A tip of my hat goes out to David Campbell, a biology teacher at Ridgeview High School in Orange Park, FL.  The NYT recently published an article detailing his difficulties in teaching evolution to his Biology I class.  I thank my Dad for pointing the article out to me.  The battle of evolution versus creationism (or Intelligent Design or whatever else they’re trying to disguise it as these days) has been particularly heated in the past several years, and public schools and their school boards have been the front lines in this debate.  The fact that there’s a battle at all is somewhat of a sad indictment of the status of science education in this country, but that’s a topic for a whole other series of posts.  Beyond all the posturing and rhetoric in the blogosphere is this single human trying his darndest to make a difference in an steeply uphill struggle.  It’s easy to sit at the keyboard and say, science teachers should do such and such, evolution should absolutely be taught in the classroom, etc.  But the details of how to do that in a real school with real kids is a much more complex issue.  Here is a dude who is actually there, walking the walk, pursuing not only the noble goal of teaching science, but also promoting the concepts of evolution.  In Florida.  Hard core, man.  Keep fighting the good fight, sir.