See what happens? You let a chink appear in the armor of evolution pedagogy, and already Google Ads are selling Intelligent Design Card Printers and Supplies!
Daniel
I blame society. 
It’s amazing how the most basic Googling shows that once again, the experts are on my side:
sciurophobic, I’m sure you can see why I’m having difficulty taking your point seriously, when it’s so obviously incorrect. Can you explain this discrepancy between your report of the AP test, and what the College Board reports about it?
Daniel
For extra credit, scroll down to the sample questions from the AP Biology test, pretend you don’t understand evolution, and answer them for me.
Daniel
D’oh! Meant to give you some sample questions to look at. Try 5, 8, and 11.
Daniel
Dammit. 3, not 5, is the better example, although a knowledge of evolution will certainly help with 5.
Daniel
Of course not. I’m saying I got it without my biology teacher tying everything back to evolution. We most certainly learned about evolution.
Ah. It’s much easier for me to accept that you’re not clear on pedagogy. THanks for the clarification.
Daniel
And you might as well say that one can achieve a basic understanding of biology without a basic understanding of biology.
What DOES influence where you draw the dividing line between basic and intermediate? What informs this decision? Since you deny the origins of species are “basic”, what IS basic, and what makes it basic?
Answer these question reflectively, rather than reflexively.
It occurs to me that I should clarify.
It sounds to me as if you’re saying that your teacher taught you evolution, and your teacher taught you other information about biology, and you learned it so well that you got a 5 on the AP Bio test, but that you do not believe that your teacher used evolution to explain everything.
I won’t claim that your teacher used it to explain everything–I’m wary of all-or-nothing claims like that. When you’re explaining why our stomach acid isn’t stomach a stomach alkaloid instead, evolution is not going to provide the simplest explanation of this (although it’ll probably sneak into the explanation a little–a critter that DID have stomach alkaloid probably wouldn’t live to reproduce).
But I’m guessing that your teacher, an expert pedagogue in the field of biology, used evolution as an organizing principle far more than you’re aware. You’re not an expert in pedagogy, so you of course aren’t going to be so attuned to the techniques that he/she used in teaching you.
I can’t prove this, but I can show that experts in the field of scientific pedagogy recommend this process, and I can show that just about everyone who knows anything about teaching biology thinks that teaching evolution is an essential part of the program.
Daniel
And that kind of circular definition moots this debate.
Flow of ideas, I suppose. Based on the science classes I’ve had through the years. The first stage is the broad coverage of the most relevant details (which I equate with the definition of Life and the Things That Living Things Do) and the most practical aspects. (where diseases come from, for instance)
The second layer consists of overarching concepts and themes, interconnecting the items from stage one, and detailing the little exceptions and quirks.
In other words, breadth, then depth.
Then the third stage is the specialized knowledge only useful to a limited audience.
Is it your assertion that in the breadth stage, the student is best off learning the breadth of facts as a series of unconnected facts to be memorized, and that such memorization constitutes understanding of the subject?
Daniel
All I know is that I recently read Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker and am halfway through The Ancestor’s Tale because I didn’t think I understood evolution as well as one should. And despite that, I scored high on a test that many universities consider the equivalent of freshman biology.
Are you asserting that by presenting them in the framework of what living things do that they are unconnected?
To once more delve into the analogy realm … it’s a sandbox. The basics I described give the student the boundaries of the sandbox, and some dirt to play in. You understand where the sandbox stops. However, you can then dig deeper. And one of the layers under the sandbox is evolution.
Does that help?
Yes, actually, I am. “Birds fly, because that’s what living things do. Lizards are cold-blooded, because that’s how living things are. Otters eat fish, because that’s what living things do.” That’s not an organizing principle: that’s call-and-response.
I’m wondering how you’ve derived your theory of breadth-and-depth: is it from your years spent teaching? Is it from your expertise in pedagogy? Is it the theory by which your favorite teacher operated, the theory she explained to you when you asked how she taught so well? Or is it something you’re making up as you go along, despite having nothing to base it on except a dimly-remembered education that you went through?
I’m reminded of a child who has never set foot in a kitchen, but who, by virtue of having eaten cake, declares the cookbooks all wrong. “You don’t need to put any sugar in a chocolate cake,” the child declares: “Chocolate is already sweet.”
It’d be easy to show the child his error; all you’d lose in the process is one ruined chocolate cake. The end-product of your error is more serious.
sciurophobe, I’m not saying that a person must understand evolution on a highly technical level in order to understand biology; for a basic understanding of biology, one needs only a basic understanding of evolution. Again and again, however, in reading children’s resources on biology, I run across explanations that make use of evolutionary theory. Last night I read Jean Craighead George’s How to Talk to Your Dog. In explaining canine body and vocal language, she refers to the fact that they’re descended from wolves.
This is biology at its simplest, written for smart six-year-olds. And there’s evolution at its simplest, right alongside it.
Daniel
And those examples have nothing to do with establishing the boundaries of what is to be covered. Not to mention those are specific traits, not ‘what living things do’ as previously referenced in this debate.
Observation of every class I’ve ever been in. Plus common sense - before you delve deeply into a subject, you establish your framework. Every building needs a foundation or blueprint. Every software project needs a requirements document. Otherwise, the work expended is useless intellectual wankery, which might succeed in its goal - through luck and much extra effort - but which is guaranteed to be replete with defects.
And evolution makes a poor framework, IMO, as its like building the house from the top down. To borrow from physics - first you learn how things fall and completely gloss over the why with Newton’s Gravity-Lite. In more advanced classes, you get the real why, with Einstein’s theories.
Heredity would be like Evolution-Lite.
So, what do living things do, and how is it useful when teaching about, for example, the traits of mammals? Or is it your contention that the traits of mammals are not part of a basic understanding of biology?
Right: the child who’s eaten chocolate cake adds common sense to the mix to declare that you needn’t add sugar to a chocolate cake recipe, since chocolate is already sweet.
Common sense isn’t a substitute for knowledge, and having been in a class isn’t a substitute for knowing how to teach.
Daniel
And to address your analogy: an organizing principle is nothing like the walls of a sandbox. Those walls exist to keep a jumbled, disorganized collection of discrete particles from spilling out: they define what is and is not the sandbox.
Evolution does not form the boundaries of biology pedagogy. Rather, it answers a tremendous number of the “Why?” questions in biology, finds itself in the answer of almost every one of those questions. Being able to answer such questions is essential to an understanding of biology at any level. The difference between a basic and an advanced understanding of biology isn’t whether the “why” questions are being answered: it’s the level of complexity of both question and answer.
A child learning biology asks, “Why can’t humans fly?” That question can best be answered by explaining that our ancestors never developed wings, and talking about how birds and bats and bees developed wings. Then you throw in a lesson about airplanes.
A grad student studying biology asks, “What distinguishes the evolutionary development of flight in the pileated woodpecker from that of the ruby-throated hummingbird?” and the answer involves DNA sequences, evolutionary ecology, and the fossil record.
In both cases, understanding evolution is essential to understanding biology. It’s just an understanding at a different level.
Sandboxes don’t enter into it.
Daniel
It’s of dubious value, but it’s so simple, one can throw it in if one likes. I don’t even remember the full list of traits of living things, but I’ve referred to them several times in this thread - Living things Grow. Living things Reproduce. et cetera.
Except to make the analogy hold, the child would have had to observe the making of the cakes, and thus, the addition of the sugar.
As to the second post - I lump “Whys” into the intermediate group.
I’m not sure what “it” refers to in the first sentence. Are you referring to the traits of mammals, or to your contention, or to the traits of living things?
I’m guessing the last. If so, why do you think that the traits of living things provide an organizing principle, instead of simply being a list of discrete facts to memorize without rhyme or reason?
No. The product of an educator’s expertise is the lesson plan, carried out. The product of the baker’s expertise is the cake. You’ve observed the end product. You don’t know anything about the production process.
Why?
Daniel