The teaching of Evolution in US Schools

[softwareNerd]

The mystics in the U.S. have been trying, for year, to stop the teaching of evolution in public schools. They have tried a variety of tactics and are still extremely persistent. This 2001 article from the "National Center for Science Education" gives a brief history of 8 cases where the courts decided for evolution and against some type of mysticism. Since then, there was a case in Dover, PA.

I'm unable to find the other side of the activist story: what school districts have added intelligent design (or some special disclaimer to evolution) to their curriculum? Also, have their been any court decisions in favor of the mystics? If anyone has links, I'd like to know.

[The Wrath]

I don't have links, but I believe schools in Kansas either added intelligent design or took Evolution out. Or maybe it was Kansas City...I can't really remember, but it was something like that.

[softwareNerd]

Thanks for reminding me. Yes, Kansas seems to be full of crazies. It wasn't just the state board of education that voted for intelligent design to be included in the curriculum (though they pretended that they weren't going to include too much mysticism), but the legislature got into the controversy this year, passing a bill ecouraging schools to disavow evolution. The only good news is that 4 of the 6 Republicans on the board lost the election, and their replacements have promised to reverse some of what they did.

The wiki suggested that Ohio had done something like this as well, but this CBS story seems to indicate that, while some committee had snuck ID into the lesson plans, the Ohio Board of Education voted to remove those plans.

Recently, Michigan's board decided against teaching ID.

The NCSE site has news organized by state. For instance...

Alaska: Board strengthens evolution teaching.

Alabama: Many attempts to pass anti-evolution laws

It does appear that the mystics are hard at work in most states.

[Lathanar]

Cobb county Georgia had a couple go rounds with ID and there was a school in Fresno that tried, but I think they should have been allowed, it was an elective philosophy course. Not exactly a scientific class.

[softwareNerd]

The Kansas State Board of Education has changed the "Science Education Standards" once again. This time, some of the tentativeness about teaching evolution has been removed. (The standards continue to contain a good dose of general philosophical scepticism about science and what we can or cannot know. However, the specific scepticism about evolution has been removed.)

[softwareNerd]

An article in the "Public Library of Science (PLOS)" Biology journal claims that scientists are using words like "emerge" and "arise" instead of "evolve" in their papers and grant applications.

In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy.

[punk]

Unfortunately evolution tends to be taught rather dogmatically. That is as facts to memorize.

The beauty of science is that it teaches inductive evidence-based reasoning which helps a person in areas well beyond science. The reduction of the science curriculum at the lower school level to memorization of dogmas does a disservice to students.

This is not to be confused with learning a science at the university level where there is just so much material to learn that you have to (at least initially) take most of it on faith.

At least the ID idiots have forced biology to bring its evidence based reasoning back into the public perception of biology.

I wonder if tossing out evolution altogether and getting students to do comparative anatomy on some animals wouldn't be a better science education.

Edited March 10, 2007 by punk

[softwareNerd]

One could make this point about a whole lot of topics, that are taught in a rote form. Or, are you saying that evolution, in particular, is taught in rote form more than other topics?

I think that evolution is commonly misunderstood, and it would be a surprise if many teachers do not misunderstand it and convey their incorrect understanding to kids. One common error is to think that it's about chance events (though this is the premise that underlies ID, people who support evolution and find the biblical view comical, also make the same error). The second common error is to think of evolution as a change that happens as a species adapts to the environment regardless of whether that adaptation is linked to procreation.

[DavidOdden]

Unfortunately evolution tends to be taught rather dogmatically. That is as facts to memorize.

The beauty of science is that it teaches inductive evidence-based reasoning which helps a person in areas well beyond science. The reduction of the science curriculum at the lower school level to memorization of dogmas does a disservice to students.

I chucked in bold to point to the big problem. I disagree in an important nit-picky way. Science is the systematic enterprise of gaining knowledge of fact. As such, it doesn't necessarily teach anything. It works only if it operates by inductive reasoning, because that is the only way to get knowledge, but the product itself is knowledge of fact (aka "facts"). So it's not hard to see why people who don't really understand science can be profoundly confused about the difference between the general method of scientific reasoning and specific scientific knowledge.

The one thing about evolution that works against it somewhat, from a pedagogical POV, is that unlike physics and chemistry, it's not something that you can demonstrate in a lab. That's expected, since biology is for the most part not a practical lab-science for high school. Without reality there to correct the teacher, it's difficult to not reduce biology to mere fact-memorization, with no connection to the method of validating the knowledge.

[punk]

One could make this point about a whole lot of topics, that are taught in a rote form. Or, are you saying that evolution, in particular, is taught in rote form more than other topics?

I think that evolution is commonly misunderstood, and it would be a surprise if many teachers do not misunderstand it and convey their incorrect understanding to kids. One common error is to think that it's about chance events (though this is the premise that underlies ID, people who support evolution and find the biblical view comical, also make the same error). The second common error is to think of evolution as a change that happens as a species adapts to the environment regardless of whether that adaptation is linked to procreation.

No, quite a few subjects are taught in rote form.

Biology, chemistry, and physics allow for in class demonstrations and experiments. Astronomy ends up being pretty rote, but you could look through a telescope if you had one. Evolution just doesn't invite nice tidy demonstrations or experiments.

I chucked in bold to point to the big problem. I disagree in an important nit-picky way. Science is the systematic enterprise of gaining knowledge of fact. As such, it doesn't necessarily teach anything. It works only if it operates by inductive reasoning, because that is the only way to get knowledge, but the product itself is knowledge of fact (aka "facts"). So it's not hard to see why people who don't really understand science can be profoundly confused about the difference between the general method of scientific reasoning and specific scientific knowledge.

The one thing about evolution that works against it somewhat, from a pedagogical POV, is that unlike physics and chemistry, it's not something that you can demonstrate in a lab. That's expected, since biology is for the most part not a practical lab-science for high school. Without reality there to correct the teacher, it's difficult to not reduce biology to mere fact-memorization, with no connection to the method of validating the knowledge.

I think we agree though, that if the students learned the scientific methodology and missed the rote facts, they'd have learned more than those that memorized the facts but never got the methodology?

[DavidOdden]

I think we agree though, that if the students learned the scientific methodology and missed the rote facts, they'd have learned more than those that memorized the facts but never got the methodology?

Yes, because a man who knows how to do science can recreate the facts himself or look them up and can discover new facts, and a man who only memorizes the creations of others can not discover any new facts: they've learned a finite list, rather than an unbounded method.

[softwareNerd]

Though, one might also point out that it's impossible to learn the method without the facts. Not all the facts, but a substantial set of facts.

Further, in the real-world I don't know of a group of K-12 schools that offer a "good method but bad conclusion" option.