Comment #1494

Posted by Pim van Meurs on April 25, 2004 11:24 AM (e) (s)

Sermonti is also the editor of “Rivista di Biologia”, and signer of the DI “intellectual doubters of Darwinism”

Comment #1495

Posted by Pim van Meurs on April 25, 2004 11:33 AM (e) (s)

More on the controversy, mostly in Italian

Here

In the Repubblica Newspaper Umberto Veronesi disagrees with Moratti

Italian scientists appear to be outraged

Comment #1496

Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on April 25, 2004 12:02 PM (e) (s)

Vade Retro Darwin means “Step back, Darwin”

Comment #1500

Posted by Gary Hurd on April 25, 2004 02:41 PM (e) (s)

And I was worried that Alabama would lose biotech jobs to Italy.

http://www.alscience.org/legislation.html…

I guess they will go to India after all.

Comment #1504

Posted by Andrea Bottaro on April 25, 2004 05:46 PM (e) (s)

Yes, that’s pretty unbelievable, frankly.  I did all my studies in Italy, and I have to say that until the past couple of years I had never heard of any serious creationist activities.  Even Sermonti was openly and benignly tolerated, because he was considered totally innocuous.

Then, last year some elements in the the far-right party Alleanza Nazionale promoted an “anti-evolution” week, which gathered some rather scornful media attention, but also not negligible public participation to meetings and “seminars” in some Italian universities.  Probably emboldened by Alleanza Nazionale’s crucial role in the coalition government, and acting completely below the radar, these same elements have now managed to delete all references to evolutionary theory from elementary and middle school curricula.

We’ll see how it will end up - nothing in Italy is ever definitive.  It certainly has managed to unify a usually very fractured scientific community.

Comment #1511

Posted by steve on April 25, 2004 09:17 PM (e) (s)

catholics.

Comment #1515

Posted by Loren Petrich on April 25, 2004 10:17 PM (e) (s)

Has the Vatican been anywhere in sight here?

Comment #1516

Posted by John Kozak on April 26, 2004 01:03 AM (e) (s)

“vade retro darwin” is by analogy with “vade retro [me] satana”, usually rendered as “get thee behind  me Satan”.

Comment #1572

Posted by vik on April 26, 2004 09:03 PM (e) (s)

the vatican actually made peace with darwin a long time ago since evolution and natural selection don’t really pose a significant threat to catholic dogma. note that in america for instance there is a conspicuous lack of creationist or ID sentiment from the Catholic bishops or laity…

Comment #1662

Posted by Matteo Borri on April 28, 2004 02:45 PM (e) (s)

Do not fear, the ruling was reversed. There really aren’t many creationists in Italy, evolution was dropped because it was too complex to explain correctly to middle school kids… What’s going on now is that evolution will be reinstated.

http://www.repubblica.it/2004/d/sezioni/cronaca/darwin/studi…

Comment #1669

Posted by Vance Maverick on April 29, 2004 03:37 AM (e) (s)

Matteo, I was pleased to see this news too.

But I tend to agree with your second point.  The vast majority of Italians, I believe, attend high school.  So why not wait till then?

Maybe someone with school teaching experience could weigh in on this.

Comment #1673

Posted by Matteo Borri on April 29, 2004 12:09 PM (e) (s)

Italian high schools work like this:

At the end of mid school, you pick an address (classical, scientific, linguistic, or a professional school, basically). Not all addresses have biology in the curriculum, most in fact don’t.

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Trackback: Italian anti-evolutionism (it's not always better in Europe!)

Posted by Gene Expression on April 26, 2004 01:04 PM

It seems that there is a Italy is dropping evolution from primary & middle school curricula. Panda's Thumb points me to this usenet summation. The author seems to have an anti-laissez-faire orientation that suffuses his critique, but neverthless, I thi...