Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Controversies over the teaching of evolution in the public schools have rocked the nation over the past century. Evolution's foes have consistently used the same arguments, but their ambitions have shifted, from banning the teaching of evolution through balancing it with a supposed alternative to blunting it by claiming that evolution is scientifically disputed. In his talk, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education will discuss the causes, history, and consequences of these controversies, explain the encouraging developments in evolution education over the last fifteen years as revealed by a recent study conducted by NCSE, and discuss what skeptics have done, and can continue to do, to help.
Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends the integrity of American science education against ideological interference. He is the author of numerous articles on evolution education and climate education, and obstacles to them, in such publications as Scientific American, American Educator, The American Biology Teacher, and the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, and the co-editor, with Eugenie C. Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools (2006). He received the Evolution Education Award for 2020 from the National Association of Biology Teachers.
Controversies over the teaching of evolution in the public schools have rocked the nation over the past century. Evolution's foes have consistently used the same arguments, but their ambitions have shifted, from banning the teaching of evolution through balancing it with a supposed alternative to blunting it by claiming that evolution is scientifically disputed. In his talk, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education will discuss the causes, history, and consequences of these controversies, explain the encouraging developments in evolution education over the last fifteen years as revealed by a recent study conducted by NCSE, and discuss what skeptics have done, and can continue to do, to help.
Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends the integrity of American science education against ideological interference. He is the author of numerous articles on evolution education and climate education, and obstacles to them, in such publications as Scientific American, American Educator, The American Biology Teacher, and the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, and the co-editor, with Eugenie C. Scott, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools (2006). He received the Evolution Education Award for 2020 from the National Association of Biology Teachers.
