Testing Darwin's Teachers

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Hello F(r)iends,

Testing Darwin’s Teachers (an interesting news article)

For the record: I believe in evolution. It’s a good theory, but still a theory.

  1. Why should teachers be afraid to teach evolution?
  2. Why are they afraid of the questions they will receive?
  3. Why aren’t they trained well enough to teach these children in the first place?
  4. Should teachers try to teach a subject they have less knowledge of than the students?
  5. Isn’t the purpose of education to explore ideas without fear?
  6. Why are teachers afraid to explore creationism? Should they be?
  7. Why must is be only evolution or only creationism?
  8. What are scientists afraid of?
  9. Should society teach creationism + evolution? Are there any dangers?

Any observations/questions?

Highlights of the article are below:

[size=92]“…sophisticated questioning of evolution by students has educators increasingly on the defensive.”[/size]

[size=92][i]“First day of a unit on the origins of life. Veteran biology teacher Al Frisby switches on the overhead projector and braces himself. As his students rummage for their notebooks, Frisby introduces his central theme: Every creature on Earth has been shaped by random mutation and natural selection — in a word, by evolution. The challenges begin at once. “Isn’t it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?” sophomore Chris Willett demands. " 'Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn’t.”

Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn’t listening. “I feel a tail growing!” he calls to his friends, drawing laughter. Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He’s about to start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: “How are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could just be some deformed raccoon.” From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: “Those are real bones that someone actually found? You’re not just making this up?”

“No, I am not just making it up,” Frisby says. At least half the students in this class of 14 don’t believe him, though, and they’re not about to let him off easy. Two decades of political and legal maneuvering on evolution has spilled over into public schools, and biology teachers are struggling to respond. Loyal to the accounts they’ve learned in church, students are taking it upon themselves to wedge creationism into the classroom, sometimes with snide comments but also with sophisticated questions — and a fervent faith.[/size][/i]

[size=92]Such challenges have become so disruptive that some teachers dread the annual unit on evolution — or skip it altogether. [/size]

[size=92][i]"If a teacher is making a claim that land animals evolved into whales, students should ask: ‘What precisely is involved? How does the fur turn into blubber, how do the nostrils move, how does the tiny tail turn into a great big fluke?’ " said John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego. “Evolution is so unsupportable, if you insist on more information, the teacher will quickly run out of credibility,” he said.

Anxious to forestall such challenges, nearly one in five teachers makes a point of avoiding the word “evolution” in class — even when they’re presenting the topic, according to a survey by the National Science Teachers Assn.

“They’re saying they don’t know how to respond…. They haven’t done the research the kids have done on this,” said Linda Froschauer, the group’s president-elect.[/size][/i]

-Thirst

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Let’s break it down:

  1. Why should teachers be afraid to teach evolution?
    Whether real or imagined, there is a fear of zealots.

  2. Why are they afraid of the questions they will receive?
    Many teachers, especially in HS, don’t have the background to fully understand the issues. As the man at the DI said, ask enough questions and they will run out of answers. My HS biology class was taught by my school’s football coach. Do they run out of answers because of the theory, or because of gaps in their own education? Just because the objective lens I have in place only lets me see objects greater than one micron doesn’t mean that small ones don’t exists.

  3. Why aren’t they trained well enough to teach these children in the first place?
    Now that is a good question. I’d say it’s because Teaching is a seriously under-valued career choice and needs to be much better supported in order to attract better minds. Yes, there are some truly dedicated people that follow that path, but in my experience, they were the minority.

  4. Should teachers try to teach a subject they have less knowledge of than the students?
    I rarely, if ever see this situation happening. If for no other reason than Elders often have a variety of intangible bits of knowledge that children can never have. So much of our schooling is daycare, so what are the alternatives? Additionally, adults (as a general rule) have the life-experience necessary to seperate the intellectual wheat from the chaff. An adult’s mistakes in judgement are very different from a child’s.

  5. Isn’t the purpose of education to explore ideas without fear?
    That’s a large part of an education in the liberal arts. But that is also part of the problem, Science/Engineering isn’t a liberal art, so to apply the teaching paradigm of those to science is a mistake.

  6. Why are teachers afraid to explore creationism? Should they be?
    Whether real or imagined, there is a fear of zealots.

  7. Why must is be only evolution or only creationism?
    Because neither creationism nor ID fulfill the metric to be classified as ‘science’. When you say, "it is just a theory’ you demonstrate your own ignorance over scientific jargon. When you say ‘theory’ what you mean is ‘hypothesis’. With hypotheses it is fair game to shoot the shit and throw out a few ideas before you settle on one. In order to combat a bona fide theorum, you need to bring something more substantial to the table.

  8. What are scientists afraid of?
    The generation of ignorance. By discrediting valid scientific theories, you are left with a big unworkable mess. Essentially, the debate around Evolution is reducing science down to a liberal art where experimentation is no longer necessary. You think it works this way (no evidence), results may not be repeatable because we live in a wierd post-modern world where anything can happen, multivariable projects are OK, breakdown of appropriate vs. inappropriate sources, ect. A Western Philosopher sits and thinks about the way the world works. A scientists thinks about the way the world works, and then creates experiments to test this. That’s why Western Philosophy is so terminally worthless.

  9. Should society teach creationism + evolution? Are there any dangers?
    I’m torn on this one. If you place strict creationism or ID side-by-side with evolution, in the hands of a credible teacher displaying all the evidence, both strict creationism and ID start to look pretty silly pretty quickly. I definately think that it is fair to teach creationism alongside the abiogenesis of life (in this scenario ID starts to look totally insane), though I would much rather that the issue not be dealt with at all until the students hit higher level biology courses. A good old fashioned, honest, “we don’t know” is usually a wonderful answer in places where we don’t know the answer. You wanna say the Primogenote was created by God? Fine by me. I don’t beleive it, but in this particular area we are dealing with hardcore beliefs, not theories.

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There are certainly legitimate questions to evolution, but the following questions aren’t.

No, most mutations are nuetral.

This question shows no understanding of evolution. Not even the dictionary definition.

Insensitive. Some people are born with tails.

When is science a 100% sure of anything?

Yes, they are real bones. No, I am not making this up.

Hey!

The teacher should also test on the information given. How many students really want that?

The kids haven’t done any research either. They’ve learned a few rhetorical tricks that some view as sophistication. It is in fact obfuscation.

A teacher should respond by disspelling a myth.

There really are bad questions.

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I know a couple of teachers and often they teach subjects they didn’t do at uni. That means that they actually don’t understand the subject, as pre-University schooling is dumbed down exactly to make it easier to understand (a good example is Chemistry, where most of what you’re taught is made up of white lies to make it easier tounderstand).

And then they have to teach something like Evolution, an extremely complex and hard to explain theory when you start throwing ‘common-sense’ objections against it.

In England, at least, this idiocy isn’t happening yet, thankfully we don’t suffer from anywhere near the level of fundamentalism that America suffers from, but it’s only a matter of time before fringe groups in the UK start employing the same tactics.

Personally I think the best way they could combat this, and very effectively too, is to change the entire evolution module to a ‘understanding scientific theories’ module, where they explain how science creates its theories, using evolution against creationism and ID as an example or valid theory versus storytale.

Hence they’ll teach evolution at the same time as working through the objections with a textbook in front of them telling them how to work through it.

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  1. Isn’t the purpose of education to explore ideas without fear?

Alfred North Whitehead said that education was “teaching the art of living well.”

I’m not sure that education’s purpose is to explore ideas without fear. After all, teachers who teach evolution, regardless of their own personal opinions should not be called upon to be defenders of the theories they teach.

We don’t ask math teachers to prove the basic theorum’s they teach. We don’t ask chemistry teachers to prove valance, or magnetism, or a multitude of other things.

Secondly, the kids in these classes aren’t participating in a meaningful way. Someone else said they learned a few rhetorical tricks. That’s about right.

When a kid finishes school he doesn’t have to believe in evolution, but he should understand the claims.

Matt - I totally agree that evolution should be taught as part of a scientific methods course.

Xunzian - enjoyable post as always.

cheers,
gemty

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They should teach the pure theory first, in abstract principles, and then let the students trace the evolutionary paths themselves in set example species. Let the students convince themselves.

Any teacher who shies away from a topic due to ‘fear’ should be booted out of the classroom.

Relish conflict of opinion.