Sorry, I was referring to English usage.
-VM
Hi everybody! Just getting back to this thread. I’m catching up on all my reading since Wednesday evening.
That’s an interesting point. To the extent that anti-evolutionary stances produce a general lack of respect for science, or a mistrust of scientists in general, I’d say that’s a bigger problem than the non-acceptance of evolution itself. If you don’t accept evolution, that doesn’t affect me very much, if at all. If you don’t accept Climate Change, you hurt us all.
The USA is suffering from death of a thousand cuts.
Okay, I’m baaaaaack.
My thinking, of course, is that evolution should be taught, with the facts and evidence and arguments and logic and all that. And yet, I’ve argued that students should not be required to believe any of that, and in particular, should not be required to profess to believe it, nor to renounce their anti-evolution or YEC beliefs.
What I want to avoid is establishing some kind of orthodoxy where students are require to genuflect and confess their errors and renounce their former evil ways in order to get credit for learning evolution in my class. (And, to be sure, it has been noted that evolution is only a small part of a full semester or year of a freshmen intro level biology class – taking, what, a week or so? So it’s only a small part of the overall class grade anyway. So sorry, nobody’s likely to flunk out for steadfastly clinging to Creationism in my class.)
(And, BTW, let it be noted that I am NOT a biologist nor a teacher. I’m just a retired computer programmer, who thinks about these things sometime. Maybe that’s why my hypothetical test questions in Post #4 were a bit lame.)
Some have objected to my idea that staunch creationists should be allowed to pass my hypothetical class, as long as they learn and can regurgitate the “right” answers on the tests. Actually, I would hope that my tests, along with class assignments and projects, would require a bit more of the students than regurgitation. A staunch creationist who stubbornly maintains willful ignorance would probably do poorly on the evolution unit, no matter how I phrase the questions. The student would at least have to learn and understand the subject in order to get by, if I managed to design the class right.
Also, some posters have made this point: If the student, who initially believes literal Bible creationism, actually learns and understands the material, and the logical arguments, then the student must necessarily come to believe evolution – it’s unavoidable and inevitable. Any student, who learns the stuff but still insists on creationism, must necessarily not have actually learned the stuff, right?
Mostly, I agree with that. I said that I won’t demand that the student be a “believer”. I never said that I have a problem with persuasion. Evangelical Christiams (Mormons, JW’s, Muslims, whatever) have no problem using “persuasion” to attract converts. Well, I have no problem using scientific, logical, critical thinking “persuasion” to attract converts either.
OTOH, there do seem to be people for whom logic and critical thinking really is a whoosh – right over their heads. Some people seem able to learn all the stuff and know it and STILL can’t make the connection that their old ideas don’t work. It’s like you teach them, and they just can’t connect the dots. So some students, I suppose, will learn the facts and the logic, etc., and will still stubbornly cling to their Creationism anyway. They just can’t seem to connect the last few dots.
I think, as most of this board does, that fundamentalism, anti-evolution, YEC’ism, etc., are wrong. If a student believes all that because of ignorance, then maybe some factual education can “win one for science”. I’m all for that. And if a student believes all the fundamentalist stuff because they are just moronic and can’t grok a logical argument with facts, well, that’s just moronic. We can try to teach them usable critical thinking, and hope for some success with that.
The problem has also been noted that these unmoveable creationists could get their degrees and become “credible experts” working for anti-AGW causes, or lobbying for Creationism in the public schools. Well, yeah, there’s that problem. I don’t know that we can really stop that at the freshman biology level. I think those are the students mostly likely to regurgitate the “right” answers on tests even if they staunchly believe those answers are wrong. Well, maybe. In general, I don’t think many staunch fundamentalists will actually go into fields of work where it matters. They could become a tinker, tailor, soldier, or sailor, but would probably not go into STEM fields much where it matters. But I don’t want to make it a litmus test that they must answer questions that implicitly require them to renounce their religious beliefs. I don’t think that kind of “orthodoxy” belongs in academia.
Some other posters noted a bigger problem, which I also don’t think we can do much with at the freshman bio level anyway: The staunch creationist who doesn’t go into a STEM field at all, but becomes a politician or other influential policy-maker. Yeah, that’s a problem. Heck, they’ve lately made it point of pride that they aren’t scientists! They push for idiotic public policy (see: SRIOTD thread), and then excuse their idiocy by pointing out that they aren’t scientists, and stand by their idiocy anyway.
The best we can do in a freshman bio class is to teach the facts, the Theory, the logic, the creative thinking, and hope that as many as possible of the budding young fundies are enlightened and diverted away from the way of moronism.
Another thought, about a specific post a ways upthread (although I won’t bother to search it out to quote it exactly):
There was that post that quoted the silly “content warning” labels that some textbooks now must have. Trigger warning! Content may cause student to think! OH NOES! The horror!
What’s striking about those warning is the degree of weasel-wording in them. They’re basically a sop to students (or their parents) who get all in a dither about it. But those books still teach evolution, don’t they? Even if they start with a disclaimer about it?
I don’t think all is lost there. Those warnings give each teacher a lot of slack. The danger lays in all the creationist-minded teachers who will sabotage the lessons, and use those warnings to back them up.
The conscientious science teacher (that is, one who sees the science teacher’s job as actually teaching science) could deal with that. Those warnings contain enough weasel-wording that such a teacher could discuss the warning, with a strong slant toward promoting science rather than denying it. It seemed to me that there’s plenty enough in those “warnings” that a good science teacher could cherry-pick and slant to make it that warning a strong PRO-science statement instead of being an anti-science statement.
It seems to me to be another hurdle for a good science teacher to jump through, and a mediocre(or fill-in) science teacher to give up on. A “good science teacher” should be spending her/his time teaching good science, not having to think up ways to dodge roadblocks like this.
Of course. They can believe whatever they want. They still have to do the required classwork and homework, and they absolutely may not disrupt the class.
Sure. I’m even willing to allow them, during discussion, to make some token “showing of the flag.” If one of the students says, “I don’t actually believe in this,” well, not a lot of harm is done. Say it once, we all heard you, now STFU.
It’s when they think they must engage in vigorous debate – and I’ve seen that happen – that there’s trouble.
Pretty much like a lot of other courses. I got by most of my history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and even mythology courses on the “regurgitate” model. I figured out what the teacher was teaching, and understood it well enough to answer exam questions correctly. That’s often enough.
Disagree. They’re still carrying the baggage around in their heads. They still are thinking, “Okay, this is more complicated than I thought, and I see now why the ‘Law of Thermodynamics’ argument is bad, but Pastor Bob says it’s all Satan’s lies, and I know he’s right.”
You can lead the kid to knowledge, but you cannot make him think.
It isn’t even a failure to connect the last few dots: they still don’t believe some of the last few dots. They can connect them just fine: they just think there is something wrong with them. You can teach the geologic column all you want, but they still believe, in their hearts, “Noah’s Flood.”
Actually, I think those “content warnings” could be used, by a conscientious science teacher, as a springboard to some good discussions. As you say, a less-than-conscientious teacher could use the same statement as a springboard to some less positive discussions. Of course, that’s the problem with those kinds of statements.
It emphasizes that “evolution is only a theory” – Well, science students need to understand exactly what “theory” means in scientific thought. We need to have that lesson, that that statement could be the starting point.
It also mentions that there are still unanswered questions, and even includes a note of encouragement for students who will be the future researchers looking into that. With a proper discussion of the “unanswered questions” and emphasis on the prospect of further research, we could be encouraging that.
That IS good science teaching, not just dodging of intended fundamentalist roadblocks. If the teacher is good enough to run with it.
Given that everything in science is subject to further research and experimentation, I don’t understand this focus on “believing” in evolution. As far as I know, science is not taught from the standpoint of, “I’m in authority, and you must believe what I say.” It’s taught from the standpoint of, “We’ve done this experiment thousands of times, and we always get this result” or “we’ve examined this many fossils and here’s what we’ve found wrt evolution.” But it is implicit in scientific thought that anyone can go out and test the theory for themselves–that’s what science is. Science doesn’t take things on this person or that person’s authority; science studies and experiments. Science keeps what works and throws out what doesn’t.
The only extent to which belief matters–and I mentioned this earlier–is the foundational belief: Science works and magic doesn’t. If we can’t convince young people of this, it doesn’t really matter what we tell them about evolution.
Fortunately, we’ve got science “themed” channels like the Discovery channel doing special reports on ghosts, hauntings, and Bigfoot. And that’s really helping.
-VM
There is limited time to get through the curriculum that is assigned, and even the best teachers have to work their asses off to do so. These religious roadblocks take away from precious teaching time.
So you would advocate disclaimers for all the other theories (including gravity, too)? Or how about we treat the theory of evolution like all the others. Explain what a theory is, then just teach the subject, just like we do all the others.
Yeah, those disclaimers are bullshit. There is a time and place to teach how science works, and that’s where students learn the difference between data, facts, hypotheses, theories and scientific consensus, and to learn what the scientific method is. No need to subject Evolution to a special refresher course.
It’s true that there’s a time crunch, but in my experience, the “springboard discussions” are more valuable in the long term than a lot of the proscribed curriculum. Those discussions are what they are more likely to remember and take away with them, long after they forget the sequence of the Krebs Cycle or Mitosis. And they always need a refresher in how science works, because the basic misconceptions die hard.
This is a bit of tangent, but did anyone else misunderstand what a scientific law was in elementary school? I don’t think I really grasped that it was in a completely different category than a theory. And, on occasion, I see posts on the Internet (not something I tend to discuss IRL) where people seem to think that when a scientific theory becomes certain enough it becomes a scientific law. I wonder if the misunderstanding comes from hypotheses potentially growing into theories and laws being more certain than theories (they are observed, after all) so kids might think theories could grow up into laws? I know I’m not the only one to misunderstand it; I just wonder how widespread that misunderstanding is.
Have you read Jon Haidt’s work about how people will discard logic and reasoning when it conflicts with their sacred views? That’s always going to be an issue, although smart students should generally be able to accept parts of religious origin stories aren’t to be taken literally. David Friedman has also pointed out that people have a hard time with some of the implications of evolution where they may be politically incorrect (eg. male/female, ethnic differences).
Suffice to say **Chen09 **has been found to be wrong so many times on that last bit, also when he looks at the evidence of the gas chambers in Nazi Germany.
I guess those views will not be shaken by any evidence. What it is important to remember though is that it was thanks to what happened in WWII is that eugenics and other misguided racist “sciences” were discredited and remain so specially after very little differences were found among the human race.
Related to the subject at hand, it is clear that some groups continue to try to use evolutionary science in a mistaken way to justify their reprehensible positions. That almost all scientists are **not **playing the game of the “scientific” racists is also a very important lesson to learn.
SMBC comic on the subject.