Ninth Grade Biology at The Geneva School
Instructor: Robbie Andreasen rkandreasen@genevaschool.org
First Quarter
This quarter is all about learning life processes while students learn how their own body works. We
focus on the parts and purpose of each system but sacrifice depth of individual systems for integration
between systems. We perform a rat dissection that is evaluated by a collegiate-style lab practical. The
final evaluation for the quarter is an essay examination with the following question:
Explain the effects that eating a ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and
mayonnaise has on EVERY system in the body. You must discuss every system, its
parts, purpose, and how they interact as you describe how the parts of the sandwich are
used by the system. You do NOT need to explain how every system interacts with every
other, but you do need to demonstrate extensive knowledge about how the systems of
the body affect each other.
To begin the philosophical thread we discuss the following:
1. Science in terms of wonder, work, wisdom, and worship.
2. The principles and brief history of rationalism, empiricism, and the idea of poetic knowledge.
3. Science and the hypothetico-deductive method.
4. Role of imagination
5. Differences between physical sciences and biology e.g.
a. Experiment vs. comparison
b. Macromolecules unique to biology
c. Complexity
d. Quantity vs. quality
e. Genetic information
6. Science and faith
7. Science and history—why the history part?
a. Epistemological humility
b. Questions we wrestle with are old
c. Importance of presuppositions (poetic knowledge)
8. Medical tradition
a. Hippocrates
b. Galen
c. Vesalius
Second quarter
This quarter is about animals and plants. This concludes what was understood about the living world
prior to the microscope. Students learn the taxonomic organization for the animal kingdom along with
how groups of animals accomplish life processes. A basic organizational structure for plants is learned
along with the processes and interactions of plant organs and tissues.
The philosophical thread deals with the following topics:
1. Growth of biological thought from the Greeks through the Renaissance with a focus on the
question of what do we do with diversity?
a. Plato, Aristotle.
b. Different emphases between Greeks , Romans, and Middle Ages
c. Aquinas and natural theology
d. Scala naturae
2. Linnaeus and development of modern taxonomy
Third quarter
We finish the diversity of life by studying cells, protists, fungus, and bacteria. Students go through an
extensive microbiology lab unit. Following this study of diversity we explore how the theory of
evolution became the explanation for the diversity. We pick up the ideas of essentialism and scalae
naturae from the Greeks but focus on the changes in thought from the Scientific Revolution through the
publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859. We study ecology by studying and camping in
the Everglades. We finish the third quarter by starting to discuss things Darwin had no idea about, cell
processes. In particular we focus on photosynthesis and cell respiration.
Fourth quarter
We finish photosynthesis and cell respiration and study mitosis. Next we go back in time to trace the
development of genetics from Gregor Mendel to the human genome project to answer the mystery of
Darwin's time, what is the nature of inheritance. This includes topics in genetics, structure of DNA,
protein synthesis, and the central dogma of biology. The final section is the integration of genetics with
Darwinian theory, the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, and how this is used to cohere every aspect of biology,
including the history of life. We also discuss issues of integrating faith and science.
Biology Final Exam
You come upon two people having an argument occurring as follows:
Matt Erlist: Christians don’t understand that evolution accounts for everything in biology. Science and
faith cannot coexist. Because Christians don’t understand evolution they do not care about the
environment.
Pat Ann Soir: Evolution does not make any sense. There is no evidence for it. Christianity has always
opposed evolution.
Contribute your thoughts to this debate in terms of history, philosophy, cell processes, ecology, and
history of life. Each of these topics is worth a total of 20 points. The more detailed information you
include for each topic, the better your grade.
Summary thoughts
The benefit of this progression is that students begin to learn the processes of biology as they are
learning about themselves. Knowledge of the animal kingdom is then added by learning how those
same processes are accomplished throughout the animal kingdom, starting with mammals and ending
with simple invertebrates. This helps tie together the ideas of structure and function as well as
providing a framework for understanding biology so that new information that is learned can be placed
into that framework. Cell processes are abstract and difficult to grasp, so they are learned later in the
year, allowing more time for students to mature and be able to handle the more difficult material.
Students should go into some detail for these processes in order to impress upon them the complexities
of life that Darwin could never have understood.
Admittedly, this is a biology course and not a history of science course nor a philosophy course. Thus
the history and philosophy is sketchy and broad, yet in the context of the class only the top third of my
students really can pull it all together. Everybody though has a sense that history, philosophy, and
biology are all tied together, which they are not going to get in any other biology class.