This was 9 years ago. It's about Idiot America. "The road trip came on the heels of a study that found that a biblical explanation for the diversity of life on Earth is still taught in many schools. Few of the nation’s biology teachers, the study found, directly tell students that evolution forms the foundation of modern biology."

New York Times

A Nationwide Day for Honoring Charles Darwin, but Handled With Caution

By Amy Harmon

February 14, 2011

There was trepidation on both sides when a squadron of biologists set out to celebrate Darwin Day in rural America during the weekend.

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C., which instigated the road trip in the name of scientific outreach, first held a workshop where seven of its Ph.D.’s staged role-playing games and practiced debunking misconceptions about evolution without sounding confrontational.

The group’s small-town hosts took their own precautions. A high school principal in Ringgold, Va., sent out permission slips so parents could opt out of sending their children to the event (two did). A museum vice president in Davenport, Iowa, publicized the festivities only to teachers, rather than risk riling members of her conservative Christian community.

Darwin Day, conceived as a way to promote science on the 202nd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth — he was born Feb. 12, 1809 — had until this time been commemorated mostly by those inclined to science, at natural history museums, by secular humanist groups and in university biology departments.

“Maybe this year,” Jory P. Weintraub, the education director at the evolutionary synthesis center, proposed to his colleagues last fall, “we should try to go to places that wouldn’t otherwise have a Darwin Day.”

Craig McClain, a marine biologist at the center who studies giant squid, was initially opposed.

“You want to send evolutionary biologists out to rural America?” Dr. McClain asked. “On purpose?”

He recalled previous clashes between scientists and religious conservatives in some rural communities over Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Nineteen schools agreed to host the scientists, but negotiating the terms of the visit was sometimes a delicate process: The goal, they assured a principal who worried about their ideological agenda, was simply to tell students why science was “cool” and perhaps interest them in a career. Still, if questions about religion and science arose, they reserved the right to answer them.

The center, which receives financing from the National Science Foundation, paired junior scientists with a senior scientist in each of the locations, “so they wouldn’t feel alone and isolated,” Dr. Weintraub said.

The road trip came on the heels of a study that found that a biblical explanation for the diversity of life on Earth is still taught in many schools. Few of the nation’s biology teachers, the study found, directly tell students that evolution forms the foundation of modern biology.

Such statistics, along with rejection by many Americans of what scientists say is evidence that human activities are causing Earth to heat up, concern scientists: the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a major private funder of biomedical research, recently announced plans to spend $60 million producing documentaries in an effort to raise the nation’s scientific awareness.

Poised for conflict, the traveling scientists found mostly curiosity. “Why did Darwin say that humans evolved from monkeys?” one Virginia student asked. (He did not, the scientist said. Darwin said humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor, like all living things.)

Dr. McClain, who wrapped up his Nebraska-Montana tour at a middle school on Monday, found himself explaining how giant squid evolved.

“Smaller squids get eaten by everything,” he said. “It’s not a very good lifestyle to have.”

Shae Carter, 16, a 10th grader at Muscatine High School in Muscatine, Iowa, was pleasantly surprised by the visiting biologists who, she wrote on her blog, “told it like it is.”

When students recoiled and said “Ewww!” watching pictures of large jungle cats devouring their prey, the scientists told them: “This is what happens, people. Get professional.”

“I had imagined that these periods in the auditorium would be cold and boring,” Shae said in an interview. “But I liked it.”

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 15, 2011, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: A Nationwide Day for Honoring Charles Darwin, but Handled With Caution.

Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe