Posted on 01/29/2004 3:08:06 AM PST by Ben Chad
Revised curriculum plan outrages science teachers
By MARY MacDONALD The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia students could graduate from high school without learning much about evolution, and may never even hear the word uttered in class.
New middle and high school science standards proposed by state Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox strike references to "evolution" and replace them with the term "biological changes over time," a revision critics say will further weaken learning in a critical subject.
Outraged teachers already have told the state it is undercutting the science education of young Georgians.
"Just like any major issue people need to deal with, you need to know the facts," said David Bechler, head of the biology department at Valdosta State University. A member of the committee that worked on the biology standards, Bechler said he was stunned to learn that evolution was not in the final proposal.
"Whether you believe in creationism or not, evolution should be known and understood by the public," he argued.
Cox declined requests for an interview on the issue. A spokesman issued a statement Wednesday that said: "The discussion of evolution is an age-old debate and it is clear that there are those in Georgia who are passionate on both sides of the issue -- we want to hear from all of them."
Cox, a Republican elected to the state's top public school position in 2002, addressed the issue briefly in a public debate during the campaign. The candidates were asked about a school dispute in Cobb County over evolution and Bible-based teachings on creation.
Cox responded: "It was a good thing for parents and the community to stand up and say we want our children exposed to this [creationism] idea as well. . . . I'd leave the state out of it and I would make sure teachers were well prepared to deal with competing theories."
Gateway course
Biology is a gateway course to future studies of the life sciences. And scientists consider evolution the basis for biology, a scientific explanation for the gradual process that has resulted in the diversity of living things.
If the state does not require teachers to cover evolution thoroughly, only the most politically secure teachers will attempt to do so, said Wes McCoy, a 26-year biology teacher at North Cobb High School. Less experienced teachers will take their cue from the state requirements, he said.
"They're either going to tread very lightly or they're going to ignore it," McCoy said. "Students will be learning some of the components of evolution. They're going to be missing how that integrates with the rest of biology. They may not understand how evolution explains the antibiotic resistance in bacteria."
The state curriculum does not preclude an individual public school system from taking a deeper approach to evolution, or any other topic. And the proposed change would not require school systems to buy new textbooks that omit the word.
But Georgia's curriculum exam, the CRCT, will be rewritten to align with the new curriculum. And the state exam is the basis for federal evaluation, which encourages schools and teachers to focus on teaching the material that will be tested.
A year in the works
The revision of Georgia's curriculum began more than a year ago as an attempt to strengthen the performance of students by requiring greater depth on essential topics. The new curriculum will replace standards adopted in 1984 that have been criticized by many educators as shallow. The state Board of Education is expected to vote on the revised curriculum in May.
The Georgia Department of Education based its biology curriculum on national standards put forth by a respected source, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But while the state copied most of the national standards, it deleted much of the section that covers the origin of living things.
A committee of science teachers, college professors and curriculum experts was involved in reviewing the proposal. The state did not specify why the references to evolution were removed, and by whom, even to educators involved in the process.
Terrie Kielborn, a middle school science teacher in Paulding County who was on the committee, recalled that Stephen Pruitt, the state's curriculum specialist for science, told the panel not to include the word evolution.
"We were pretty much told not to put it in there," Kielborn said. The rationale was community reaction, she said.
"When you say the word evolution, people automatically, whatever age they are, think of the man-monkey thing," Kielborn said.
Pruitt could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Cox released the state's proposed new curriculum on Jan. 12 and invited comments on all subject areas for the next three months from parents, teachers and students. She described the new curriculum as world-class and said it provides clear direction to teachers for the first time on what will be expected of students.
Backlash a result
The biology revision was eagerly awaited by a strongly organized network of scientists, university professors and classroom teachers. Several teachers and professors say they are pleased the state adopted large sections of the national standards, which include a strengthened explanation of the nature of science, the function and structure of cells and genetics.
But the treatment of evolution prompted a backlash. More than 600 Georgians, including professors and teachers, by Wednesday had signed an online petition challenging the curriculum as misguided.
If Georgia approves the revised curriculum, the state will be among six that avoid the word "evolution" in science teaching, according to the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that advocates for evolution instruction.
Many other states, including North Carolina and South Carolina, have adopted national standards that cover evolution in detail.
The word "evolution" itself is important because it is a scientific term, said Sarah Pallas, an associate professor of biology at Georgia State University. "Students need to know the language of science," she said. "They don't need to know euphemisms. It's just silly."
The proposed changes in the Georgia curriculum would leave students with tremendous gaps when they reach college, Pallas said.
"The students from other states always perform better in my classes, and that's a real indictment of the state educational system," the professor said. "North Carolina, another very conservative state, adopted all of the benchmarks. If they can do it in North Carolina, why can't Georgia do it?"
Debate over how and whether to teach evolution has divided communities and states for years.
In metro Atlanta, the Cobb County school system became the center of national attention in 2002 after it placed disclaimers about evolution in science textbooks and adopted a policy that could have allowed discussion of alternate views in science class.
The Cobb superintendent defused the dispute by issuing guidelines for teachers that told them to stick to the state curriculum.
This is completely false.
I taught a course last semester on the chemical basis of evolution. Students who took it were mostly freshmen and sophomores, and knew very little about molecular biology. The final project was to select one of the ribosomal proteins (randomly), download 20 or so sequences from the NCBI database, use some software construct a tree, and compare the tree with the standard evolutionary model. Would you believe that every single tree corroborated the standard model?
A couple of the students also found pseudogenes in the human genome and integrated those pseudogenes into their tree. Evolution gives an explanation why we have pseudogenes. But why would a creator/intelligent designer put them in there?
Yep -- basically, when the evidence for a given line of ancestry becomes so overwhelming that even creationists can't credibly deny it, they reclassify it as "microevolution" so that they can pretend that it "doesn't count" as evidence.
The Klintoon Koolaid drinkers used the same tactic -- they classified their hero's misbehaviors as "not rising to the level of impeachment" ("microdereliction") and "a serious charge if true" ("macroderelection"). Before our very eyes, they reclassified the Monica misadventure and associated perjury from "macrodereliction" (when it was still he said - she said) to "microdereliction" (after the blue dress surfaced). They might have been taking lessons from the creationists who similarly fast-shuffled the Eohippus --> Equus line from "macroevolution" (when the fossil record was still spotty) to "microevolution" (once the fossil record had been filled in more or less exactly as predicted).
The question of how the first life form originated is irrelevant to the theory of biological evolution, just as the question of where matter and energy originated is irrelevant to the theory of Newtonian (or Einsteinian) mechanics.
Secondly, to have a chemist, who is an avowed creationist who makes his money on the creationist lecture/homeschool circuit tell me what he alone thinks of speciation raises a BIG red flag.
You attributed to him acceptance of transitional forms. I pointed out that his statement was that he's never seen one. All the 'transitional' forms he's seen could easily be the same species.
Sigh. How about looking at it thusly: If creationism were true, how in the heck are there fossils at all? Even one? The fossil record isn't on a 5 billion year long videotape, sorry. However, what we do have paints a rather interesting and clear picture of speciation over the years. Check it out sometime. Go to your local natural history museum. Click on one of the links in this thread. Maybe you'll be surprised. Are you aware of the rare conditions that are needed to even produce a fossil? It's not like every thing that ever lived ends up a fossil, y'know. in fact, go spend the next month digging around your neighborhood and let me know if you find any fossils. Lemme guess, OJ was innocent, right?
As to how/why fossils exist I don't know. I'll have to ask God when I see Him. He may have had reasons to put fossils in or perhaps the earth is older than it seems (various scriptural interpretations allow more time than others). It's never been a big deal to me.
I do love natural history museums however, The Smithsonian is pretty cool. Went to see it when they had the dinosaur wing re-opened a few years back. Neat stuff. (If I was God I would have created dinosaurs just to watch them.)
As to finding a fossil around here. I live in the limestone capital of the world. We can't turn over a rock without finding something in it. During the warmer months the highway cuts through the limestone beds are populated by people with little hammers cutting fossils out. Now most of them will be small sea creatures (trilobites and such) but every once in a while we find bigger things. A couple years back a diver found a mastodon (or was it a mammoth) tooth at the bottom of the river. So things do show up around here. Lots of fossils everywhere.
Perhaps it is a more of a definition thing in that I regard evolution as the whole 'this is how we got here from scratch' theory and mindset while you may be looking only at the supposed process of one species changing into another.
We'll probably always disagree
;-/
ROFL!
Best thing I've read for a while!
(*crickets chirping*)
Chewbacca is actually quite conservative for a Wookie.
How is evolution falsibiable? Can you give me scenario which would prove evolution to be false?
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