Posted on 05/12/2005 5:30:04 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
With its lavish illustrations of colorful, cuddly critters, "Our Family Tree" looks like the kind of book kids keep by their bedside to read again and again.
But when its St. Paul author, Lisa Westberg Peters, planned to talk about the book in classroom appearances today and Friday at a Monticello, Minn., elementary school, educators got cold feet.
"Our Family Tree" focuses on evolution, the scientific explanation for human origins that some believe contradicts biblical teachings. Peters' appearances, which were to focus on helping kids learn how to write, were canceled.
"It's a cute book. There's nothing wrong with it. We just don't need that kind of debate," said Brad Sanderson, principal at Pinewood Elementary.
Monticello's assistant superintendent, Jim Johnson, said school officials made a reasonable request of Peters to talk about writing but leave the discussion about evolution to teachers. When she refused, the visit was scuttled.
Across the country, there has been increasing opposition to teaching evolution. Peters said officials at two other Minnesota school districts have asked her not to talk about the book in visits over the past year.
The author believes that she is being censored -- something the schools deny.
"Once you start censoring, it's a slippery slope. Are geology and physics next? You have to stop it right away," said Peters, who won a Minnesota Book Award for "Our Family Tree," published in 2003.
In Kansas, the State Board of Education is expected to require that teachers tell students that evolution is controversial. Bills have been introduced in Georgia and Alabama to allow educators to question evolution in the classroom and offer alternatives.
Last year, the Grantsburg, Wis., school district drew widespread attention when a new policy urged teachers to explore alternative theories to evolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
That would be a parody of evolution made up by someone who, for whatever reason, is opposed to the concept of evolution and wants to ridicule it.
But kids are exposed to ads promoting medicine, and TV shows promoting the parnormal. The concept of the double blind experiment is an aid to getting through life.
You can get through life without knowing geology or astronomy or much about chemistry. But junk science confronts everyone everyday, invades their politics and takes their money.
For someone with a Ph.D., you write well.
That type of stereotyping cuts both ways. For example, I cannot count the number of times on these threads that I've been called an atheist primarily because of statements by scientists to the effect that evolution implies atheism, which is simply the personal belief of that scientist and nothing to do with the actual content of the theory of evolution.
That's true in the same sense that architecture can only progress when a building falls down, or industry can only progress when a product or corporation fails.
No, it's what's in popular "science" books for children. Visit the children's section of a library.
The other common theme is to find a personified "nature" which is consciously "evolving" stuff.
ID Ping
I really will have to say, quite respectfully, that I don't see the concept of the double-blind experiment as all that pivotal. I realize from reading earlier posts that you have studied psychology yourself, and that as a result of the importance of these principles to your own life, you may be overestimating how important they are to the lives of of others. Similarly, while I find physics fascinating and the study of it quite essential to maintaining my happiness, I cannot presume that very many people find it to be anything more than a bunch of calculus and other gobbledygook.
Seeing as I have education in just about every area of science except psychology (physics, mathematics, chemistry, and now biochemistry), I'd have to say that I've gotten through life quite well. I can't say I was ever taken in by The X-Files.
A little bit of parentally-instilled common sense helps a child go a very long way, indeed further than any textbook.
It might be in children's books, but not in science books. At least not in anything edited or approved by a biologist.
If nothing else comes out of this debate, I would hope that schools would become more careful about what they teach.
I do not believe ID is science, but I do believe we should teach kids a little about the history and methods of science.
When you teach only "facts" you give the impression there are no interesting puzzles left, and that is the opposite of what kids should learn.
I understand your point. This article, though, was about a children's story book, not about a biologist-approved science text.
If you don't see many children's books, or children's TV programs, you might not be aware of how incoherent the presentation of "evolution" generally is.
I see what is posted here about evolution, so I know it isn't being taught in a coherent form.
I can think of three people on FR -- half a dozen at most -- who argue against something that resembles evolution as a biologist sees it. And even those people prefer to argue against a straw man made up of out-of-date statements, mostly things from popular books and articles, rather than argue against the best current journal publications.
If people want science teaching sharpened and brought up-to-date, I'm all for that.
1. Teachers with degrees in science (math, engineering), not in education.
2. Textbooks written and approved by scientists, not committees.
3. Massive infusions of math instruction, so that students can actually understand science beyond the level of "This is a fungus. Don't eat that mushroom!"
Allow me to present a silly example so I can be sure that I understand it.
If a theory is presented that a planet in another galaxy is made of marshmellow by the StayPuff Marshmallow Man the theory isn't "right" because that can't be proved but on the other hand it can't be disproved by experiment, either.
Now my "common sense" would tell me that a marshmellow planet is absurd, but it can't be disproved so it would remain a valid theory, not yet disproved.
If these are naive questions, forgive me, but I ask them only because I honestly desire to have a better understanding of these things (my background is not in any science other than the computer type).
Thanks.
Dang!
They can't put EVERY book in the class room, so SOME are going to be eliminated.
Too bad.
Do you think Christ is GOD as He claimed?
Science isn't really driven by common sense or reasonableness. Relativity and Quantum theory are more counterintuitive than marshmellow men.
What makes a hypothesis scientific is whether it suggests research that can be done. Usually, but not always, good hypotheses are extensions of current theories. Sometimes they are based on an existing observation. Scientists get hunches just like normal people. The difference is that they do not allow themselves to be suckered into believing hunches without attempting to confirm them.
Since you didn't quote me, I didn't immediately realize what you were responding to.
There is progress made when things fail, but engineering is dedicated to makng failures occur in the lab rather than in the wild, where people might lose their lives.
Science can progress by small increments or by great leaps. Both happen.
Actually, you could design an experiment to test part of the theory. If you can pick up light reflected from that planet, you can do a spectral analysis and determine the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere, if it has one. We might expect that a marshmallow planet would have an unusually high amount of sugar in the atmosphere. Or, better yet, if it turned out that the atmosphere was something that wouldn't permit a marshmallow surface - for example, if it was mostly sulfuric acid - then you'd have pretty strong evidence that the hypothesis was false. It doesn't disprove the theory that the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man made that planet, but at least you'd pretty well know that part of the theory - that the planet is made of marshmallow - was false.
This is, by the way, a pretty good example of how religion and science wind up clashing. When religion makes claims about the real world that are testable - Planet X is made out of marshmallows - then there's always the potential that science will poke holes in your religion. If, however, religion does not make testable claims about the physical world, it will forever be immune to science's investigations. If you say that the God of Marshmallows made Planet X, and leave it at that, it's awfully hard for someone to disprove that claim - there may not be much reason to believe it, but disproof is not likely either.
One could also, incrementally, demonstrate that life could arise by natural processes. Discovering and demonstrating each step might take decades or centuries, but it is a reasonable research project.
Asserting that this cannot happen does not lead to a research project.
But I'm still fuzzy on the attempting to confirm part. Can e=mc2 be confirmed? From what I've read it appears not and I note that is a segment of the scientific community (and perhaps they're just whackjobs) that have alternate theories that to this layman, appeared to be convincing or as convincing as Einstein's.
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