The second issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach -- the new journal aspiring to promote accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience -- is now available on-line. Featured are original scientific articles on such topics as evolutionary medicine, evolutionary trees, and punctuated equilibrium; curriculum articles on such topics as using Inherit the Wind in the science classroom, molecular evolution and HIV, and hominid evolution; and reviews of a host of books, including David Sloan Wilson's Evolution for Everyone and Philip Kitcher's Living with Darwin. Those interested in the intersection of science and art will enjoy a report on Esther Solondz's The Evolution of Darwin installation as well as a description of a project fusing evolutionary biology with ceramics and printmaking.
Also included is the second installment of NCSE's regular column for Evolution: Education and Outreach, Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education. In "The OOPSIE Compromise -- A Big Mistake," NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch write, "Opt-out policies are typically invoked to excuse students from activities to which they or their parents may have religious objections, such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, dissecting animals in a laboratory, or attending sex education classes. Occasionally, however, a school or school district allows students to opt out of academic topics, including, sometimes, evolution. Opt-out policies specifically including evolution are a big mistake -- for the students who opt out, for their classmates whose studies are disrupted, and especially for their teachers, who cannot fulfill their duty to instruct their charges about biology without emphasizing evolution."