Evolution in the City

In response to a comment to this post from a reader in Kansas, I thought I'd share my sons' experience with evolution in a NYC public school.

My 2nd grade sons (twins, neighborhood public school) just went on a field trip to the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. The whole second grade went and I was sort of expecting to hear some backlash, but so far so good. This was entirely their teachers' idea and had nothing to do with me. They did read a children's book on evolution in class before the trip as preparation - (Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story, by Lisa Westberg Peters). The book was my wife's idea and she loaned them our copy. But I was impressed that the teachers organized and carried it out without much fuss or fanfare. I asked my sons about it afterward and they seemed to actually get the major concept of natural selection, through a computer simulation at the exhibit in which the background color changes over time and the color of a population of prey organisms changes with it. "When the background is green the orange bugs get eaten by the birds and when the background changes to orange the green bugs get eaten." I pressed them a little further and asked what was left when all the green bugs were eaten, and they told me that only the orange bugs were left. Pretty good summary for 2nd graders. I hope my 9th graders get it!