Now evolving in biology classes: a testier climate

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."

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?

Right. climatologists are an exception and make little noise. the point being mainstream academic and scientific communities accept both global warming and evolution as fact. And the real evidence for either is sketchy.

Enough of this. I've said I was willing to entertain evidence. If you have any significant nuggets you've found that directly get at my question then go ahead and point me to them. Seems a reasonable question for a skeptic to ask of someone like yourself who apparently is convinced. Everything I've seen deals with minor changes here and there and nothing pertaining to macro evolution. This "stuff happens over time" argument is not enough for me. Sorry.

This "stuff happens over time" argument is not enough for me.

You're the one who acknowledged that "stuff happens". All I ask is for evidence that it stops.

I have never seen even the slimest excuse for a "species limiting gene" that prevents evolution from continuing unabated for as long as life does.

"I have never seen even the slimest excuse for a "species limiting gene" that prevents evolution from continuing unabated for as long as life does."

Of course, we would find this, HOW? Did you think we came upon unlocking the human genome that we had all the answers? Nothing supports "unlimited change", everything supports "viable change"

So? Who cares if it's enjoyable or not? If we are bent on surviving as a species, why should "enjoyment" play a part?

Because most animals, best we can tell, don't have the mental capability to comprehend a thought as complex as "surviving as a species is good", and the pleasure of sexual activity came about before we developed the mental ability to develop such thoughts.

Then why were the laws made in the first place? They are laws of Man after all.

Because Men wanted them. And for the reason of "why" men wanted them, you again go into psychology and brain science.

Because observation shows that everything has a cause. This would include "everything" itself.

And why assume that this cause is "higher"? What properties do you assume of this ultimate cause, and why?

And again, what has any of this to do with evolution? Are you trying to go off subject because you have no actual arguments against evolution?

For people to accept evolution as fact you have to prove it. I don't have to disprove it.

You've already acknowledged evolution. But you claim that at some point it stops, but you do not describe the mechanism that causes it to stop.

Sorry. That's just illogical.

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.

You've been given links -- such as PatrickHenry's list-o-links -- and you simply dismissed them with a metaphoical wave of the hand. Why are we to take your question seriously?

"Because most animals, best we can tell, don't have the mental capability to comprehend a thought as complex as "surviving as a species is good", and the pleasure of sexual activity came about before we developed the mental ability to develop such thoughts."

Then why do WE have it?

"And why assume that this cause is "higher"? What properties do you assume of this ultimate cause, and why?"

Properties that are not observable by conventional methods. (Hint, it's HIGHER than us. Metaphysically speaking)

I assume these properties are not observable (conventionally) because we have not yet observed them. What would you posit?

If contrary, why? What would lead one to believe in "nothing"?

And again, what has any of this to do with evolution?

You missed the post after the one you responded to. Get back to me on that.

Because most animals, best we can tell, don't have the mental capability to comprehend a thought as complex as "surviving as a species is good",

Actually, I don't think humans have such a drive to keep the species alive either.

Europe and Russia have a declining population, and perhaps Japan. And I think the US would be about at zero growth, except for the "border problem".

biogenesis is the field of science dedicated to studying how life might have arisen for the first time on the primordial young Earth...

Darwin did not propose a theory of the origin of life in the beginning... Evolutionary theory was not proposed to account for the origins of living beings, only the process of change once life exists.

The study of how life might have arisen is not the same as the study of how life changes over time, just as I and others have been saying all along.

However, many have thought that the theory of evolution logically requires a beginning of life, which is true. Of those, many have thought that a natural account of the origin of life is necessary, and some have proposed models which have borne up or not as research proceeds.

Sure, it's an interesting question and one that deserves study, but hypotheses and theories surrounding a naturalistic origin of life is not the same study of evolution. Evolution is the study of the rates of change in patterns of genes in populations of creatures that occur over time.

You can't have it both ways.

I welcome your most cordial accusation of hypocrisy. :\

No, I've acknowledged small changes in species. That's a different kettle of fish than a monkey turning into a human. Or an amoeba evolving into man. What's irrational is assuming that little changes automatically translate into macro evolution without evidence. Its faith. Its your religion.

No, I've acknowledged small changes in species.

And cannot tell me why you think those changes will stop.

What's irrational is assuming that little changes automatically translate into macro evolution without evidence. Its faith. Its your religion.

Ok. I admit it. I have faith that time exists.

phew, that was tough

Really? In Post 245, narby said "I think there are some good links on Patrick Henry's page as well."

You responded in post 250 with "nope. Nothing on macro evolution."

Did you simply ignore the content of narby's post and spout of a response founded in ignorance, or did you just forget that you'd been directed to links less than 60 posts ago?

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