The Architect and the Scaffold: Evolution and Education in South Africa (African Human Genome Initiative series)

✍ Scribed by Wilmot James, Lynne Wilson

• Publisher: Human Sciences Research Council
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 171
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Having explored and mapped our planet's land masses, vast oceans and the space surrounding it, science is turning inward to the challenging and controversial mapping of the human genome, a collection of genes forming DNA. Each of our genes is a single instruction for the make up of an individual being. The more we learn, the more we discover to explore-and the more controversy we release in the process. Moral and ethical, social, religious and educational and scientific questions roll in: Are we giving proper attention to evolutionary theory in schools, and more particularly in South Africa? Can both science and religion be taught constructively? Is the genetic revolution passing us all us by? The African Human Genome Initiative was founded to address these questions, as well as the marginilization of our continent Africa-the cradle of humankind-in global research. The Architect and the Scaffold brings together papers, presented at the Colloquium on Science and Evolution held in March 2002, in answer to these questions. This publication brings together thinkers and experts such as Wieland Gewers, President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town; High Court Judge Denis Davis who looks at evolution from a "somewhat dissident Jewish perspective"; Professor Caroline Odora-Hoppers, whose passionately pleads for the education of our children to include indigenous knowledge; and a myriad of curriculum developers, book publishers, teachers and religious scholars.