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
Cordially,
"Natural selection" isn't driven. It's a passive influence. No two groups of entities have exactly the same environment; thus one of the groups will have more offspring than the other. This will continue down through time.
Eventually one population will be substantially larger than the other. There could be a difference in their genetic makeup (like better eating habits or disease resistance) or just luck. That's about all there is to natural selection. Of course, it's the details that are interesting.
I will refer you back again to my posts 453 and 464.
Ask any specific questions you like about the material in the post.
At this point you seem to be just repeating your questions as if you had not read the responses.
I personally taught in two different public schools for about a year and a half, and my personal experience was that there are a few good, knowledgeable science teachers out there and a whole bunch of ones who know little about science. I think there really is a shortage of qualified people who want to teach. There are, I believe, several factors causing this situation.
First and foremost is the state of university education for teachers. Prospective science teachers are required to take surprisingly few science classes, and a whole lot of education classes. This strikes me as bass ackwards. We should have teachers take a bachelor's degree in the field in which they wish to teach. Then, they could take a semester or two of education courses (or do this during the four years of their B.S. in addition to the B.S. coursework) and finally move into their student teaching. A firm grounding in the field is lacking in many educators. I think many of today's students who have some interest in science are attracted to science education programs since these tend to be less difficult and rigorous. Unfortunately this leads to a lowering of the qualifications of the average science teacher.
Secondly, (and the main reason I no longer teach), teaching in the public schools today involves very little actual teaching and a whole lot of administrative and classroom management type activities. Student discipline is difficult in today's schools. I don't know how it was for you in school, but if I got in trouble at school, I was in trouble when I got home as well. Now, it's relatively common for a parent to completely deny that their precious little son or daughter did what the teacher says that they did. Without parental support, and often without the support of school administrators who fear that the parents will make trouble or even sue if their child is held accountable for their actions, it's difficult to maintain any authority as a teacher. There simply is too often no consequence for student misbehavior. In such an environment, educating children is difficult, and many knowledgeable teachers (including me) just give up and move on to other jobs.
Thirdly, in the 1950's and 1960's, after the Soviets launched Sputnik, there was a great push to get qualified people into the teaching of science. In many cases, prospective science teachers had their college tuitions paid for in order to encourage smart people to go into science education. This has led in recent years to a fairly large group of older science teachers who are nearing retirement, and are not so motivated as younger teachers. These are the tenured teachers who are holding on until they get to their 35 or 40 year mark and can retire. I taught in 1997-1999, so this issue is probably on the decline because of attrition.
Finally, there is the issue of compensation. In many areas of the country, a bachelor's level scientist can earn 50-100% more than a high school science teacher. I personally feel that this is less important for explaining the lack of good science educators simply because a person who becomes a teacher based primarily on the money is likely not to be as good a teacher as one who enters the field out of a motivation to help students. Still, there may be many qualified individuals who want to teach, but choose an industrial R&D position instead based on compensation.
The lack of emphasis on science in public schools and in the country in general, I think, comes from a generalized dumbing down in the school system, which has led to an overall less knowledeable population. The school system is more concerned now with promoting an unearned feeling of self esteem in students rather than in real achievement. A good science education is rigorous and difficult, and we can't teach our children something that they can't master completely or they might feel bad. Therefore, we just water down the science curriculum to the point where most of the students have no problem with it. Only problem is that they then don't really learn much and we end up with a scientifically illiterate population.
It might be a good thing. "Alternative" views might seem likeless of a good idea.
Yep. Natural selection is driven by competition for resources (ie. mates, food, etc.) Those organisms that are best able to find food, avoid predators, and find mates are the ones that pass their genes on to the next generation. These descendants, barring dramatic changes in environment or a new, more successful variant, are also the ones that will be more likely to reproduce. By contrast, those organisms with genetic makeups that make them less able to compete for resources tend to die without reproducing. Hence, desirable genetic characteristics will tend to accumulate in a population and undesirable ones tend to be weeded out. That's what natural selection is about.
Nobody said it was of no interest, just that it isn't part of the theory of evolution. Finding a misleading or incorrect statement in a textbook, BTW, is these days unfortunately common.
I think you summed it up nicely. Another point involves students not being encouraged to take the more difficult courses. From what I've seen, guidance counselors serve little purpose at schools so we can't depend on them to encourage students to push themselves. And most students just don't see how the sciences will be useful in their lives and have few role models in the sciences. And, of course, many science teachers don't make it the most interesting of subjects, although I think it should be. Americans are more concerned about American Idol than when the next space shuttle will be launched. Our culture in general continues to dumb down. I'm not sure what the answer is.
Think about it for a minute. Critters with no desire to survive would most likely not, and therefore not reproduce.
421
Cordially,
You got me there, pard. You're right. Naturalistic origins are now coming under the microscope. Do you aver that scientists should discover pathways by which naturalistic explanations of life could occur, and immediately conclude that they didn't?
I know - I just don't know WHY we want to survive. Okay, instinct maybe. But how do you quantify instinct? How can you prove it exists? Sorry - just ignore me if my questions become too ridiculous.
The hardwiring has developed over millions of years, with successful responses surviving and unsuccessful ones being weeded out of the gene pool. Consider it a self-reinforcing loop.
I would say we don't "want to survive" we want to satisfy various urges: hunger, breathing, comfortable temperature, sex etc.
Survival is a by-product.
"... Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying—a replicator. This may seem like a big stroke of luck... Freakish or not, this kind of luck does happen... [and] it had to happen only once... What is more, as far as we know, it may have happened on only one planet out of a billion billion planets in the universe. Of course many people think that it actually happened on lots and lots of planets, but we only have evidence that it happened on one planet, after a lapse of half a billion to a billion years."What is irksome to me is that someone like Dawkins routinely make absolute claims of fact about the earth's history, for which he claims there is evidence, but he says that nobody knows how it happened. Is that what you mean by "hypotheses surrounding the origins of life are speculative"? If these purported events are merely conjecture then why are they continually presented as facts of natural history in the continuum of evolution from the Big Bang to Michael Jackson? And since natural history really is an unbroken continuum of events, why, other that practical reasons of scope of research, would one second prior to the beginning of macro-evolution be out of bounds of evolution and not one second after the beginning, other than merely by an argument from definition?
It is unsurprising that "those who are studying the origin of life" would investigate naturalist hypotheses. What other line of reasoning should people in the physical sciences pursue?
There is a difference between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism. If science is to remain exclusively within the natural (material) realm methodologically (this itself is a metaphysical assumption) then in any putative naturalistic accounting of history the term ‘evolution’ cannot logically be excluded from the emergence of any thing that exists, including the beginning of life, or the universe itself because the universe began and has ‘evolved’ to what it is today.
It seems to me that if such questions are entirely speculation, or conjecture because we really don't know what happened, then it is not science to assert that events happened of which we are ignorant.
Cordially,
Well, there is also the instinctual avoidance of danger (fight or flight).
The proponents are doing all the heavy lifting for me.
Cordially,
"Evolution comprises all the stages of the development of the universe: the cosmic, biological and human or cultural developments. Attempts to restrict the concept of evolution to biology are gratuitous. Life is a product of the evolution of inorganic nature, and man is a product of the evolution of life."Cordially,
Theodosius Dobzhansky
"The explanation of an eclipse as being due to "magic" is not a useful explanation."
You missed the point of the steps: it was the recognition of the pattern that was useful. It was incomplete in the why or how, but the observation still had application.
Everything in Ich's doc dumps presupposes that the evolutionary premise is proven... because, it's... proven,...and then takes this circular reasoning to a level of con-artistry rarely seen.
Evolution's frauds and flaws are there for any rationally thinking person to appreciate. Apparently, you just don't happen to be one of them.
Evolution has such hard core DNA evidence, that to disbelieve it is ... just unbelievable.
OK. Prove it. Your own words. Are you speaking from your own research, or are you intending to quote someone else's vain speculations in the liberal MSM?
Show us what you know for a change. Show us you can put two cogent thoughts together that make any scientific sense. Forget the Ichy doc dump routine -- he just uses that for a smoke screen to hide behind and to gloss over what he doesn't know himself.
I really think that some "creationists" are merely atheist trolls attempting to embarrass Christians by making them look stupid.
If that is what you "really think," one may reasonably conclude that your powers of cogent reasoning about any topic -- let alone a topic of science -- must be truly impoverished.
You just go ahead and keep thinking that. Anything you say from this point forward will be able to be appreciated from the readers' now privileged insight as to how you "really think" -- or perhaps more accurately stated, can't think.
Well, I'm sorry you're irked, but it's not like a man can't have an opinion.
And since natural history really is an unbroken continuum of events, why, other that practical reasons of scope of research, would one second prior to the beginning of macro-evolution be out of bounds of evolution and not one second after the beginning, other than merely by an argument from definition?
This is a non sequitur. Evolution as a practical scientific theory *must* be limited in scope of investigation. Just because some scientists express opinions on the subject does not mean the technical denotation is changed. Furthermore, just because these are opinions with which you may disagree does not mean you may redefine it, either. One of the reasons for maintaining rigorous hold on a technical definition is because it's so easy to redefine things. People are great definers and categorizers. Finding patterns is one of the things we're really good at, from dividing up history into eras to taxonomy to the periodic table. We're so good at it, some people will find patterns where there are none, like finding a potato that resembles Elvis or those spiritualists who listen to television static wanting to hear voices and so occasionally hear some random bit of white noise that sounds like "get out."
If science is to remain exclusively within the natural (material) realm methodologically (this itself is a metaphysical assumption) then in any putative naturalistic accounting of history the term ‘evolution’ cannot logically be excluded from the emergence of any thing that exists, including the beginning of life, or the universe itself because the universe began and has ‘evolved’ to what it is today.
This is sophistry. In one awkward sentence you've redefined 'evolution' to mean 'life, the universe, and everything' to which the answer is, of course, forty-two.
It seems to me that if such questions are entirely speculation, or conjecture because we really don't know what happened, then it is not science to assert that events happened of which we are ignorant.
You seem to be implying that scientists are asserting something as absolute fact on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, which of course isn't the case. In that long post with all the references in it (241 I think) there was at least one that contained the word 'speculation' in the title, and several named as hypotheses. Reading the titles (I haven't read the abstracts) it's clear people are trying to figure out what happened and how. Hypotheses by their very nature are speculative. Heaven forbid scientists speculate! Now, this is not to say that one hypothesis or another is without any supporting evidence. Hypotheses are designed to match what evidence we now have. What evidence might that be? Perhaps our understand of the early solar system, our understanding of molecular biology and inorganic chemistry? Certainly there is no one dominant theory of a naturalistic biogenesis as there is with the theory of evolution, but of course there are literally mountains of evidence for evolution.
See, you've managed to drag me kicking and screaming off topic. I don't often argue abiogenesis because, honestly, it's not a discipline I know a great deal about. This thread is about evolution, not origins. Please don't keep trying to change the subject.
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