PhysicsGirl--I am not arguing that it should be TAUGHT, but acknowledging that some people's parents believe this and simply stating that they did not intend to come in to the class and debunk their beliefs can put some children's minds at ease.

I understand the distiction between science class and anthropology, thank you. I'm not saying they should STUDY it. I just fail to see the harm in a teacher, who the students usually place some trust in, being allowed to verbally acknowledge that there are other BELIEFS (not theories, because we clearly need to be careful with this word) about how life came about.

We're talking high school kids; I graduated college a few years ago, and until I started dating someone from another country, I didn't realize that many of the things I was taught were really dogma, and neither my college nor my high school encouraged exploration of ideas outside of what was approved. I understand that science class is for science, thank you for clarifying that. And sometimes you DO study history in english class, or math class, or math in science class. Its called interdisciplinary learning, and its good for kids in high school and middle school to see how things relate to each other. But I don't see what the harm is in acknowledging that, you know what? some people believe that this wasn't all chance. we're going to operate in here under the assumption that it was, but we don't discourage openminded intellectual curiousity about other people's beliefs, which my very highly ranked, very Northeastern, and very liberal public schools really did, however unintentionally.