A new study from Pennsylvania State University in University Park finds that 16 percent of high school biology teachers believe in creationism, according to NewScientist.
The researchers sampled 2000 high school biology teachers across the country in 2007 and found that teachers with less training in evolutionary biology are less likely to spend time teaching evolution. Of the 939 who responded, 2 percent said they did not teach evolution at all. While the majority of educators sampled spend between 3 and 10 classroom hours teaching evolution, almost a quarter of those educators focus some time on creationism. And almost half of those educators—12.5 percent of the entire group—said they teach creationsim as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of the species.”
Linda Froschauer, the former president of the National Science Teachers Association in Arlington, Va., did not appear to be shocked by the findings. Said Froschauer, “We do know there’s problem out there, and this gives more credibility to the issue.” The bottom line? Regardless of how states mandate the teaching of science, many classroom teachers believe that God created human beings within the last 10,000 years.