Gentle reminder to steel man, not straw man, but whatever. You brought up a point I am curious about, since my own formal education was severely lacking in many many ways.

Is the teaching of evolution really such a big deal?

I was never taught creationism, nor evolution, nor anything even remotely touching those subjects. In High School, I was barely taught what a variable was; my math education capped out at rote solving of quadratic equations. I learned the atomic model. of the day, and memorized a quarter of the periodic table. I learned that Shakespeare existed and that sentences in English usually have an object and a subject. I learned that a blood cell contains a lot of little things that I can't do shit about.

I was top 1% of my class.