In a letter to Hugh Falconer in October 1862, Charles Darwin wrote, “I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish.”

Since the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species in November 1859, attempts over the past 150 years to avoid fulfilling Darwin’s own prediction have largely been a failure, according to an article in The New York Times —at least in the classroom.

In the Times article “On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan,” free-lance writer Nicholas Bakalar notes “that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology.”

While only 28 percent of the teachers consistently follow the recommendations, Bakalar was even more dismayed that researchers discovered that “13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.”

Bakalar’s article was based on a research paper by political science professors, Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer at Penn State, Pennsylvania, entitled “Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom” published in the January 2011 issue of Science.

In an interview with ScienceDaily and published in an article entitled “High School Biology Teachers in U.S. Reluctant to Endorse Evolution in Class, Study Finds,” Berkman and Plutzer noted in dismay that “Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America’s classrooms.”

To solve this apparent schoolroom “breathtaking inanity,” Berkman and Plutzer propose the following solution: “Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations.” Really?

Perhaps rather than spending time in “courtrooms and the halls of state government,” Berkman and Plutzer should consider exploring the range of known scientific problems with evolution. Berkman and Plutzer would undoubtedly be surprised to discover that evolution is a theory in crisis—not a scientific fact.

Even the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the vanguard of promoting the teaching of evolution in the public classroom, will not even lend support to any of the currently popular theories of evolution, only noting, “There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place.”

The fact is public science teachers appear far more aware of the debate over evolution than Berkman and Plutzer. Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B Műller in Evolution the Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press, spells out the now blatant dilemma: “Although it [Modern Synthesis] is still regarded as the standard theoretical paradigm of evolutionary biology, for several years now dissenters from diverse fields of biology have been questioning aspects of the Modern Synthesis.”

Since Nobel Prize winner Jacque Monod endorsement of the gene centric Modern Synthesis Theory declaration, “a mechanism for Darwinism is at last securely founded” in the mid-twentieth century, new scientific discoveries employing technological advances in the following decades has delivered a crushing blow to the Modern Synthesis Theory.

According to Marc Kirschner of Harvard University and John C Gerhart of the University of California, Berkley, “The Modern Synthesis was a great intellectual accomplishment in an important era for evolutionary biology. Viewed today it is neither modern nor much of a synthesis.”

Sean B. Carroll of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute agrees: “The Modern Synthesis established much of the foundation for how evolutionary biology has been discussed and taught in the past sixty years. However, despite the monikers of ‘Modern’ and ‘Synthesis’, it is incomplete.”

Pigliucci, Műller, Kirschner, Gerhart, and Carroll are just five of the sixteen evolutionary scientists that convened for Altenberg Summit during the summer of 2008 in Altenberg, Austria. The goal of the summit was to develop a new consensus on a new theory for evolution following the complete demise of the Modern Synthesis.

In their own “breathtaking inanity,” Berkman and Plutzer appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that a consensus for a theory of evolution does not exist. While Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College agrees that “No natural law may suffice to describe the full evolution of the biosphere, human economy, and the human culture,” French geneticist Jerome Lejeune, cuts to the chase —“There is no theory of evolution.”

In the words of Italian geneticist and editor of the longest running biology journal in the world, Giuseppe Sermonti, “There never really has been a scientific theory of evolution.”

Before drawing reigning judgment on teacher performance in the classroom and drawing up legal entanglements in the courts, perhaps Berkman and Plutzer evaluate the weight of scientific evidence now known to be against evolution. Berkman and Plutzer should spend more time on the laboratory bench rather than the not in the courthouse. The presentation of evolution in the classroom should be a matter of science, not law.

Public school teachers seem to understand the following principle of teaching better than Berkman and Plutzer – that which is unknown should not be taught as fact—even when mandated by the court.