Evolution

In some American school districts there is an ongoing debate about whether evolution should be taught to students. Many Christians believe that evolution is “only a theory” and that it is incompatible with their creationist worldview. As a result, ideas like intelligent design have creeped into the curriculum of some schools, and many people advocate teaching creationism alongside evolution. Tanzanians have developed an interesting way of combating this problem: evolution is taught in history and biology, but nobody believes it.

The other day I had a fascinating conversation with two students – a Christian and a Muslim – about religion (so, in a sense, we had a representative of the three Western monotheistic faiths), and ultimately we ended up talking about evolution. I have discussed evolution with some other students prior to this, and talking with other WorldTeach volunteers it sounds like across Tanzania everyone learns evolution, but doesn’t believe it.

These students were able to clearly explain the theory of evolution, but explained that outside of school they did not believe it. They are literal creationists – God created Adam, and then Eve (Eva) from one of his ribs. These students were the first to explain to me that in school they believed in evolution, but outside of school they did not. I told them that this was an artificial dichotomy (first I had to explain those words), but in the end they told me that they simply did not find evolution compatible with their faith. I explained that many religious people interpret the bible as a metaphor so they did not have to interpret it literally, but religion is really conservative here, and I am sure there are almost no churches that teach a version of religion that is not consistent with a literal interpretation of the bible. Around this point, one of the history teachers walked in, and began to engage the conversation. History is taught from pre-history here, so he is one of the teachers who actually teaches about the origin of man. He asked a series of really insightful questions of the students, and they didn’t know how to respond. Then, he said it was important for them to think about these things. Later, I asked him if he believed in evolution. “Of course not,” he said, “for evolution to be true we would have to be evolving right now. From what I can see, we are not.”

Yet, for some reason, this teacher, and teachers like him, continue to teach evolution, and do not seem to mind that it is in the curriculum, which strikes me as somewhat odd, given how fundamentally religious most Tanzanians are. It seems like Tanzanians are taught about evolution at an early state – beginning in primary school – but everything they have learned about the world up to this point is framed by their religion, which teaches that God created Adam and Eve, so evolution is therefore something that they must learn, but simply isn’t true. Of course, many students are unable to explain what evolution is actually about (“We didn’t come from monkeys!”), but even those that are capable of explaining the specifics simply choose not to believe it. If only things were so simple in America.