Writing for American Scientist (December 8, 2022), NCSE's Deputy Director Glenn Branch cites Svante Pääbo's Nobel Prize-winning research on the Neanderthal genome in the course of urging the importance of teaching human evolution.
In the United States, the socially controversial nature of human evolution, together with the frequent absence of the topic from state science standards (including the Next Generation Science Standards), tends to inhibit K-12 teachers from teaching human evolution, Branch observed.
"Despite these obstacles, there are encouraging signs," he continued, citing the fact, revealed by a 2019 survey on which NCSE staff collaborated, that "the average time that public high school biology teachers devoted to teaching human evolution almost doubled" between 2007 and 2019.
Branch took the opportunity to promote NCSE's evolution lesson plans, particularly "No More Monkeying Around," in which students are guided to investigate the evidence for human evolution for themselves.
