Mendelism in the course of biology of the new ukrainian school

Abstract

The article draws attention to the discrepancy between the teaching of Mendelism in the secondary school biology course and the level of modern genetics. It is pointed out the shift of emphasis in teaching the laws of inheritance and the simplified understanding of Mendelism by reducing it to three laws. The reason for this can be seen in the unjustified giving to the results obtained by Mendel in the genetic experiment, the status of laws, which, without taking into account modern scientific achievements, uncritically pass from textbook to textbook. It is pointed out the need in the new Ukrainian school, when teaching the basics of classical genetics, to take into account the latest achievements of genetics and suppress Mendelian results not as laws, but as data of a genetic experiment, which became the basis for a paradigm shift in the understanding of the phenomena of heredity – a transition from the idea of fused heredity to the theory of hereditary discreteness material. It is proposed to present Mendel’s achievements to students as one fundamental law of discreteness of heredity, which takes a worthy place in the series of ideas about the discreteness of matter and energy.