We the Muslims don’t need religious slogans or politically expedient responses to scientific and socio-political realities. Let us find genuine and true answers. Turkish students can learn about evolution in general and guided evolution in particular in the Muslim Times

Source: CNN

By Gul Tuysuz, CNN

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN)Turkish high school students will no longer be taught the theory of evolution.

The subject has been cut from the curriculum under changes made to eliminate “controversial” topics, the head of the national board of education, Alpaslan Durmus, announced in a video address.

“If our students don’t have the background, the scientific knowledge, or information to comprehend the debate around controversial issues, we have left them out,” Durmus said.

The new curriculum will go into effect for the 2017- 2018 school year.
It was crafted to emphasize national values and highlight contributions made by Turkish and Muslim scholars, Durmus said.

History classes will look beyond “Eurocentrism” and music classes will focus on “all colors of Turkish music,” he said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan survived a coup attempt last year and solidified his power in April in a referendum that handed him sweeping powers.

Critics view the changes in the education system as another step in the ruling Justice and Development Party’s ambitions to make Turkey more conservative. Erdogan has been vocal about wanting to raise “a pious generation.”

The argument that evolution is too difficult for ninth-graders to comprehend is not a reasonable explanation for removing the unit from high schools, according to Ebru Yigit, a board member of the secular education union Egitim-Sen.

“The curriculum change in its entirety is taking the education system away from scientific reasoning and changing it into a dogmatic religious system,” Yigit said in a phone interview with CNN. “The elimination of the evolution unit from classes is the most concrete example of this.”

Darwin’s theory of evolution has been at the center of the Turkish culture wars over the last decade.

The government-run Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, or TUBITAK, enflamed the debate in 2009 after recalling a magazine issue featuring a spread on evolution proponent Charles Darwin.

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