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
Haven't read it.
Fool! How many times must I answer this question?
Along with the Intelligent Designertm there is the Cosmic Clerktm. It is the Clerk's function to keep track of how many times in the past your ancestral line has undergone mutations. This is a purely mechanical task, because the Clerk merely has to follow the Designer around and keep accurate records. Even your primitive, naturalistic mind should be able to understand.
And when some creature's ancestors have used up their alloted number of mutations, no more are permitted. It's really very simple. Why do you Satanic eeeevooo- loouuu-shunists have so much trouble with this concept? When the designed-in allowance of mutations is used up, that's it. Radiation has no effect. Chemicals in the environment have no effect. Lateral transfers from a virus have no effect. The creature's "kind" is fixed. Forever!
"As for your gorilla example, given enough time and the right pressures, a 1500 kg ape might not be out of the question."
And yet, that is only a "might" there isn't even a theory that would account for this. Let alone actual observations.
Well you've described the faith behind macro evolution. That given enough time small changes translate into entire animals evolving from one to other. Sort of an inverse 2nd law of thermodynamics. This is based on sheer speculation and faith and no evidence.
So the proper question is - what is the evidence to support macro evolution? Evolutionists have to prove macro evolution exists. I don't have to disprove it. Your logic is nuts.
Actually, "why" can often be explained in terms of causality; ie, the reason why babies are born is because people keep making them and people keep making them because 1) they want them and 2) the process for making them is quite fun.
Ok then: WHY do people want them? WHY is it fun?
The precise boundary means nothing. Sure I understand the speculation about small changes adding up and supposedly given enough time a spec of caterpillar would evolve into fire-breathing dragon in my backyard. Sure, I'm with you.
So I ask you if you have enough faith to accept that amoebas became human beings - then do you have faith that Jesus died on a cross 2,000 years ago and rose from the dead?
Fallen sparrows placemark
And it relates to the methodology involved in evolution.
Instead of claiming a source (natural selection) which is outside of science (though not disagreeing with scientific findings), leave it open for a motive.(God is also not in disagreeance with findings) Only exaplain the mechanism.
The problem is that school systems mismanage money. In the county I grew up in, the two high schools have about 1,200 students each and are a LITTLE crowded. Rather than just add on to the existing schools, they are going to build a third high school.
This will just increase costs as now there will be three principals and his staff, three cafeteria staffs, three gyms, etc rather than just two. Gross duplication of services.
Larger high schools, like the ones in suburban Atlanta (3,000 students) have the advantage of being able to group students with similar abilities and goals together. Rather than having an advanced calculus class of 30 in which only 10 people should really be there, there is an advanced class of 25 where all of the students are qualified.
Also, schools waste money buying computers and other "teaching aides". If a kid doesn't know the difference between a noun and a verb, does a computer really help?
No faith is needed. Small changes accumulate within a population, selected for by environmental and other pressures. Over time, isolated pockets of a population will accumulate changes not reflected in other populations and because of this will no longer be able to interbreed with those other populations.
Not really. You already accept that changes within a population occur. That's evolution. We're simply saying that there is no magic cutoff beyond which no more changes accumulate.
Similarly, species for whom the act of producing children was not entirely enjoyable might be less inclined to reproduce.
So? Who cares if it's enjoyable or not? If we are bent on surviving as a species, why should "enjoyment" play a part?
Best post award.
Past time for some fun.
Yes. I understand. Over time stuff happens. Again, any evidence other than pure faith to depict a rock solid case for one animal avolving into a completely different animal? I'd love to see it. I'm willing to entertain evidence and go where the real science is.
Yes. They are politically correct and fully a part of the MSM and support their political interests. They are not the "journal of record" for "science".
But that still doesn't change the fact that a significant number of climatologists (a majority, I believe), the people who actually study the climate, do not think that Global Warming is man caused, which is the issue with Kyoto and the envronmental left.
It doesn't happen overnight. You're basically asking us to prove there is no magic cutoff switch. You can't prove a negative.
Interesting. Since your education is lacking, you revert to name calling.
OK, you are just plain ducking the question.
When it comes to science I have no faith whatsoever. I don't even trust my own observations, nor does any other scientist trust his.
When it comes to my Faith...it is none of your business.
Normally I give a response but not to those who challenge rather than ask. And never to those who consistently refuse to respond to my questions.
You're trying the "my faith is (stronger/better) than yours" game and that's one I don't play.
And your claim that "micro" cannot become "macro" over enough time is a claim that at some point stuff stops happening.
It is up to you to provide an explanation as to why that would happen. Otherwise logic dictates that the changes will continue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.