Quebec community cool to Darwin

Montreal Gazette via Canada.com ^ | May 20 2006 | Alison Lampert

[RightWingAtheist]

A high school science teacher vowed yesterday to continue telling his Inuit students about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, despite complaints from parents in the northern Quebec community of Salluit.

Science teacher Alexandre April was given a written reprimand last month by his principal at Ikusik High School for discussing evolution in class.

Parents in the village 1,860 kilometres north of Montreal complained their children had been told they came from apes.

"I am a biologist. ... This is what I'm passionate about," said April, who teaches Grades 7 and 8. "It interests the students. It gets them asking questions.

"They laugh and they call me 'ape,' but I don't mind. If I stopped, they would lose out."

April, who is leaving the town when his contract runs out at the end of the school year, said the principal first told teachers last fall not to talk about evolution.

Debate over the teaching of evolution in Salluit - a village of 1,150 located along the northern coast of Quebec, between Ungava and Hudson bays - is pitting an increasingly religious Inuit population against a Quebec education system that's becoming more and more secular.

Although April, 32, won't be punished, his reprimand has outraged Quebec's scientific community.

"What he's doing is right and it's best for the kids," said Brian Alters, director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University. "Science should not be de-emphasized for non-science."

Over the years, controversy over the teaching of evolution has erupted in Pennsylvania, along with U.S. states in the so-called Bible Belt. In November, the Kansas State Board of Education approved science standards that cast doubt on evolution.

But with heightened religious fervour among the Inuit and Cree in northern communities, some observers suggest Canada might have its own Bible North.

Molly Tayara, a member of the Salluit school's volunteer education committee, said she'd tell her four school-age children to walk out of a lesson on Darwin.

"The minister (of education) may have come from apes, but we're Inuit and we've always been human," she told The Gazette in a phone interview.

"Most of us rely on God's word. ... God made Adam and Eve and they weren't animals."

Legally, Inuit schools in Quebec's north must teach evolution, as it's part of the provincial curriculum. After April's story came out this week in the magazine Quebec Science, Education Department officials immediately called the school to ensure the curriculum was followed.

Topics like reproduction and diversity of species are part of Science and Technology, a course for Grades 7 and 8. Darwin's work, based on the premise that humans and other animals have evolved over time, is further covered in Grade 11 biology - an elective course.

"We want the curriculum to be applied. We're just saying the theory of evolution could be taught more delicately to students," said Gaston Pelletier, director of educational services for the Kativik School Board, which serves northern Quebec's 14 Inuit communities. "We have to respect their view."

[donh]

Wow....who killed what? You spent about 60.00 per word on that post. I have to get my little ole dictionary and translate. :)

Make a sensible argument or go bug somebody else.

[tgambill]

no fun today, just messing with you.....I'm writing you from the Congo right now and one gets little mental stimulation here, trust me on that one.

[js1138]

Vachel Lindsay placemarker

[js1138]

Vachel Lindsay placemarker

[tgambill]

"It's not OK to force some people's kids to be taught creation, but it is OK to force other people's kids to be taught evolution"

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe the whole issue is that the evols + followers see a disconnect or a separation between the two as the separation between "religion" and science. What they fail to realize is that the two are actually related and dependent upon each other. Certainly it's like two circles not overlaying each other but, two circles connected with a small area that is common to both. God created science to create the universe we occupy and put it on "automatic pilot" for lack of a better word. The reason a debate between the creationist and evols on this forum is moved one way or another, the debaters take the discussion outside that small common space..... So, is this clear as mud...:))

[donh]

jack daniels placemarker

[tgambill]

My friend.......I wish....Jack Daniels costs 35.00 per bottle here in the Congo....I got a bottle of J&B for $20.00 out of despiration.....I saw the bottles on the shelf. ouch.......

[donh]

Dart of Harkness placemarker

[donh]

[hyperkitty]

jack daniels placemarker

Nobody cares if you're stopping for a drink, you don't have to announce it to the whole world.

[donh]

So you still think that it's OK for a special interest group to determine through the judiciary what should be taught to the children of those paying taxes just because they think they are better than everyone else. That's tyranny.

Scientists are not a special interest group in the sense that lobbyists are. They are professionals of a profession that schoolboards have recognized as important enough as to constitute a part of standard high school curriculum. Not unlike the case for music class, and hygiene, and driver training. Would you think you could get away with hiring an unlicensed driver training instructor from britain, who insisted that the lanes he learned to drive in were the God-given lanes? You can either boot it out of the curriculum, or teach it as the profession in question understands it. You cannot alter it at your whim--that constitutes fraud and child abuse.

[donh]

Let me suggest you grow a brain, and figure out what is going on, before you open your yap.

[unlearner]

Trying to recruit David Hume to your banner is, by the way, pretty laughable.

I'm not. He's the poster boy for the philosophical outlook of the definition of science you propose. But his viewpoint is indefensible.

the fact remains that creation science is a feeble idea in the minds of most scientists

A tautology. The fact remains that creation science is a feeble idea in the minds of most [non-creationist] scientists. No different than me saying that evolution is a feeble idea in the minds of most creationists.

A person's persuasion about creation and evolution does not have any bearing on methodology or accuracy of collected data, as far as I am aware. (Though a person's integrity might, but that is not the subject under discussion.) The difference has to do with the formation and selection of hypotheses then the interpretation of test results.

Do you think that no Bible believing Christians work in scientific professions? Do you think that if someone believes the Bible, they are no longer able to measure things like mass, distance, volume?

As long as evolutionary theory is assumed and testing results allow for interpretations consistent with the theory, the theory is internally consistent and therefore logically valid. The problem is creationists do not assume the validity of certain aspects of the theory (this does not mean that data or methodology is necessarily in dispute).

[unlearner]

Because mine are vetted by professional cynics

Cynical about interpretation of test results. But where is the skepticism of philosophical predispositions upon which the theory as a whole rests? It's left up to creationists.

I'm debating about the limits of scientist-contradicting balderdash that can be allowed in science textbooks which must be read by children mandated by the state to pay attention to it.

And why should religious humanism be the established religion of federally mandated public schools?

[unlearner]

You're kind of a rude twit, aren't you? I minored in philosophy at UC Berkeley under Michael Scriven, and my senior essay was on the nature of proof and certainty. I think I can probably keep up if you use really small words.

I don't think I was being rude, but I admit I was trying to get you to tip your hand, since you already told me this before in our previous, incredibly long discussion. You seem to have a strategy of sandbagging - saving your best ammunition for when you think your opponent has slipped. Not a bad strategy except for the fact it does tend to drag things out a bit.

For someone who has studied philosophy and science, you seem suprisedly against drawing a connection between them. It is as if you have dichotomized your thinking between the two.

Do you really think that philosophic outlook does not effect hypotheses formation, selection, and the interpretation of test results? How can something so obvious escape an educated person?

[unlearner]

scientists is who we should properly consult about the nature of science

And FedEx drivers should set the policy for when packages are delivered.

Do we really need to go back over this? Scientists do science, they do not define it. Science is defined by philosophy. Scientists can make the case for why they do what they do. They can argue whether something is consistent with their approach. But when you begin debating the methodology itself, you are in the realm of philosophy.

Explain how to develop the scientific method by following the steps of the scientific method. Show me how to falsify the demarcation of falsification. No one else has ever done this, but go ahead and show me.

The problem is your unwillingness to admit that an acceptance of evolutionary theory predisposes the scientific community to propose and select hypotheses which affirm this view. Further, data must be interpreted (from this vantage point) with the presumption that any generally accepted part of evolutionary theory which is not the immediate subject of scrutiny, must be assumed true when drawing conclusions (interpretation of data). You fail to acknowledge this or the fact that it is circular reasoning (when it comes to the debate over whether the assumptions of evolution are correct).

[donh]

blah, blah, blah... Do you think that no Bible believing Christians work in scientific professions? Do you think that if someone believes the Bible, they are no longer able to measure things like mass, distance, volume?...blah, blah blah......

The usual irrelevant perseflage. The measure of whether something is a science, for the purposes of determining high school curriculum, is what scientists overwhelmingly believe. Just like the measure of what constitutes music education, is what the overwhelming majority of musicians believe it is. It is pointless (well, at least totally unpersuasive) to critique the flaws or shortcomings in the philosophical underpinnings, if they exist, by which musicians come to their prejudices and conclusions. And so it is with science in the public curriculum.

[donh]

Do we really need to go back over this? Scientists do science, they do not define it. Science is defined by philosophy.

So you laughably say. Prove it.

[metmom]

Ah, the old *child abuse* angle. It was just a matter of time.

[donh]

I don't think I was being rude, but I admit I was trying to get you to tip your hand, since you already told me this before in our previous, incredibly long discussion. You seem to have a strategy of sandbagging - saving your best ammunition for when you think your opponent has slipped. Not a bad strategy except for the fact it does tend to drag things out a bit.

What I "seem to have a strategy of", is going no deeper into a subject than seems required. I'm not your socratic handpuppet, and the level of my participation in this conversation is not yours to order. The extent to which your tact here is not rude and presumptuous, in a controlling sort of way, is not apparent to me.

For someone who has studied philosophy and science, you seem suprisedly against drawing a connection between them. It is as if you have dichotomized your thinking between the two.

Unlike some of us, I studied it--I don't worship at its alter. The notion that philosophy is at the top of some kind of intellectual food chain is, of course, attractive to people whom the state pays to sit around thinking about philosophy, or people who hope to sell an intellectual end-run around some hard homework they mught otherwise have to do to market their crackpot schemes--but it is less apparent to many of us working stiffs.