The News
9 de febrero de 2009
Moved by their admiration for British naturalist Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking theory of evolution, Mexican scientists and academics have organized a celebration to mark the bicentenary of his birth and 150 years since the publication of his landmark work, «On the Origin of Species.»
The Institutional Development Secretariat at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, is overseeing a 10-month series of events running through November that has been dubbed «The Year of Evolution.»
Activities kick off on Wednesday with a scientific and cultural festival at UNAM’s campus that includes biology workshops, children’s science workshops, exhibitions, stilt performers, talks with scientists and films about Darwin and evolution. Biologists will read excerpts from «On the Origin of Species.»
UNAM Rector José Narro will give the opening speech for «The Year of Evolution,» whose activities involve 20 of the university’s departments as well as other academic institutions and the Mexico City government.
The scientists behind the event told The News that they planned the celebration not only to commemorate the milestone, but also to promote evolution in Mexico, where they say the theory is often undertaught and devalued.
«We think it is important to support the dissemination of education of evolution,» said Concepción Ruiz, a member of the festival’s organizing committee.
The head of UNAM’s Institutional Development Secretariat, biologist Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, said that Mexican primary and secondary school teachers lack proper knowledge about evolution.
She said that although evolution is included in school syllabi, teachers don’t make it a topic that children enjoy.
«If we can make a contribution to professors’ teaching so that they can be properly trained, and most of all that they be up to date with the latest developments, that’s what we want to do,» she said.
Ruiz Gutiérrez said she has conducted studies in Mexican schools showing that instructors’ personal ideas about divine creation affect their teaching.
«What must be made perfectly clear is that there is a separation of religious ideas and scientific ideas,» she said.
SOME STUDENTS SKEPTICAL
Sometimes, Ruiz Gutiérrez said, it is the students who have questions or raise doubts about evolution. Teachers need to be trained to answer those questions so they don’t avoid them altogether, she said.
University biology professor Irma Elena Dueñas García said she sometimes hears questions from students who are creationists or followers of the intelligent design theory, which holds that life could not have arisen by chance and was created by an entity.
«I tell them that nature is not perfect,» she said. «An intelligent entity would have done a better job.»
Part of the challenge for evolutionary theory in Mexico is that relatively few people attend university, where the subject is taught with more depth than in primary or secondary school.
RAISING AWARENESS
Laura Gladys Nieto, a biology teacher at one of the schools that belongs to UNAM’s National High School, said her students are mostly open-minded and willing to consider evolution.
«They are respectful. They ask for evidence,» she said. «We give them biological [and] paleontological evidence, [and] we tell them which books to read. We tell them that they can make up their own minds.»
Darwin’s evolutionary theory posits that all species evolved over long periods of time through random variation and natural selection, Ruiz Gutiérrez said.
In other words, random changes led to new forms, and those changes that are beneficial remain in the next generation.
Ruiz Gutiérrez, who is president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, said that new theories have emerged – like genetic drift – that don’t replace the theory of natural selection evolution, but complement it.
According to a definition of genetic drift on the University of California, Berkeley, Web site, in each generation, some individuals may, by chance, leave behind a few more descendants – and genes – than others individuals.
The genes of the next generation will be the genes of the «lucky» individuals, not necessarily the healthier or «better» individuals.
Such theories «in no way contradict Darwin’s thinking,» Ruiz Gutiérrez said.
Dueñas García said that «The Year of Evolution» festivities are just the type of promotion that Darwin’s theory needs in Mexico.
«I think we’re at a disadvantage when compared to Jehovah’s Witnesses,» she said. «They’re out there every Sunday, carrying the Bible.
«But there’s no army of biologists with `On the Origin of Species’ under their arms, knocking on doors, going from house to house.»
The Year of Evolution’ inauguration
The following is a list of exhibitions on short- and longer-term display and activities slated for the first day of events to commemorate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since «On the Origin of Species» transformed biology.