A much-needed report on teacher preparation in the United States has just been released by the National Research Council (NRC). While the attention it focuses on ways to improve the education prospective teachers acquire is of critical importance, a major disappointment (perhaps embarrassment would be a better word) with the report is that it completely ignores the manufactured controversy over the teaching of evolution as a central tenet of biology.
This isn't to say that the report ignored the teaching of science itself. Indeed, science was one of the three areas given primary attention, joined by reading and mathematics. Additionally, the committee writing the report recognized two salient points about science education. First, in a participatory democracy it is essential that citizens achieve at least a basic level of science literacy. Second, national and international studies of students' science knowledge continue to show that U.S. students, on average, fare very poorly.
And yet, probably in a desire to avoid controversy, the report omits any mention of the single issue likely to impact teacher training and student learning more than any other. Fear of facing the dominant problem means that progress is likely to be small at best.
Ignoring the issue, however, isn't going to make it disappear. Rather, ignoring the issue is going to make it increasingly difficult for teachers to understand science fully and to teach it well.
The science curriculum advanced by young earth creationists such as those at Answers in Genesis, the folks behind the Creation Museum-cum-theme-park outside Cincinnati where school kids go to see dinosaurs and humans cavorting, is completely at odds with that of the world's scientific community. And it's important to note that if such an extreme curriculum were to be fully implemented, there would be significant impact on subjects well beyond biology. In fact, significant restructuring of chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, anthropology and linguistics, as well as biology, would have to take place.
That the problem is very real has been strikingly demonstrated by a relatively recent study showing that one in six high school biology teachers could be considered to be a young earth creationist. Given that evolution is the framework upon which all of biology is dependent, and given that the great population geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky so well and so famously said in 1973 that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," it isn't surprising that our students are being poorly educated in science. Even though the NRC report makes a general call for teachers to have a richer understanding of scientific content, it just couldn't bring itself to tackle this critical issue.
Perhaps even more important than the lack of specific scientific information taught to our students is our inability, or our unwillingness, to educate students about the very nature of science. For the most part, we refuse to help students differentiate between science and non-science -- and between non-science and nonsense.
The science curriculum advanced by such creationist organizations as the Discovery Institute makes an already bad situation far worse. They're attempting to have science redefined to include the supernatural and to move away from the well-established concept of hypothesis testing that is central to the scientific method. And they're promoting intelligent design creationism, which has the concept of irreducible complexity at its core -- a concept that calls for the end of scientific investigation once a creationist "expert" declares that further investigation would be fruitless. Remember that Michael Behe, the leading proponent of irreducible complexity, declared under oath in the Dover, PA "intelligent design" trial that by his definition, astrology is every bit as much a scientific theory as is intelligent design.
If science education is going to be strengthened in the United States, something that virtually everyone agrees should happen, people must be willing to stand up and be unafraid to declare that some concepts fall outside the bounds of science. And then, collectively, we need the will to say that those topics will not be taught in science classes -- period. We should be no more worried that creationists will be upset when we forcefully declare their ideas unscientific than we are concerned about the feelings of those who promote astrology.
Accomplish this simple goal and have serious discussions with prospective teachers about the nature of science, showing them how to differentiate science from pseudoscience, and we will make great strides toward educating a scientifically literate population.
Refuse to move in this direction, refuse to even raise the issue in a major national report about improving science education, and instead continue to allow local school boards and state legislatures to promote nonsense as science because of the fear that very vocal religious fundamentalists will be disappointed and the students of the United States will continue to land at the bottom of all of those international science tests.
The choice about how to proceed is ours -- and very clear.
Follow Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mzclergyletter
John Farrell: Bad Faith (in Science): Darwin as All-Purpose Boogey Man?
I am now a Pagan but even when I was Christian I had enough sense to believe in evolution. It is the best explanation of how life came to be as it is.
I sincerely hope a way to keep Creationism or ID out of the public schools is found. Unless we nip this nonsense in the bud, our ranking in scientific literacy will continue to slip. We really cannot, as a country, allow that to happen.
At the same time, religion and science cannot be fully understood independent of each other. The first Genesis account of the Creation is actually a very poetic approach to part of the evolutionary process. I think the composer of this account had an intuitive sense but did not have the scientific context from which to build. I think we need to give credit to everyone who at least tries to come to terms with the physical world as well as the spiritual world, not divorced but as part of a single whole. It is no coincidence that often the first word from angels and prophets is "Look!" - thus initiating the process of observation and recollection.
Science and religion are mutually exclusive (Gould was wrong on this issue) because the way each approaches a set of problems is completely different.
Hence why the former is rational, and the latter: pathetically irrational.
Conversely, science approaches big questions without the arrogance of pretending to know the answer, and these two styles are in fact completely at odds.
Religion covers everything else.
Redefining or obfuscating what science is leaves us in a very vulnerable situation. The less our people understand it, the less manpower we'll have in these fields and the less competetive we'll become on the global market. Creationism is something we should have shed in the 19th century and it's a tragedy we still have to address it in the 21st.
Lawyers who espouse flat earth concept of science generally have blocks of stock in book manufacturing facilities. They are also Communists. After all, this is "the American way"! create a "bubble", make your cash and retire in France while scoffing at American nitwits dumb enough to believe in medieval concepts.
As an "old style Cold War Communist spy", I and all my cronies who slaved away spying, kick ourselves in the ass for our efforts. While Neo-Communists sport around in laughing at American dolts who love , and constantly lionize their propaganda, as the "word of Gawd"!
I will become evangelist myself, as it is the only hope I have to get a babe, some cash and presentable fashion accoutrement.
European comrades are incredulous. They shake their heads and roll their eyes in astonishment, and call America "The confluence of halfwits and numb-skulls".
Even with the influx of top Nazi scientists after WW II, this slide towards oblivion was out of the "clear blue sky!"
If my career as TV evangelist does not work out, my only hope is to bring out new line of "Cold War Fashions" suitable for young revolutionary type chaps, and chicks. Will have Deluxe fashion expert Karl Lagerfeld as consulting designer.
But in many states, school boards and teachers and superintendents are all, or mostly, creationists. I don't see how to fight them other than to move to a more reality-based state.
http://thefiresidepost.com/2010/05/03/rednecks-talk-intelligent-design/
Go with me for a second on this (whether you're an atheist of a fundamentalist): Assuming God is real and is the omnipotent creator of the world... couldn't God choose to employ a big bang and some biological evolution to do the job?
Assuming a creator started up the cosmos and left it to run, cranking in a little evolution along the way, is OK as long as we remember that it's a religious idea, not science. Science doesn’t require the God hypothesis.
It all stops being OK when you try to enshrine these beliefs in the law, and try to force it to be taught as fact. It's religion, as must not be allowed in our schools. There are churches aplenty - go there if you prefer belief and faith to facts and evidence.
Religionists know they are losing the propaganda war due to the dawn of the communication era - they cannot control the sources of information like they used to be able to, so people are getting smarter about what they accept as real or imaginary - religion is easier to sell to ignoramuses.
This is why religions want their ideas taught in our schools - they need to get to their new sheep early, so as to muddle their minds as early as possible, and get the belief systems going.
And that’s why it cannot be allowed – treat religion like booze – you have to be 21 years old to drink or join – and no driving (or thinking) is allowed while under the influence.
I know, that'll really peeve conservatives everywhere who hate centralized government. Tough, I say. If people are going to teach this stuff as science, they've gotta be saved from themselves. (How elitist of me.)
Where I will differ with you is on the whole "ignoramuses" and "under the influence" line of thinking. You don't help anybody with that kind of junk. Please keep the conversation up on the high road.
Teachers tend to find jobs in the communities where they were raised. What teachers actually teach in our classrooms does not necessarily match the official curriculum, and students in conservative communities who may disagree would face the wrath of their community if they gave voice to their complaints.