Teaching the theory of evolution in France: moving beyond wishful thinking
At 1.5 km, Rue Lamarck is one of the longest streets in the 18th arrondissement; the neighboring Rue Darwin is only 86 meters long. This difference symbolizes France's special connection to evolution.
Marc-André SELOSSE, National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) – Sorbonne Universities and Bernard GODELLE, University of Montpellier
An early adherent to evolutionary theories Lamarck (inventor of the concept of transformism, which establishes that the biological world has changed), our country has reluctantly, then slowly, assimilated the mechanisms that are at the origin of this biological change: natural selection, proposed by DarwinOther mechanisms related to evolution will be discovered later.
At the end of the 19th century, the weight of a Pasteur diminishes Darwin's impact: taken to its extreme, Darwin's theory suggests that, in the beginning, an "initial" spontaneous generation may have given rise to life. This appearance without a creator upset quite a few churches. Pasteur, a conservative clergyman, had asserted that there was no spontaneous generation: he did not appreciate Darwinism and never mentioned Darwin in his writings. Pasteur accepted a created world, since life cannot appear spontaneously. Thus, a French biology without Darwinism began to take shape.
Wellcome Images/Wikimedia, CC BY
During the 20th century, biology education "told" stories of evolution (such as that of humans, or that of fish leaving the water in the primary era), supported by paleontological examples, but the mechanisms at work were absent or even presented incorrectly. Between 1950 and 1980, universities were dominated by "general biology," as embodied by academician Pierre-Paul Grassé: this approach to living organisms highlights the remarkable relationships between structures and the functions they perform within organisms. But it ignores the mechanisms of evolution and reduces living organisms to a series of organisms linked by a chain of innovations forming a progression. Darwinism, neglected, was considered a clumsy and reductive explanation.
Have we now moved on from this era, where France believes in evolution (80% of French people in 2005), but without knowing how it works? The answer is yes... to some extent.
Evolutionary biology, French style
The 1980s saw the emergence of a French school of evolutionary biology, particularly in agricultural colleges and teacher training colleges. University courses were set up; accessible popular science books were published; and gradually, this school gained worldwide recognition. But its ideas were slow to penetrate secondary education, where change only began in the late 1990s. Specialists in evolution, including ourselves, participated in the reform of teacher recruitment competitions (agrégation and CAPES); others wrote educational books; some were invited to help develop school curricula. The final step was the introduction of evolution teaching in 2013 into the curricula of preparatory classes for agronomy and veterinary science.
However, the teaching of evolution still encounters difficulties, primarily related to the training of teachers in "general biology," which they still tend to replicate too much with their students. The curricula are in reality a kind of wishful thinking, without continuing education being able to change perceptions. During the reform of the preparatory class programs, a teacher asked "what use is evolution to future agronomists?" on a discussion forum! Excellent question! But asking it says a lot about the prevailing ignorance: it's a bit like a physics teacher asking why astronomy students should be taught about gravity.
Genetic drift
Can we expect such a teacher to convey the evolution and power of its applications without ad hoc training? Some new features of the programs pose problems: the introduction of the concept of genetic drift posed difficulties for teachers, who were ill-prepared to find simple examples and approaches. Drift is the fact that traits (genetic variants) can appear or disappear by chance, regardless of their value for natural selection, especially when a population becomes small. This explains many observations, such as the frequency of certain diseases in human populations founded by small groups, in Finland for example. Despite the commendable efforts of inspectors, there are too few resources and opportunities to bring teachers together to train them in evolution, as well as other new additions to the curriculum.
Today, we are concerned about initial training: its duration and nature changed at the beginning of the current five-year term. Ten years ago, students took the CAPES exam with a master's degree (master's level 1) followed by a year of training. Today, the master's degree year serves as training, with a month of fieldwork and courses in pedagogy and didactics. While the latter aspect is an interesting innovation, the reduction in the total duration of disciplinary training (by one year and 30% during the M1) clearly undermines the level of training. In addition, the takeover of this training by the Higher Schools of Teaching and Education (ESPE) has been accompanied in some centers by the exclusion of science faculties, which poses a problem in terms of the ability to provide training everywhere in biology based on recent advances, particularly in evolution.
Marc-André SELOSSEProfessor at the National Museum of Natural History, Visiting Professor at the Universities of Gdansk (Poland) and Viçosa (Brazil), National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) – Sorbonne Universities and Bernard GODELLEProfessor of Human Evolutionary Biology, University of Montpellier
The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.