Posted on 05/03/2005 2:12:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Some science teachers say they're encountering fresh resistance to the topic of evolution - and it's coming from their students.
Nearly 30 years of teaching evolution in Kansas has taught Brad Williamson to expect resistance, but even this veteran of the trenches now has his work cut out for him when students raise their hands.
That's because critics of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection are equipping families with books, DVDs, and a list of "10 questions to ask your biology teacher."
The intent is to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of students as to the veracity of Darwin's theory of evolution.
The result is a climate that makes biology class tougher to teach. Some teachers say class time is now wasted on questions that are not science-based. Others say the increasingly charged atmosphere has simply forced them to work harder to find ways to skirt controversy.
On Thursday, the Science Hearings Committee of the Kansas State Board of Education begins hearings to reopen questions on the teaching of evolution in state schools.
The Kansas board has a famously zigzag record with respect to evolution. In 1999, it acted to remove most references to evolution from the state's science standards. The next year, a new - and less conservative - board reaffirmed evolution as a key concept that Kansas students must learn.
Now, however, conservatives are in the majority on the board again and have raised the question of whether science classes in Kansas schools need to include more information about alternatives to Darwin's theory.
But those alternatives, some science teachers report, are already making their way into the classroom - by way of their students.
In a certain sense, stiff resistance on the part of some US students to the theory of evolution should come as no surprise.
Even after decades of debate, Americans remain deeply ambivalent about the notion that the theory of natural selection can explain creation and its genesis.
A Gallup poll late last year showed that only 28 percent of Americans accept the theory of evolution, while 48 percent adhere to creationism - the belief that an intelligent being is responsible for the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.
But if reluctance to accept evolution is not new, the ways in which students are resisting its teachings are changing.
"The argument was always in the past the monkey-ancestor deal," says Mr. Williamson, who teaches at Olathe East High School. "Today there are many more arguments that kids bring to class, a whole fleet of arguments, and they're all drawn out of the efforts by different groups, like the intelligent design [proponents]."
It creates an uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom, Williamson says - one that he doesn't like. "I don't want to ever be in a confrontational mode with those kids ... I find it disheartening as a teacher."
Williamson and his Kansas colleagues aren't alone. An informal survey released in April from the National Science Teachers Association found that 31 percent of the 1,050 respondents said they feel pressure to include "creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution in their science classroom."
These findings confirm the experience of Gerry Wheeler, the group's executive director, who says that about half the teachers he talks to tell him they feel ideological pressure when they teach evolution.
And according to the survey, while 20 percent of the teachers say the pressure comes from parents, 22 percent say it comes primarily from students.
In this climate, science teachers say they must find new methods to defuse what has become a politically and emotionally charged atmosphere in the classroom. But in some cases doing so also means learning to handle well-organized efforts to raise doubts about Darwin's theory.
Darwin's detractors say their goal is more science, not less, in evolution discussions.
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute distributes a DVD, "Icons of Evolution," that encourages viewers to doubt Darwinian theory.
One example from related promotional literature: "Why don't textbooks discuss the 'Cambrian explosion,' in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?"
Such questions too often get routinely dismissed from the classroom, says senior fellow John West, adding that teachers who advance such questions can be rebuked - or worse.
"Teachers should not be pressured or intimidated," says Mr. West, "but what about all the teachers who are being intimidated and in some cases losing their jobs because they simply want to present a few scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory?"
But Mr. Wheeler says the criticisms West raises lack empirical evidence and don't belong in the science classroom.
"The questions scientists are wrestling with are not the same ones these people are claiming to be wrestling with," Wheeler says. "It's an effort to sabotage quality science education. There is a well-funded effort to get religion into the science classroom [through strategic questioning], and that's not fair to our students."
A troubled history Teaching that humans evolved by a process of natural selection has long stirred passionate debate, captured most famously in the Tennessee v. John Scopes trial of 1925.
Today, even as Kansas braces for another review of the question, parents in Dover, Pa., are suing their local school board for requiring last year that evolution be taught alongside the theory that humankind owes its origins to an "intelligent designer."
In this charged atmosphere, teachers who have experienced pressure are sometimes hesitant to discuss it for fear of stirring a local hornets' nest. One Oklahoma teacher, for instance, canceled his plans to be interviewed for this story, saying, "The school would like to avoid any media, good or bad, on such an emotionally charged subject."
Others believe they've learned how to successfully navigate units on evolution.
In the mountain town of Bancroft, Idaho (pop. 460), Ralph Peterson teaches all the science classes at North Gem High School. Most of his students are Mormons, as is he.
When teaching evolution at school, he says, he sticks to a clear but simple divide between religion and science. "I teach the limits of science," Mr. Peterson says. "Science does not discuss the existence of God because that's outside the realm of science." He says he gets virtually no resistance from his students when he approaches the topic this way.
In Skokie, Ill., Lisa Nimz faces a more religiously diverse classroom and a different kind of challenge. A teaching colleague, whom she respects and doesn't want to offend, is an evolution critic and is often in her classroom when the subject is taught.
In deference to her colleague's beliefs, she says she now introduces the topic of evolution with a disclaimer.
"I preface it with this idea, that I am not a spiritual provider and would never try to be," Ms. Nimz says. "And so I am trying not ... to feel any disrespect for their religion. And I think she feels that she can live with that."
A job that gets harder The path has been a rougher one for John Wachholz, a biology teacher at Salina (Kansas) High School Central. When evolution comes up, students tune out: "They'll put their heads on their desks and pretend they don't hear a word you say."
To show he's not an enemy of faith, he sometimes tells them he's a choir member and the son of a Lutheran pastor. But resistance is nevertheless getting stronger as he prepares to retire this spring.
"I see the same thing I saw five years ago, except now students think they're informed without having ever really read anything" on evolution or intelligent design, Mr. Wachholz says. "Because it's been discussed in the home and other places, they think they know, [and] they're more outspoken.... They'll say, 'I don't believe a word you're saying.' "
As teachers struggle to fend off strategic questions - which some believe are intended to cloak evolution in a cloud of doubt - critics of Darwin's theory sense an irony of history. In their view, those who once championed teacher John Scopes's right to question religious dogma are now unwilling to let a new set of established ideas be challenged.
"What you have is the Scopes trial turned on its head because you have school boards saying you can't say anything critical about Darwin," says Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman on the "Icons of Evolution" DVD.
But to many teachers, "teaching the controversy" means letting ideologues manufacture controversy where there is none. And that, they say, could set a disastrous precedent in education.
"In some ways I think civilization is at stake because it's about how we view our world," Nimz says. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, for example, were possible, she says, because evidence wasn't necessary to guide a course of action.
"When there's no empirical evidence, some very serious things can happen," she says. "If we can't look around at what is really there and try to put something logical and intelligent together from that without our fears getting in the way, then I think that we're doomed."
What some students are asking their biology teachers Critics of evolution are supplying students with prepared questions on such topics as:
• The origins of life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth - when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
• Darwin's tree of life. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
• Vertebrate embryos. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry - even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
• The archaeopteryx. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds - even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?
• Peppered moths. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection - when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?
• Darwin's finches. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection - even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?
• Mutant fruit flies. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution - even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
• Human origins. Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident - when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?
• Evolution as a fact. Why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact - even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
Source: Discovery Institute
This is the problem - most teachers really don't know much about what they are teaching. None of my history teachers really knew that much about history - if a student ever asked anything that wasn't mentioned in the book, the teacher would have been lost. Most think that rote memorization of trivial facts that will quickly be forgotten ("what exact date was the battle of Vicksburg fought") rather than teaching the big picture ("why was the battle of Vicksburg important").
I was in line at a Chik-fil-A one a few years ago and some teachers on break from a teacher's conference were behind me. I heard them complaining about the state's new teacher standardized tests - they were upset that it would have 7th grade math on it. I heard one teacher say "Bob may be for it, but he's a math wiz - I'm good with kids though".
How does any adult get through daily life if 7th grade math is a challenge? For most, 7th grade math is still arithmetic and not even algebra.
There are certainly exceptions, but education majors are typically the ones that couldn't hack it in any other major. Every one that I met are basically women that just want like kids and couldn't pass anything else.
Many states require a masters now, but that doesn't help since the masters is in education which at most schools is basically worthless. Schools would be better off hiring guys with bachelor of science degrees that at least know what they are doing in their respective subjects.
I have made the arguement that it is a philosophy, and the worship of human endevours IS a religion.
Again, there is no compelling evidence for macro evolution. You are talking about micro evolution. And I'm not a creationist. If we are stereotyping should I call you an atheist evolutionist?
That's just an incorrect statement.
The problem is that when a gap is filled, the creationist sees a new gap on either side.
And there is a whole lot of biology that can be taught that has nothing to do with evolution.
On the contrary. Science (as I argue) IS a philosophy.
You are using an archaic connotation of philosophy that includes the physical sciences. The modern usage defines philosophy as the study of leaning and of human knowledge, but is distinct from the technical sciences. Philosophy includes such branches of study as ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. Defining science *as* philosophy for the purpose of including the physical sciences hopelessly muddies the issue, when I and many others have been trying very hard to mark a clear boundry between the physical and metaphysical, and between origins and evolution.
"Science doesn't address questions that can't be studied with scientific methodologies."
The statement was directed at scientISTS that hold that atheism is "unbiased."
Not all, mind you. Just the ones that stick out to Creaionists attacks and the rest of the world's non-stereotype scientists.
Science is unapplied engineering.
Interestingly, one of the scientists who wrote for the "In 6 Days" book was a student of Gould's.
God help us!
Nope, merely touting stereotypes that have been yet to be laid to rest. (For reasons of a lack of contradiction)
Science doesn't claim to have all the answers. And it cannot do so unless the foundations of science are changed. For example, you would not expect answers from science as to what is "art", or what is "beautiful". Science might learn to detect when a human thought those things, but I think it would be impossible for science to design a computer program to determine such.
Likewise, science can only operate in a world that is predictable and measurable. Any supernatural entity, by definition, it outside that range because such a being is not limited to the predictable and measurable.
God is the supernatural, while science, by definition operates in the natural world.
Thus science cannot claim to detect God, even in the "design" of the universe. And it cannot falsify Him either.
GOOD!!! Question EVERYTHING! That's being a good scientist, and a good thinker!!!
Even if even if every scientist in the world were a monster of depravity, it would have no bearing on the correctness of their empirical statements and theories.
You should read this about the textbook process:
http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1195&issue=nov_04
Out of curiosity, being a creationist, if you were to pick one of those books for me to read, which would it be?
OK, let's parse this.
If "science is too narrow a tool for the study of these subjects", then doesn't it follow that critiques of explanations for human origins that include the supernatural are therefore "unscientific".
What you're asking for is the redefinition of science, at the behest of those who are outside the field.
It's no wonder scientists take offense at such intrusion.
"How can you truly "know" something if there's no way to "know" if that something is false?"
Such is the problem facing Science. If something CAN be false in science, it is taken as "scientific"
If it is SHOWN as false, it is dismissed or adjusted.
There is no focal point that can be "true" unless it can be "false" and upon being false, it is no longer true. An effective naturalistic response to the world, but conflicting. Notions are only good if they are possibly NOT? Daoism much?
Socrates posited that EVERYBODY knows "the Truth." The only task is to ask the correct questions. Any answer will lead to the next step in logic, and thus eventually to the "trail head" of truth.
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