Originally Posted By: DWallach
In 9th grade, I took "honors biology". So far as I can remember, we spent an awful lot of time memorizing the names of all the parts of things. We dissected a frog and had to give names to all the parts. There was the *briefest* discussion of evolution, but that's it. My conclusion, at the time, was that biology was stupid, and that's because it never explained anything. Just documented what was there.

Had I been taught that evolution is *the* thread that holds everything together, and you can explain everything in biology by how it may have evolved into its current shape and function, well that may well have changed everything for me.

Dang... I think you might have put a finger on why I never got interested in biology, either. I remember doing the frog dissection, too, and, while it was fun and enjoyable, the rote memorization of all the names for everything put me off taking any more biology.