Science Education – Bill Nye on Evolution in Science Education - Popular Mechanics