Two years ago, my younger brother came home from school a little perturbed about his latest homework assignment. Apparently, his sixth grade teacher had required that my brother and the rest of his classmates tape their thumbs to the back of their hands, and experience a day in their lives without their “opposable thumbs.” The purpose of the assignment was to make the students understand how their great-ancestors, more commonly known as the Chimpanzee (in relation to the “Neanderthal” or the “Homo-Sapiens”), felt without the use of the thumbs we take for granted today. The students were asked to go about the rest of the day with their every day tasks as they normally would with their thumbs. After their day was completed, the sixth graders were required to write (still with their thumbs taped) a report on what was difficult, frustrating, and “what felt silly.” When one student asked if he could type up his report, the teacher replied, “Of course not! Australopithecines didn’t have computers!” I thought that was kind of ironic, because Australopithecines didn’t have computers true, but they also didn’t have paper, pencils, school, video games, homework assignments, or any other of the sixth grader’s “every day tasks, thus eliminating the whole purpose of the assignment completely. So why did the teacher assign such an absurd activity? To be frank, she felt like torturing her students. Why did she decide on such a bizarre method? Only one explanation remains…she’s a chimp at heart.
As I watched my younger brother do his report, still without his thumbs (and holding back convulsions of laughter), I began pondering the whole evolution theory and how it came to be. My first impulse was that it seems awkward that people would make the assumption that man came from the ape just because of a few similarities like; we both have arms and legs. How these scientists figure this stuff out, I will never know. There was a lot of controversy when they first starting teaching the subject in schools. Personally, I just think it’s amusing how the school system has decided to teach the subject, as evidenced by my brother’s latest homework assignment.
I never took Biology, so I have to admit, the whole concept of evolution alone still puzzles me. Why, if we evolved from monkeys, do we still have monkeys on the earth today? Scientists have given the explanation that half of the monkeys evolved toward modern ape, while the other half in order to adapt to the environment better became what we are today. (Darwin’s Theory.)
As I pondered this, I started laughing at how much trust we put into the scientific community. There’s a lot of the world of science that I will never come to know for myself. So much of what we come to know about Science we take on the research and credentials of others. The more I think about it, the more I think that Scientists could really screw with our heads if they wanted to. Because I mean, if a scientist says it, it must be true. Everybody knows you can’t argue with a guy in a lab coat. I suppose that if they really wanted to, scientists could have made us all believe that we evolved from grilled-cheese sandwiches. Mmmm…sandwiches…
Either way, I’ll probably never really understand evolution. I can’t understand man evolving from monkeys any more than man evolving from woman. (Or woman from man, which ever is your preference.) I guess that explains why I don’t understand woman any more than I understand monkeys.