From here:
Will the Ohio-folk move like the Kansans did a few years back and remove the offending board members? Or will Ohio-school children continue to be subjected to unscientific lesson-plans in their science classes?
Is this a case of state-control of education gone afoul? Should Ohio School Board have the right to institute lesson plans that teach the children things that are incorrect?
This is terribly sad and is only happening because creationism isn’t in any way robust enough to stand up as science in its own right, so it must be supported by statute - stupid.
I still don’t know what this means. I wink at the idea that there may have been incremental genetic programming upgrades over the course of evolution. Is this ID? Or is ID simply a re-labeling of Biblical creationsm? Or is it kept so vague as to accomodate these 2 very different possibilities?
The ID proponents tried this last summer (teaching ID with Evolution) and a whole host of scientists came in to protest, so they backed down. Then, in a last minute change, the board president snuck in a “tweak” that advocates “scientific criticism” of Evolutionary theory, and holding forth that ID is such a critique.
I suspect that they were clever enough in their wording that there will not be a Kansas-like revolt of the voters on the issue, so it will wind up in the courts.
I don’t think it’s necessary to teach evolution. It’s just a theory and not all theories are taught in school. Sure it’s important but there are lots of other things that are important that aren’t taught in school; however, teaching any sort of creationism should not be allowed since this obviously breaks the separation between church and state.
For that matter, why teach gravity?
Seriously though, evolution is one of the, if not the, unifying principle in biology. Without it, biology is in large part just a collection of random facts and arbitrary classifications.
“Just a theory” == “I am utterly ignorant of science.”
And that means that no theories should be taught in school? I’m really not seeing your point here.
And so we shouldn’t teach anything important? By the way, what important things that can be taught are not on any school curricula?
Thanks for that Dogface. I have been trying for ages to think of a succinct way of addressing the “just a theory” statement. I think you’ve nailed it.
To the issue raised in the OP. I’m in Australia so should not be concerned with what a school board in the US does, but my heart breaks a little whenever I read about the intrusion of faith into a science curriculum.
How about this proposal? We will discuss “how intelligent design is behind the evolutionary process” in our science classes if you describe “how the evolutionary process is carrying out God’s plan” in your religious instruction classes/Sunday Schools.
Better yet, how about this? We will discuss science and evidence in our science classes and you can discuss God and faith in your religious instruction classes.
The kind of evolution I learned in high school didn’t even really clash with the ID faction, it was basic Darwinian stuff - the strongest survive - and we did a lot of things about the difference between dominant and recessive traits, DNA process, etc. There was never a discussion about how animals could have arisen from single-cells or anything of the sort.
This was in a science/tech based high school and there was pretty much no displays of religion outside a single bible club with nary 20 members meeting once a week, so I don’t think it was the workings of any religious pressure. Its simply the level of material school kids can handle.
ID is a variant of the “original” form of creationism, Special Creation.
SC basically maintains that all living things are created as is, in their current forms (this is typically limited to various nebulous “kinds”, as described in the Bible; it does not mean that all living things are specially created, but rather the “kinds” were created, and reproduce after their own kind). However, this idea has been pretty soundly dismantled by modern evolutionary theory (and some good old-fashioned observation).
Given the untenability of SC as a whole, creationist proponents have put forth ID: the idea that while kinds may not have been created, certain molecular components, or other very complex morphological traits, behaviors or relationships were created, or rather, “designed”, by some intelligence. It is, essentially, a re-hash of Paley’s “Divine Watchmaker” argument, which also pretty much fell by the wayside with the advent of Darwinian thinking. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to dress this baby up in nice quasi- or pseudo-science and present it before the masses as “real science”. Those who perhaps only casually (if at all)understand science or philosophy may be inclined to think that IDers give good arguments, but in reality, many of those arguments boil down to, “well, you can’t explain this <thing>, so it must have been designed!” Or, all-too typically, “I can’t think of how this might have evolved gradually, therefore it must have been designed.”
Indeed!
Not to take anything away from Dogface, but a less confrontational rebuttal can be found here.
Thanks also to you for that link. The problem is that the sort of person who dismisses a scientific theory as “just a theory” is usually also the sort of person who would not work their way through that web page. Always worth a shot at educating them though.
When confronted with a “just a theory” person, I try to describe the scientific method and explain terms like “hypothesis,” “observation,” and “theory,” but even after explaining why “theory” is just about the strongest term there is, I’m often dismayed when the person I am talking to will still say, “I understand that, but it’s still just a theory.” That’s when I would like to say something like, “Fine, but I warn you that if you insist on using the expression ‘it’s just a theory’ you are also implying ‘I am utterly ignorant of science’.”
It might make you feel good, but it won’t advance the argument-- although sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that! 
You’re right; it isn’t necessary to teach evolution if you decide that biology shouldn’t be part of school curriculae.
Ask any high school science teacher, or for that matter any professor of (any school of) biology, anthropology, paleontology, and so forth… they’ll all tell you you’re wrong.
I don’t know where everyone got their negative reaction from my post. There are subjects that aren’t taught in school because there simply is not enough time to do so. Someone has to decide what is taught and what is not taught. It is not totally unreasonable for a school to teach biology without evolution, they’d be foolish to do so and I wouldn’t want to bring up my kids in such a district but it’s up to the laws governing that school. If they don’t want to teach evolution and the law permits them to not teach it then that’s fine - perhaps they’ll spend more time on The Big Bang or other theories (or non-American history) that are not generally given much if any time. If you feel so strongly that Evolution MUST be taught then get the federal government to pass a law. This same story keeps on popping up in the news over and over again.
Hmm, perhaps…but schools do teach outmoded theories (at least when I went to school) - it’s not a total waste of time to do so. I spent a lot of time learning the Bohr model of the atom only to find out about Q.M. in college.
I don’t see how you can think I said any of the above. You must have just had a very negative reaction to my statement that “Evolution is just a theory” which it indeed is. Sure, Evolution is “most likely” the way things work.
As for important things that are not taught…Non-American history/geography for one. It amazes me how little American kids know about the rest of the world. I just read a thread in which it was pointed out that quite a few Americans think that the Sun orbits the Earth! I remember very little Astronomy taught at school except at the higher levels. How about a foreign language? In most Western countries a foreign language is a mandatory subject - not in the U.S.A.
Evolution by natural selection is the very foundation of modern biology. You cannot begin to understand antibiotics, germ theory, genetics, the structure of the cell, or thousands of other very basic concepts in biology without a foundation in microevolution. To suggest is that it is not always necessary to teach evolution in school is like saying there is no need to understand addition and subtraction in order to make sense of Calculus and physics. You cannot separate the subjects in this way in the least bit.
Now if you are talking about macroevolution, yes, that is a topic that can be debated. Microevolution, though, and evolution by natural selection is NOT just a theory. It is a fact. It does happen. It has been shown to happen both in the lab and in the real world.Speciation (macroevolution) has also been observed. So that too is a fact.