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Where did I come from? Where am I going?
The latter has plagued the minds of all college students as they prepare to cross the threshold from the fun-loving life of college to the harsh, grim reality of what is so eloquently dubbed "The Real World."
But what about the first? Some believe we came from a higher power - a God, Intelligent Design. Others think that we merely stumbled to where we are today through years upon years of evolution: from prehistoric muck and ooze to the business suit.
And the two sides have been in a heated debate since Darwin took the stage. Now, the debate has crawled into the classrooms, each side trying to influence and lobby what should and shouldn't be taught to their beloved children.
The religious believe that it is not feasible to assume we humans just came from monkeys through millions of years of evolution, while the secular and atheistic hypothesize that it is illogical to think that we just appeared here from dust, sculpted by an invisible creator.
Even on this campus, the conversation and debate rage on, as they should. The many Christian and other religious organizations, I imagine, hold the belief that we came from the dust crafted by the hands of a God, while groups such as the Pastafarians and other "free-thinking" secular groups reference evolution.
Both are a microcosm of the nation's opinions in regards to public school's teaching of the origins of man (and woman).
So why can't teachers teach both? Students are taught differing methods of how to solve the same math problem and are instructed to read books with differing philosophical standpoints on the same issues in English, so why not teach two differing theories of where we came from?
How has our society gotten to such a "my way or the highway" mentality, instead of the "meeting in the middle" mindset that our founding fathers used to pen The Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
If the bickering continues, then neither theory will be taught, and future students will never have the opportunity to agree or disagree with theories and hypotheses. After all, it is a teacher's job to teach and impart knowledge so that others may think for themselves.
Even the greatest teacher, Aristotle, followed this method. He didn't instruct Plato on what to put in his "Apology." He merely instructed him on how to express thought in writing. That is the idea we should take in regards to the teachings of our origins. Present both Creationism and Evolution as ideas, neither of which has been fully proven, and let the students decide for themselves where they think we came from. Who knows? Maybe one of those students will solve the issue of our beginnings.
But truly, where we come from and how we got to where we are is a miniscule matter. What we should be most concerned with is where we are going.
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