Creationism In US High Schools: 16 Percent Of US Science Teachers Are Creationists

ABC News reports on the findings of a study that concluded 16% of U.S. science teachers are Creationists, and that, disturbingly, one in eight are teaching creationism as a valid science:

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in U.S. schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science -- and especially evolutionary biology -- tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles...

...The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2,000 high-school science teachers across the U.S. in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2 percent said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject.

However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48 percent -- about 12.5 percent of the total survey -- said they taught it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species".

Related: Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism's Manufactroversy

Comments

[rich3324]

They need to be fired. ID is not science.

[emerywood]

Long time ago, some philosopher asked " If everything must have a creator, then who created the Creator ? " I don't think that question has been answered yet. Fortunately, faith and intelligence are not mutually exclusive. Some very faithful people are also highly intelligent. In my view, creationism should be taught in church, not in schools.

[lisakaz2]

Indeed. And this is why many astronomers, among other scientists, have faith. Heck, the Catholic Church (at least according to my CCD instructors) held that there was no contradiction between evolution and their God. How do we not know God did not create evolution? There is no answer but for the faithful, there need not be. However, as you rightly state, this is not science and does not belong in a science classroom.

[CitizenFace]

Plus, the Vatican has given all those faithfull astronomers the green light to believe in aliens ;)

[helonias]

Simple the creator,s mom and dad

[SwingingFromCenter]

Great, no wonder we're falling so far behind in science to other countries all over the world. We're teaching our kids that the world is the result of some invisible sky fairy who wanted some friends and who will grant you wishes if you beg it hard enough.

[wolf58]

Einstein writes "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

I agree with Einstein and any teaching of god in public school should never be. Thats what church and sunday school are for. It does not belong in the public school system.

[Mort]

He also said "In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views."

[ObamaFarmer]

The issue is "intelligent design" vs. "natural selection", not "creationism" vs. "evolution". Too bad the article got it so wrong.

"Natural selection" is the theory of evolution, put forth by Darwin, that species either adapt or die, and therefore the surviving species necessarily gain positive attributes over thousands of years. This "theory" is generally accepted by anyone who has seriously looked at the evidence objectively.

"Creationism" is the belief that the universe was created by a god. "Intelligent design" is the belief that evolutionary change (if any) is guided by a god, rather than by natural selection.

Regardless of which terms are used, religious beliefs have no place in the classroom. Church is for religion, school is for science.

[apduncan1]

Define god.

[radmul]

ID is simply creationism repackaged. when they tried to make the argument for ID in court the folks promoting it had not even bothered to retype all of their documents and used the terms interchangeably. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

[Richard729]

When the Institute for Creation Science moved from San Diego to Dallas, TX they assumed a state with mega church pastors like John "the Catholic church is the great whore" Hagee, Texas would welcome and embrace their postulate that men and dinosaurs coexisted, the age of the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000-years-old, everything was formed in six days out of nothing at exactly the same time and evolution never occurred.

But the state of Texas, at least so far, nixed their claim that the ICR could bestow science degrees based totally on religious faith. Even red state Texas is not all that enthusiastic about taking their schools and education system back to the days of the Tennessee Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 which made the teaching of evolution a crime.

Now, it doesn't take a scientist or a theology PHD to know that when Creation Scientists state in their general catalog "All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week described in Genesis.The creation record is factual, historical and perspicuous; thus all theories of origin and development that involve evolution in any form are false" that if this is accepted as science then it would be the shortest and easiest science course ever proposed.

After all, who needs to learn genetics when all the answers are in Genesis? But maybe that's why the United States ranks 20th among all the advanced countries in science literacy.

[Annette]

And dropping fast. To think the US used to have some of the formost respected scientists. Now we have faith.

[amanda85]

"16 Percent Of US Science Teachers Are Creationists"

Yeah, and they all voted for Hillary...

[Annette]

Probably not. Almost certainly Huskabee and going for McCain in November.

[TocinoHumano]

Wow, even in on a thread about religious whack jobs teaching creationism in public schools, somebody finds an excuse to bash Senator Clinton. Pathetic!

Please, get a f*cking life!

[perturbation]

Atheism is not a belief. It is a word that describes an absence of belief in a particular thing. I don't believe in the existence of centaurs either, but would you call an absence of belief in centaurs a belief? If you do, then you've got an infinite number of beliefs on your hands, one for each thing that doesn't exist (and there are alot of those, right?). Personally I don't have time for that.

An absence is not a presence, and not doing something is not the same as doing something. Really it isn't.

[ObamaFarmer]

Actually, atheism is a belief - a belief that God does not exist.

Agnosticism (sp?) is to have no belief, i.e., to say that one doesn't believe one way or another.

[cgpunker]

Unacceptable. Not in any school, any time. There's a % that doesn't teach evolution AT ALL?

Any teacher in a public school that teaches their religious beliefs v. accepted science should be fired (unless they are being paid to teach "my opinion"). On the spot. What a monstrous disservice to those kids.

[Terminal1]

LIFE IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR HEAVEN!!

/puts head in hands

[thinbluetorpedo]

Why, in 2008, do so many still cling to their gods?

[radmul]

Haven't you heard they are bitter.

[TheMadScientist]

Yep, I've been there. Grew up in Missouri, and had a high-school biology teacher whose husband was a Southern Baptist minister. She made us "debate" the creationist/evolutionist arguments one day in class, and we were instructed the day prior to bring in materials to support our case. Well, only 2 of us were on the "evolution" side, just me and my friend Bill. We supported our arguments with the classic diagram of Darwin's Galapagos Finches, etc. The other 25 or so students were on the "creationist side" and brought in....you guessed it, THEIR BIBLES!

So now I'm a cancer researcher and Bill is a paleontologist. The point is, it really doesn't matter what these HS teachers think. The smart, science oriented, strong-willed types who can actually succeed in science will se right through the BS spouted by this 16% of creationist science teachers.

[joebaggadonuts]

Let's change focus a moment. Why don't we just teach kids to learn and let them have access to all the facts and draw their own conclusions? What are y'all afraid of, that they will learn something about the truth?

I am really fed up with the foolish approach we keep taking. Kids need to learn skills not dogma. That's the nature of knowledge, it grows from accumulated facts and people draw their own conclusions. Naturally they make mistakes along the way, but reality intrudes to correct them. Kids don't need you to butt in and 'splain things to them, they just need the facts and the skills to get them.

Let's try teaching them to read several languages so that their sources of information are biased in several directions instead of limited to one. Let's teach them about how to make art and music and how to excel at sports. Let's give them access to the world's great books and let them see for themselves what the great thinkers of history said. Let's teach them skills in math and give them FACTS about science and technologies. Then when they come to us for explanation, we can fill them up with our preconceived notions and let them decide for themselves whether to believe us or not. Do the prejudices we hold fit the facts as they have been enabled to learn them? That should be the criteria for their growing intelligence.

This focus on theories is bu11sh1t. Knock it off!

[only1Demvoter]

joebaggadonuts : *** Post of the thread !! ***

Critical Thinking is the most important notion we can impart to our children.


Thank You joe. -ralph

[BatMasterson]

creationism = religion = dogma

disproving yourself won't help you win any arguments.

[Myshkin57]

Well, I agree that critical thinking is probably more important, but we can hardly expect students to make all the inferences on their own. As they say "we are standing on the shoulders of giants." If being educated in theories was not important then we should think a brilliant man like Aristotle should have invented the personal computer. He didn't and didn't do a lot of things he might have if he were alive today because no one had laid the groundwork. So, while critical thinking is of utmost importance, the teaching of specific theories is important as well to ensure progress.

[Annette]

Theory is a scientific understanding of "facts".

Fact: there is gravity.

Theory: An understaning of what causes gravity with the constant caveat that there is more to learn and the acceptance of the possibility of reassessing the information in light of further knowledge.

Theories are not bul-- they are the understanding that we do not know everything. Kids should have access to many languages and as much information as possible is absolutely necessary for an educated society. One of the most important things a child should learn is to realize that knowledge is constantly evolving.

[ladyfractal]

joebaggadonuts:

No, the focus on theory in science is *precisely* where it should be. ALL that we have in science are theories. Thermodynamics? A theory. Even though we usually talk about them in the term of laws of thermodynamics they are actually theories. That said, as one physicist put it "If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." But it is STILL a theory.

A theory is not a guess. When I use the word theory and I am talking as a biologist, I mean something very far from a guess. A theory is a problem-solving strategy that has a limited domain (in other words ToE are not proper theories) and is testable and falsifiable. I cannot teach biology *without* teaching evolutionary theory because, as the great biologist Dzobhansky observed, "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution". Evolutionary theory is what keeps biology from being nothing more than stamp-collecting in that it ties together seemingly disparate facts about the natural world.

Cheers
LF

[BPCentrisAmerican]

My Catholic education could not have been finer. My HS Bio teacher was not a nun, and passionate about Biology, he taught us well. My chemistry teacher belonged to the Sisters of Charity; who were tough, true educators. I still remember my chemistry teacher in full habit, sleeves rolled up, wearing a stained rubber apron. Ironically in my first 2 years of college my Biology professor started dragging religion into her classes like no Catholic HS teacher ever did before which sort shocked me. I remember dropping her class, and enrolling in a Biology class at a different campus with a great teacher. Catholic schools knew how to teach science and evolution in harmony with religious belief. My sister refers to our generation as hippie Catholics, yet the Nuns of my generation were still quite conservative, and practical at same time.

A lot of Intelligent Designers point to a book by a Professor Behe, of the University Of PA, I watch him debate Darwinism with a University of Michigan Biology Professor on C-Span last year. Behe is a Catholic, who cannot reconcile his faith with the science he teaches; he makes up imperial data as he goes alone. In the discussion with Michigan professor he started using the Borg from Star Trek as the bases for his theories, the guy made a fool out himself, using machine like fictional characters from a TV show, not even part of the natural world.

[newshawk14]

I have no objection to creationism being taught in a parochial school. However, it has no place
in a public school, and some teachers and school boards need to be fired.

[Binea]

I agree.but Intelligent design thoery is not "religion",you call it creation theory..and it is,but it does not promote any one religion or name the creator.To use the bible in a school to support it,well..Muslims and Hindus and all others could bring in their books too to support it,but that WOULD be religion class. Present the facts,the arguements for both evolution and Intelligent design theory and let kids look at it all.Let them decide which makes the best case and which makes more sense.Just teaching evolution or IDT, and teaching it as undeniable fact does border on religion.

[newshawk14]

I disagree, intelligent design, is a lying subset, backed up by ridiculous statistics,
to keep alive the idea of creationism. Mind you, I have no objection to people
believing in a prime causal agent, but accept in on faith, don't try to prove it on
science that virtually no one will accept. I've long admired Voltaire's bon mot, if
God created man in his own image, man has certainly returned the favor.