Though my Advanced Physics teacher was a total bitch and failed me, she did make sure that everyone in the class understood the difference between a hypothesis and a theory and how a hypothesis that could not be disproven experimentally is not valid - ‘The moon is made of cheese’ can (and has been) disproven experimentally, while ‘There is an omnipotent invisible cheese watching and juding you’ is not, as how can you disprove the existence of an omnipotent being that may not want to be seen?
Well, since it is virtually impossible to disprove it, it must have a finite improbability.
So, all I have to do is figure out exactly how improbable it is, feed the numbers into the Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain logic circuits of my finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea…
At the risk of seeming to contradict my previous post, I do think that alternate theories of “how things came to be” should be taught in schools. But they belong in philosophy, literature, mythology or history classes, not science class.
I’d just respond to all the comments with one response.
You are most likely right. I never really felt the idea was a workable one. In fact, it’s a terribly unformed idea that would be chaos in any real science program. If teachers were all smart folk(trust me, we aren’t), it could be amended to a workable solution by each teacher.
Let me reiterate my main concern, which I feel should be the main concern for people who are firm believers in Evolution. My experience has been that most students can’t list any real solid evidence for Evolution. Sure, they say, “uh…fossil records” and other things, but they mostly believe it is true because they have been told it is.
Basically, they have faith that there teachers have not led them astray. This is what concerns me. I want teachers who teach in a way that promotes self-discovery.
One solution used by many newer teachers is to lay out all assumptions that the teacher holds. For example, if I’m teaching about the Evolution, I tell the students whether or not I believe it. If I’m teaching…gravity or about Hamlet or about Word Processing, the first thing I, as the teacher, do is tell the students my personal beliefs/assumptions about the topic.
Obviously, this only takes five-ten minutes at the beginning of a unit and makes many students feel as if their teacher is being flat out honest with them. I do it when I teach U.S. History. Once the students know my assumptions, they know from where I am coming and can interpret it from there.
It’s not currently a common method, but is quite useful.
Oh, and for here? My assumption would be that the ultimate goal of teaching is to raise humans who can think for themselves. If you disagree with the importance of that, then the rest of my post is irrelevant(see how it works?).
No disagreement here. The most important thing we can teach our kids, more important than any specific fact, is how to critically examine the assumptions that any idea may be founded upon.
Which is what Penn & Teller did.
Successfully, too, I might add.
I vote that the rabbit is male. Prince, indeed.
So what if students can’t prove evolution if you quiz them about it? They probably can’t provide credible evidence for plate tectonics or photosynthesis either, but they accept it as true because their science teacher told 'em. Mind control indeed.
Science teachers today only teach the basics about science’s understanding of the world, and they barely have time for that much! They do (or, at least, are supposed to) teach the fundamentals of the scientific method (hypothesis vs theory, empirically examining evidence and evaluating competing theories), but if you want them to teach kids WHY and HOW science has arrived at all those different theories, you’d have to quadruple the amount of classes in the subject. Not that I’d have anything against that, mind you. 
I don’t get Showtime. If they’d only move to HBO, I could at least have my folks tape it. Are there transcripts available? Clips? What was the show like?
—My experience has been that most students can’t list any real solid evidence for Evolution.—
My experience is that most students can’t prove that right triangles have sides of a2 + b2 = c2, but we teach it to them anyway. It’s certainly important to go back later and teach them how this result was reached: but the reality is you have to teach them something of geometry, and get them used to working with with it, before they are even good enough at the subject TO go back and understand the proofs.
I agree that teachers need to teach more to “how science is/was done” than “what science says.” But the reality is, so many important results depend upon understanding other sets of results, and in limited time you have to let SOME things be givens that the students can go back and examine when they have a better grasp of how to do science.
It’s been many years since I took or taught high school, but I seem to recall that Semester One of plane geometry was MOSTLY proofs. After learning a very small set of unprovable axioms, nothing else could be used for problem solving until it was rigorously proven, a step at a time.
This includes a[sup]2[/sup] + b[sup]2[/sup] = c[sup]2[/sup].
You will note, however, that you had an entire semester devoted to such proofs. Evolution is the foundation of biology, yet it is probably granted a few weeks per semester (if that) in most K-12 systems. We get entire classes devoted to chemistry and physics, but all of biology must typically be taught in the same course. That’s a tall order for anyone to fill, so it’s little wonder that so much of the public has a poor understanding of what evolution is, how it works, and how we know what we know about it - there just isn’t enough time devoted in most curricula to make sure that it’s taught properly.
I am a high school teacher and where I teach, most biology teachers are afraid to spend too much time on evolution because of the inevitable complaints from students and parents.
Not to mention that some of the biology teachers themselves either don’t understand evolution or are actually Creationists themselves.
:eek:
All I have to do in my classes (physics) is say the words “Big Bang” and I can see from the expressions on their faces that half of my students have immediately put up a wall and will be defensive and unwilling to accept anything else I say on the subject.
However,
This pretty much hits the nail on the head. Teach them how to think critically and analytically and to understand how science works. You can’t force a Creationist to accept evolution, but you can teach them how to think logically. The rest is up to them.
I just logged back onto the dope (busy weekend), and I saw the show. I thought it was great, Gish is an idiot, and it was entirely too short.
That being said I wish, Badtz Maru was being taught in highschools, because from what I’ve been told-it’s not.
This can be a problem with anything that is taught. Why is evolution being singled out?
I don’t think this is necessarily a good idea. You are supposed to be the one with the knowledge in the subject, not them. Don’t you think that the students would wonder why they are being taught something their teacher doesn’t even believe?
I think I might need a clarification on what exactly you mean and what age level the kids are.
That’s frightening. I thought the “Big Bang” was pretty much accepted now-a-days.
Responding to a few points here.
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Yes, it does make it awkward if the teacher does not believe what he/she is teaching. But it is better to tell students you don’t believe something that you are required to teach than to pretend you are neutral(or worse…believe in it). It is either this or let each teacher decide for him/herself.
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Yes, I do think students would wonder why their teacher is teaching something he/she doesn’t believe it. I’m glad they are wondering why he/she has to.
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Meatros, trust me, while the average student in my experience does believe in evolution, I always get a very mixed reaction to the Big Bang. Actually, I’d estimate that less than half have ever believed in it. Again, this is my experience. In fact, at university(I went to the University of Michigan), I found many of my science teachers(all but one of who believed in evolution) were not exactly confident in Big Bang. In all fairness, there was one prof. who was very much a believer in it.
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Yes, while evolution was the topic here, I really do think that American students have a hard time giving detailed proofs of why they believe anything they learned. We produce regurgitating machines, who live for the grade mark and not for the knowledge. My goal has never been simply to shift what the machines regurgitate(evolution-creation or something), but rather to develop people who think.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with most teachers, biology included. For most teachers, their truth is the only truth and it is fact. Not just evolution, everything.
You don’t even want to know how much political sway teachers have over the 18 year old students in their class on election year. I have actually heard teachers go on and on about who or what to vote for and why. It is quite common.
Here’s the thing though, depending on the age of the student, your opinion of the material is very likely to influence them (IMO).
Well, aren’t there alternate hypotheses to the big bang that haven’t exactly been disproven yet, like a steady-state universe or the possibility the universe is contracting and our perception of time is backwards. 8^)