Blondie, AuldSoul and others have made the proper connections: while the Society does not currently emphasize teaching that the creative days were 7,000 years long, what it does teach is consistent with that tradition. If one takes the view that the last thing explicitly stated in Watchtower literature on a subject is the definitive word from the JWs' claimed "faithful slave", then the Society is still teaching the 7,000-year idea, even though they no longer state it outright. But I think that they've actually dumped the old idea, and are being cagey about saying so in order not to upset older JWs who stick with the old teaching out of habit.
It's true that newer JWs have little or no idea about the old teaching of 7,000-year creative days. When my daughter, at age 14, quit the JWs and came to live with me in 1999, I found that she had never heard of this silly notion, and was flabbergasted when I showed her the teaching in various pre-1985 publications. Most young JWs have no problem with the fact that life has been on the earth for billions of years.
Older JWs have a serious problem, though. Not long ago an older man struck up a conversation with me while we were waiting for something. One thing led to another, and it turned out that he had been a JW for more than 50 years. I asked him (without letting him know that I was once a JW) what the current teaching about the creative days is. He said that the creative days were thousands of years long, and launched into a fairly long monologue about what happened during those creative days. So I said that it sounded like he had no problem with the fact that microscopic life has been around for some 3.5 billion years and multi-celled life for some 600 million. He surprised me by saying that he doesn't believe that for a second. I pressed him about how long he thinks life has been around. He did a bit of mental calculation and said, "Oh, around 15,000 or 20,000 years." Obviously, he still retains the old 7,000-year belief, despite knowing the Society's current cagey phrasing. I actually got the impression that he was trying to be cagey with me in that he was clearly reluctant to state his actual belief until I pressed him.
It's clear to me that the Society wants to change the ancient tradition without upsetting the older JWs who make up the bulk of elders and the cores of many congregations. Their failure to be straightforward in this matter is yet another proof that JW leaders are more interested in retaining the fiction that they speak for God than in promulgating truth.
AlanF
