First, I’ll refer you to an article printed in today’s L.A Times:
I am not in the position of having to teach and/or defend evolution to high school students. I'm just curious about where all this is leading; whether students are questioning this subject a lot more than they used to; and how you deal with this subject if you teach it....Or, how would you handle it if you had to?I was a high school teacher, though not of science. Teaching evolution must be really challenging these days. That’s a good thing.
Anything that apparently deliberately disrupts the teaching process (walking out of the classroom, constantly interrupting the teacher after being told not to) can be dealt with as a discipline problem).
But the teacher should be as well-prepared as possible to answer students’ questions that are raised, including the ones that are “traps.” That requires a lot of planning. If the student asks something that the teacher doesn’t know, then the teacher can assign that question to the student for further scientific research. The report, however, must be in keeping with scientific principles.
The student should not be graded on whether or not she or he accepts the science.
I don’t see why civilized debate can’t take place among the students if that is their choice, but the teacher must make clear what the position of the public education’s science curriculum is.
Would it be legal in most school systems to show why Creationism and Intelligent Design are not appropriately taught in science classes?
I taught chemistry and physics for 7 years. The age of the Earth (and evolution) came up occasionally.
I did have one student who made disparaging noises when I brought up the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles over millions of years. I made a point of not getting into an argument with him in the classroom, but I didn’t back down either.
After class, another one of my students came up to me and made the comment, “I read the Bible for religious reasons and to improve my life as a Christian. I never took it to be a science book, though! I thought that went out with the dark ages!” I chuckled and replied, “If only that were true.”
I did have another student who arrived at my school thoroughly indoctrinated with young Earth creationist theories. Other than this, she was an excellent, thoughtful student. At the end of the school year, she indicated that she hoped to major in biology. :eek: I honestly recall thinking to myself, “Good luck with that!” As she left though, she added that she was trying to look at things more critically and scientifically, which I took for a hopeful sign. I felt that the year I had her as a physics student had a positive effect on her challenging her preconceptions.
One thing I found very helpful was to know way more about the subject than the students did, which is something that should be true of any teacher anyway. Lazy teachers need not apply.
Another was to remain calm at all times and to not get into arguments in the classroom. My demeanor was calm and confident at all times, whether I was discussing the age of the Earth, evolution, chemical stoichiometry, or Newton’s Laws of Motion.
My husband teaches sociology at our local university branch campus, and he’s had experiences with this sort of thing. His subject matter is the standard stuff in sociology courses: the social forces behind contemporary issues like abortion, family roles, poverty, drug abuse and crime. He’s careful never to express personal opinions about any of these issues, but just presents the facts on both sides.
However, there is a very small population of students for whom questioning any of their opinions on social issues is incredibly offensive and examining the “other side’s” points is vaguely immoral. He encourages class debate, but some people won’t participate, because to them, there* is *no debate. Their opinions are concrete.
I remember one student who decided to martyr herself. The students were asked to write three papers, examining an issue through one of the sociological perspectives. Her first paper was basically why God says abortion is wrong. Hubby took her aside and explained that her opinions were not what he was looking for: he wanted analysis of facts. He gives all of the students a lot of leeway on their first paper, because they often don’t understand exactly what he’s looking for. He spends an entire class period after the first paper, explaining what they did right and what was wrong-- the differences between opinion and facts. (Some people are astonishingly shaky in understanding this concept.)
Her second paper detailed why she felt that divorce was wrong. Hubby took her aside and explained why she had gotten a low grade on the paper, and again explained what he was asking for. Her third paper showed no difference, and she failed the course because she also answered questions on tests in the same fashion.
She accused him of being a liberal athiest who was “persecuting” her, that the only reason she had failed was that she espoused views differing from his. She wrote him a nasty e-mail “DEMAND” that he give her the grade she felt she deserved.
So, what’s to be done? Nothing-- there’s really nothing that can be done.
My cousin is a biology teacher (who believes in evolution and is more or less agnostic) at a public high school in Alabama. He said that he’s required to announce at the beginning of the evolution portion of the year that
1- he’s required by law to teach the theory of evolution
2- he is not qualified to answer any questions on theology
3- evolution is a theory (which is also on a sticker on the textbooks, though neither the sticker nor my cousin explains the difference in a “scientific theory” and a “conspiracy theory”, the former because it’s a sticker and the latter because he hates confrontation and says the kids don’t generally care)
He gets questions every year that are very clearly things the kids are taught to ask by their Sunday school teachers that he says range from thoroughly stupid (“if dinosaurs lived 100 million years ago and humans didn’t get here until a few thousand years ago then why are there human and dinosaur footprints together?”) to unanswerably convoluted (“how can we be sure that a divine being didn’t make it seem like there were dinosaurs?”) to the usual (“why are there still apes?”) to the backlash against the Fundies (“if everything has an intelligent creator who created God?”). He generally detests this part of the year, though he says sometimes the students have been too apathetic to care and that was alright.
I disagree. We don’t do this for physics or chemistry, or for any other area of biology for that matter. Why should we do it for evolution? If I go into my physics courses and I tell them that I’m not going to use F = ma because it conflicts with my personal beliefs, they’ll fail me. The evidence that evolution of biological organisms occcurs is over-fucking-whelming. There is absolutely no reason why those who are religious cannot accept those facts and still retain all of their piety. Hell, the Catholic Church itself has stated that intelligent design has no place among scientific theories. What more does anyone need?
One thing for sure. When someone tries to get the subject onto the origin of life get it back on the origin of species.
Evolution concerns the development of new species from existing species and the adaptation of existing species to changing environments.
Darwin did mention that life probably did develop in, I think he phrased it as “some warm pool” but it was just a passing comment and he didn’t expand on the idea to any great extent.
You may be confusing what it means to say “accepting the science.”
A student may be required to demonstrate that he or she is conversant with the material and understands the concepts presented without requiring that the student submit a declaration that he or she believes the material to be true.
It is reasonable–indeed, necessary–that the student demonstrate a grasp of the material presented. It is not reasonable to demand that the student publicly declare their apostasy from the church or family situation in which she or he was raised.
I’ve seen some experts in evolutionary theory express complete disillusionment with the supposed discussion. They discover that while they are making a sincere effort to engage, say, an ID “theorist” in rigorous debate, the forum turns into a vehicle for the ID proponent to grandstand and recite well-worn sound-bites and other propagandist pablum. They essentially talk past one another, no minds are actually influenced, and the ID promoters milk the engagement with a card-carrying Ivory Tower Darwinist for its PR value.
I don’t expect a high-school student to be quite so polished, but I do suspect the nature of the controversey precludes any substantive dialogue.
I’d simply inform the student that he/she will do the homework and take the tests like the rest of his/her classmates, and instruct the student that he/she is not permitted to turn the classroom into a personal soapbox. Lack of compliance will be reflected in the grade. “Debating” creationism is quite possibly a self-defeating exercise (the whole point of “teaching the controversey” is to create an impression there legitimately is one, after all), so perhaps it’s best to simply exlude any such discussion in a science class, where it has no instructive value anyhow. You’re damned if you do or don’t with creationists, so maybe the lesser evil is to just limit the damage by not allowing one or two students waste the rest of the class’ time.
Thanks for the replies. I just don’t remember anything like this ever happening back when I was in high school–but of course, that was a million years ago. (Or am I talking like an evolutionist by saying “a million” ?)
To add to what Lissa said: Yes, indeed: Many people don’t see the difference between fact and opinion, or between faith and evidence. You should see their faces when I tell them that not all opinions are equally valid and that some are terribly uninformed.
I also get several students every semester who turn an argumentative essay into a sermon. They go something like this: “We should not support [gay marriage, stem cell research, and so on] because God does not want us to, [insert series of Bible verses here].”
This occurs despite my explanations (given before the papers are assigned) that faith and evidence are not the same thing; that statements like the above presume an awful lot; that not everyone worships the same God or in the same church; that even those in the same faith have different interpretations of the Bible and very different views on hot topics; that the statements show no consideration of the mixed audience of readers.
My colleagues report the same problem. In my last two textbook reviews, I suggested to the editors/publishers that they add something about this in the textbook sections on argumentation. Maybe it would help if the students saw it in print. Maybe not. I don’t know.
I’m not a teacher, but I remember learning about evolution over the years. When I was in middle school, the teacher told us that if we had any questions about religious views, then we’d need to ask a pastor for guidance. In high school, the teacher told us that there was no such thing as macro-evolution. In college, we watched a video about that was supposed to “prove evolution false” where the speakers said things like, “why haven’t they ever found a duck who had a top bill but not a bottom bill?”. Then a Christian professor told us how he looked at evolution as a religious person. They never mentioned anything else about the controversy.
I know a person with a BS in biology who doesn’t believe in evolution. He just memorized the material for exams, but still believes in the literal Adam and Eve story.
I didn’t teach biology, but I did teach plate tectonics and age-of-the-Earth stuff to high schoolers. Nobody ever questioned it.
Scarily enough, one of the bio teachers in the department where I did my student teaching would tell the kids that evolution wasn’t true but they were required by the state (Massachusetts) to read that chapter in the book.
I was fortunate enough to be involved in a discussion with a fairly prominent and respected microbiologist who conducts research at my university, and she expressed the gist of this statement - that debating ID or Creationism proponents is a waste of time, as they end up talking about completely different subjects: the scientist will ask questions about science and evidence, while the ID proponent repeats the standard propaganda and nonsense. There is no attempt to engage the scientist in honest debate, and the ID people always come away looking better than the scientist, largely because the scientist made the mistake of actually giving the ID folks the time of day in the first place.
(I’m not trying to be coy in not mentioning her name - this was a personal conversation between the microbiologist, a grad student, a couple of undergrads and myself, and I don’t want to be misrepresenting the views of a respected scientist if I misunderstood her at all.)
You think they actually read the text book?
Hubby put a lot of thought into his textbook choice for this last class. He decided rather than a dry tome of social theory, he’d get one which used two stories to illustrate different sides of arguments through one of the sociological perspectives. I thought it was a great choice-- I actually read the book for entertainment purposes.
His students were very upset. “Where are the boldfaced words?” one girl asked him. “How do I know what terms I’m supposed to memorize? There’s supposed to be a summary page at the end of each chapter that lists all the facts and definitions.”
It’s astonishing how many college students have the reading comprehension skills of a grade-schooler.
Critical thinking is not a skill that is very common. Facts/Opionions are different. The first step would be teaching children HOW to think, then you wouldn’t have to teach them WHAT to think.
My first anthropology professor was an ordained minister. He had a very interesting perspective:
If god is all knowing, all powerful, all whatever, then he would have known from the first spark of life, the vast array of life that would come from it. It is a far greater ability to see the splendor of our planet from the “true” beginning, than to form a bunch of stuff out of clay.
IMHO, alot of relgious people don’t give god alot of credit. They give god the easy way out. The most simplistic, most illogical, most inane way of creating humans/earth/animals/life. If you are gonna believe in invisible pink unicorns, at least make the incredibly smart invisible pink unicorns.
I wish the fundies, the young earthers, et al., would come up with some new arguments for these hot topics. If I hear “god created adam and eve, not adam and steve” one more time, I’ll start attending churches JUST to get them struck by lightening.
FWIW, I am not an atheist because I majored in anthropology, nor did I major in anthropology because I am an atheist, many folks can mix those in their brains somehow.
I’m also not a devil worshipper, that is not a synonym for atheist
I taught biology for a couple years in Silicon Valley, and only one student ever questioned evolution - she was also a student who thought she was psychokinetic and no one else took her seriously.
I really would have appreciated more debate - I much prefer teaching students about ways to evaluate evidence and support a position rather than teaching 1, 2, 3 are the characteristics of evolutionary theory. I believe students don’t question what they are told enough, and it would have been fine with me if they wanted to challenge it. But they didn’t.
For the past two weeks I was called to substitute for a special ed class. Most of the students didn’t so much have learning disabilities, but rather had social ones. Their normal teacher was apparently the Mother Theresa of special ed teachers, but when she went on maternity leave the class went all to hell. They had a long string of substitute teachers before even I was called in. The previous sub apparently had a debate with them on the topic of evolution, and even brought a video proving his point.
None of the students believed him. But I do not believe this is because that class was full of fundie morons. Rather, he picked the worst situation to bring it up. As a substitute teacher, I know full well that most students will not take me seriously. They will disagree with me not because they think I am wrong, but rather because they know it will frustrate me to drag out an argument. When they asked me if I believed in evolution, I said yes, but I also felt they had more important things to learn (like how to pass the English CASEE exam on their umpteenth attempt).
If the preivous sub couldn’t convince the class with 2 weeks of debate and a video presentation, there wasn’t anything I could pull up my sleeve to change their mind. And frankly, I didn’t care.
I’m not a teacher, but if I were, I would devote one day a year to the religious creation story. The first year, I’d explain the Hindu version, then the next year, Navajo. I might eventually get around to the biblical one.
I am not a biology teacher, but I am an Earth Science, Chemistry, and Physics teacher. I don’t delve into the biology of evolution, but I do teach the theory of plate tectonics, astronomy, and the fossil record, which are all counter to the tenets of creationism. (So, too, does radioactivity in Chem, but by that time - 11th and 12th grades - the kids don’t have to take the course if they don’t want to.)
I have never had A Problem with teaching the above topics, but I have had a few small problems. In Earth Science (9th grade), I typically do the fossil record (and how it is evidence for evolution) at the end of the year; tectonics towards the begining. The one year that I had a student express any qualms about the age of Earth, I made sure that I took a day from “science” content and discussed “philosophy of science” as it applied to evolution. Basically, I made sure that I reviewed what is a theory vs law, then I went over The Creation-Evolution Continuum. I made sure that it was clear that I would not teach the biblical version of genesis, but that I wanted people to understand that there are many different ways to view the process besides the black and white of creationism vs atheistic evolution. The whole class session generated some very good discussion on the part of the students, including the one who had earlier expressed disbelief at the age of Earth.