September 2017 Church & State - September 2016

Around The World: Turkey Pulls Evolution From Curriculum

  AU admin

Turkey’s secular education communities have expressed concern about the state of science education in their country after the concept of evolution was removed from its high school curriculum nationwide. 

“The last crumbs of secular scientific education have been removed,” Feray Aytekin Aydogan, the head of Egitim-Sen, a union of secular-minded teachers, told The New York Times in June. 

Alpaslan Durmus, the chairman of the Education Ministry’s Education and Discipline Board, said in a video published on the ministry’s website that “students don’t have the necessary scientific background and information-based context needed to comprehend” evolution. But Aydogan disagreed, adding that evolution “is one of the basic topics you need to understand living beings, life and nature.” 

While most Turks are Muslims, the country is legally a secular state. Critics fear that this is another by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to transform the country’s culture from secular to religious and conservative. 

BREAKING NEWS

Americans United & the National Women’s Law Center file suit to challenge Missouri’s abortion bans.

Abortion bans violate the separation of church and state. Americans United and the National Women’s Law Center—the leading experts in religious freedom and gender justice—have joined forces with thirteen clergy from six faith traditions to challenge Missouri’s abortion bans as unconstitutionally imposing one narrow religious doctrine on everyone.


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