Table 2 From c2000 to date
From: The Inability of Primary School to Introduce Children to the Theory of Biological Evolution
Gr. | Curricula | Teachers’ textbooks | Pupils’ textbooks |
|---|---|---|---|
Second | “Adaptation of the animals to the environment” | “…A synopsis of the animals’ basic needs is given… and the new concept of adaptation to the environment is introduced” | “Animals adapt to the environment. Animals find different ways to adapt to the environment in order to survive …Some birds migrate… etc. But others find it hard” |
“Plants in their evolutionary course perfected the…mechanisms and the functions necessary to the production of their food etc.… as well as their ability to adapt to their natural environment” | “Nothing is accidental… in plants… Plants find clever ways to protect themselves, and to adapt to the environment. The plants use “clever” ways to feed themselves, to protect themselves from their enemies… They adapt, that is, to the environment” | ||
Examples | |||
Third | The pupils must “comprehend that the plants form their characteristics according to the condition of the environment in which they grow” | Pupils “should ascertain several ways by which plants adapt to their environment. Students also discuss the way humans adapt to the weather…” | “When we humans cannot live in a place we decide to leave. But the plants which cannot do that, manage by other ways to adapt to the environment so that they live…How do we humans adapt to the cold of the winter and the heat of the summer?…Every animal adapts to the environment, i.e., has found its own “solution” in order to live in it. |
And that the animals “adapt to their habitat in order to survive” | “…Highlight the mechanisms by which sea animals adapt to the (e.g., fish–tail, fins, body shape” | ||
e.g., Fish have long and thin bodies, fins, and tails, so that they can swim fast in the water. They all adapt on order to live in the environment of the water” | |||
Sixth | “Characteristics of big mammals, adaptations to their habitat, herbivores—carnivores” | “In order to survive, every animal adapts to its habitat. The adaptive ability of every animal is the result of the action of natural selection and phenotypic ally it expresses itself in the colour of the animal,…in its individual characteristics, as well as in the particular behavior that it develops” | “Adaptation of the animals to the environment” |
“We introduce the concepts of “adaptation” and “survival,” and we explain them to the pupils” | |||
Examples | |||
Vertebrates | Vertebrates | “One of the most impressive animals, which have vanished many centuries ago, are the dinosaurs” |