LHoD starting playing the violins, cricetus - he set up the strawman, I’m just pushing it out of the way.
And the objective evidence for this assertion is… where?
My only point of reference is how every science class I’ve every taken at any level was taught. And the fact that those teaching methods worked well.
I’d also be curious as to what “ground-level details” you mean, what the “practical applications” are, and why these trump my “origins and destiny” approach for understanding the system.
They worked well at teaching you what you learned. But do you understand biology?
"Here’s how your muscles work. This is what you can do to help yourself keep in shape. "
As opposed to “First, the Earth cooled. Then the first amino acids formed (Huh?) They joined together into more complex forms. The first living thing was born in a puddle on the barren Earth.”
It’s like giving a lecture on city architecture and starting with a bird’s eye view of Earth - from the moon.
Slow down, cricetus. Combine posts. I have other onlien communities to make sarcastic comments in, you know. 
I’d say that I do understand biology, though I loathe it. Icky science.
Heh. I hadn’t realized weight lifting was more fundamental to biology that natural selection, but then, I’m not a biologist.
My last comment (I hope) on this thread… just because it’s become sort of run out of steam and original thought:
I didn’t like biology in high school, but became interested in it when I read about evolution. I think evolution makes biology compelling. It’s the master narrative that makes the whole thing interesting.
That being said, I still can’t find the spleen on a pig fetus or explain photosynthesis.
Not weight lifting necessarily.
Our biological classes were split into two halves… one was ‘biology’ - we learned cell structures, body details, biological processes … the other half was ‘Health’ which gave the explicit practical ramifications to benefit Joe Q. Student.
As for the other post - evolution, for me, is like icing on the cake. It’s neat, and I like it, but you need the cake first.
Evolution is a theory. A theory explains facts. It makes no sense to learn a theory until you know the facts that require an explanation.
Now does a “basic” understanding of a subject require knowing both the What and the Why? I think for a sufficiently low definition of “basic” the answer is no.
It makes no sense to teach a bunch of discrete facts if you’re not going to explain them.
Obviously not. You don’t have a good grasp of organizing principles, and you think biology is icky. You lack understanding of how to apply reason to a debate. You need to educate yourself in the facts before you pontificate on theory; you lack basic understanding of the discussion at hand, much less of biology.
Daniel
I wish I could edit. That last post added nothing to the conversation. I apologize.
Daniel
You can’t explain a fact until the student knows the fact.
For example:
- Teach the fact that wolves and dogs are similar in some ways, yet different in others.
- Explain why this is so (how dogs evolved from wolves)
However you define “basic understanding,” step 1 has to come before step 2. The only question is when you get to step 2, and I don’t think the answer has to be “immediately.”
In your example, this is true. However, if you’re teaching that:
-Dogs have a certain shape of tooth in their mouth
-Wolves have an identical type of tooth
-Bears have a similar type of tooth
-Cats have a vaguely similar type of tooth
-Humans have a tooth that fulfills a distantly related function
-Rabbits have a tooth that does something completely different
-Birds don’t have teeth
-Jellyfish don’t have mouths at all
Then it’s very helpful to have an organizing principle. You might organize around eating patterns; but in order to do that, ou have to talk about evolution, inasmuch as the relevance of the eating patterns is that animals evolved mouthshapes to match their eating preferences, and evolved eating preferences to match their mouthshapes, bit by bit.
Again, the key word is understanding. Without an organizing principle, you’re memorizing, not understanding.
Daniel
Hey, it’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it. My key objection to the ideas put forth to start with evolution is that it flies in the face of common sense, from my perspective. I’ve tried to illustrate that point with analogies, but if you’re not convinced by now, I doubt you will be.
Who in this thread advocated starting a biology course with evolution? Something that’s fundamental doesn’t nessicarily have to be tought first. For instance, in my highschool physics education, I was tought first that the acceleration of something falling on earth (discounting friction) is about 9.8 meters/second. Some time after that, I was tought Newtons law regarding gravity. Without Newton’s law (or something more sophisticated) there is no way of explaining that acceleration or why it doesn’t apply in space / anywhere else.
Newton’s law of universal gravitiation is essential to understanding basic physics in the same way that the theory of evolution is essential to understanding basic biology. I also understand that if you put the “basic” standard low enough while still having the guts to call those subjects physics and biology, that statement would appear to be false, but then, I’d argue neither of those “basic” standards are high enough and you’d be teaching crafts* instead of science.
- for lack of a better word.
Make that 9.8 meters / ( second ^ 2 ) . :smack:
Trouble is, that’s disanalogous.
Follow me, here. Evolution explains why animals and plants are in their current forms. Correct? It is a consequence of the basic principles of reproduction and heredity.
Now, while Newton did some very fine work, you have to go to Einstein to start to get the real dirt on why things are in the form they’re in. But Newton is a good place to start. It’s simple. It doesn’t address ‘why’ so much, but gives a good picture of a substantial portion of ‘how’ - as in ‘how things work’.
Do you consider Einsteinian physics “basic”?