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Internationalization of the Evokids Project Progresses

Translations of the educational material in all EU languages can now be requested

The Evokids educational material for teaching evolution in primary schools has been admitted to the "Scientix" programme of the European Commission. Teachers can now request translations of the teaching material into all European languages without charge. "This brings us one step closer to the ambitious goal of establishing the teaching of evolution not only at German but also at international schools," say the heads of the Evokids project Dittmar Graf (Institute for Didactics of Biology in Giessen) and Michael Schmidt-Salomon (Giordano Bruno Stiftung).

In 2013, when the Evokids group went public with the demand to establish the theory of evolution as a central part of the school curriculum, they often fell on deaf ears, says Graf: "It was claimed that the theory of evolution is only one topic among many, which ignored the fact that it is an essential foundation of a modern worldview. In fact, the development of life on earth and the development of human societies and cultures cannot be comprehended without knowledge of the theory of evolution. Moreover, some experts mistakenly believed that younger children are unable to grasp the mechanisms of evolution, which our empirical studies have refuted." In the meantime, according to Graf, there has been a paradigm shift in academic circles. Last year a commission of experts from the National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), in which Graf participated, published a detailed statement calling for greater consideration of the theory of evolution in schools and academic studies. Since the Evokids educational material, which is already being used in many German schools, has now also been included in the EU Scientix programme, "international didacticians increasingly recognize the importance of the early teaching of the theory of evolution for the intellectual development of students".

Teachers within the EU can now request a free translation of the Evokids teaching material via the Scientix website (this page informs about the exact procedure). When enough requests are submitted from a EU country, an appropriate translation will be prepared. Since the teaching material also includes the film based on the book "Big Family - A Fantastic Journey into the Past", which so far is only available in English, German, and Turkish, the Giordano Bruno Stiftung agreed to produce film versions in the respective national languages as soon as new translations of the educational material are available.
 

Scientific Enlightenment and Religious Fundamentalism

In any case, the gbs plans to distribute the Evokids teaching material more internationally. "Only recently I met a young man from Syria who, on his own initiative and after months of work, translated the entire Evokids teaching material and the 'Big Family' film into Arabic," explains gbs spokesman Michael Schmidt-Salomon. "Western Europeans can hardly imagine the importance of the theory of evolution for people who grew up under the strict rule of religious dogmas. For many secular refugees, such as Rana Ahmad, learning about the theory of evolution was the central trigger for abandoning fundamentalist beliefs. Therefore, we think that an international dissemination of the Evokids materials can effectively contribute not only to scientific enlightenment, but also to the prevention of fundamentalism. After all, nothing shatters nationalist or religious delusions as profoundly as the scientific enlightenment of the fundamental facts of life."

A few days ago it became obvious how necessary such an enlightenment campaign is. After the Turkish president Erdogan removed the theory of evolution from the curricula of Turkish schools last year, the Indian minister of state for higher education (!) Satya Pal Singh went public with the same proposal. His justification for withdrawing the theory of evolution from the school curriculum is breathtaking: "Since the time about which our grandparents told stories, even since books were written, no one has ever reported that they went into the jungle and saw a monkey turn into a human being. No such thing is written down anywhere. Darwin's theory is scientifically wrong and must therefore be changed in schools and colleges. Since man came to earth, he has always been human and he will always be human. Maybe you don't know it, but abroad people say what our scientists said 35 years ago, that this theory is not correct."

The people responsible for the Evokids project obviously still have a lot to do...