Classroom Clashes Over Science Education 493
cheezitmike writes "In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion."
Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Funny)
How DARE you question the Eddas? [thepaincomics.com]
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
These are not conservative leaning. They are religious zealots. They need to stop making people right of center seem like that they are all crazed idiots.
Re: (Score:3)
"They need to stop making people right of center seem like that they are all crazed idiots."
As long as rightists SUPPORT Superstitionists they share their guilt.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:4, Interesting)
Initially? The first two English colonies were not religious, though of course the first one disappeared. The Pilgrims in 1620 were the first religious colony. While Maryland and Pennsylvania were also religious, the Catholics currently accept evolution (I'm not sure about the Quakers).
I definitely qualify as conservative, but as a Catholic myself I see no place for literal Biblical creationism in the classroom.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:4, Insightful)
Religion played a very different role than you think.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Interesting)
If you check out analysis of why the Republicans cosy up to religious nutters, its because there are a lot of them and they vote. Broadly speaking they are a reasonable fit to - Small government, rampant capitalism, strongly enforced arbitrary laws and illegal overseas crusades.
Certainly a better fit than to Democratic - Education and health for all, heavily regulated capitalism, updating law in line with societal change, illegal overseas wars just for economic interests.
Certainly that's how it seems from Europe. The religious have been bought by one political party. Basically man its the money, they bought the religious for the votes.
They come with a whole lot of baggage unfortunately, being bat shit crazy that is.
Re: (Score:3)
We are talking specifically about Christianity and it's zealotry.
No, we're talking about a tiny subset of Christianity. Most Christians accept evolution.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:4, Informative)
We are talking specifically about Christianity and it's zealotry.
No, we're talking about a tiny subset of Christianity. Most Christians accept evolution.
I could swear the most recent Gallop Poles on the matter said different.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple, because it is science class - teach the children, don't dictate to them, welcome their challenges as a sign of an engaged, but misinformed, student and work to inform their decisions.
If a student is forced to accept what is told to him without question by either a person behind a lecturn or behind a pulpit, the pulpit stands a better chance of winning over the student - the church offers snacks.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
"If a student is forced to accept what is told to him without question" then the student is not in a science classroom.
However, if when the question is answered with facts and data, the student persists in the Truth of an untenable hypothesis which is not supported by facts and data, the student ought not presume to get a good grade in a science class.
Science is not a religion. I say this as both a scientist, and a religious person.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Get the right answers on the test and it shouldn't matter what the student believes. Students should not be graded on beliefs but on results. Generally science classes aren't given essay tests so no philosophy needs to be presented by the student. I've never seen science test that just ask "is evolution a fact", instead they have questions like "what is eohippus" or "what are some of the consequences of a rising global temperature", things that you can answer and get full credit on even if you think the topics are bunk. They can be answered without lying by phrasing certain way (prefix it with "according to many researchers" for example).
The danger here is rejecting one dogma and replacing it with a different dogma. And this danger becomes apparent when you see statements that a student should fail because of their beliefs, or that a scientist is fired because of it.
another danger (Score:5, Insightful)
If the religious parents of a child explain "give the answers they want even though we know they are wrong thanks to the Bible," the fact remains that the student is being exposed to evidence that undermines his faith.
This is what the religious practitioners all fear. When a young and impressionable mind is exposed to challenging information, no amount of preparation can prevent at least some of it from making an impression. So, it is not sufficient to keep religious discussions in the church and to allow secular discussions at school. Any exposure to religion-undermining memes *at all* is a threat to parent's goal of keeping control over their child's beliefs.
No amount of enlightened philosophizing will convince such parents that it is ok to keep secular education secular. And telling them to send their kid to private school is no good either; most religious parents either can't or won't pay for it. They want the property-tax-funded public education for their child, and they want to filter out anything that might challenge their religious beliefs, and they are going to fight for this tooth and nail.
You can't silence them through rational argument. There is no convincing them, and we are stuck with them. Your only option is to get just as involved, and just as pushy, and just as loud as they are.
Re: (Score:3)
When a teacher tells a child that their statements are true facts, and those statements are in direct
Re:another danger (Score:5, Informative)
The "other" interpretation. You make it sound as if there are two and exactly two "sides". The problem is that when you open the discussions up to include the Judeo-Christian creation mythos, you have to welcome every other equally untestable explanation out there: Eurynome, the AEsir, the raven, Pangu, Enki, the Ogdoad, flying spaghetti monsters, pyramid building aliens, the machines from The Matrix, or any of a thousand other explanations that have arisen throughout the centuries. Since none can be proven or disproven, what is there to teach from a scientific perspective?
Religious ideas regarding creation could certainly be discussed in the schools - but in history, literature, or philosophy classes, not science.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:4, Interesting)
The 77 cents on the dollar argument is based on adding up the incomes of all the working women in the country, dividing it by the number of women in the country, and doing the same for the men. The actual calculation ignores experience, ability, time on the job, nature of the work, etc. Such a conclusion is only possible in the most abstract of discussions - on the personal level it is undetectable.
Does your employer have a men's pay scale and a women's pay scale? No, none do. It's illegal, and every few years we remind everyone my passing ever more regulations prohibiting the practice.
Does it make any sense that if women are paid less than men, why aren't there more women in the workforce, since an all-women workforce (if this were true) would be 3/4ths the cost of an all-male workforce?
A big part of the comparison is also based on the difference between "earnings" and pay rate - women who, on average, work fewer hours at the same rate as a man have less earnings, despite being paid 100 cents for every dollar a man earns for the same work.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Informative)
The 77 cents on the dollar argument is based on adding up the incomes of all the working women in the country, dividing it by the number of women in the country, and doing the same for the men. The actual calculation ignores experience, ability, time on the job, nature of the work, etc.
True, however, there is still around a 5-7% gap that is unexplained, and is probably due to gender discrimination. Also, there is hard evidence of this discrimination taking place. from Wikipedia:
Other studies have found direct evidence of discrimination. For example, fewer replies to identical resumes with female names and more jobs for women when orchestras moved to blind auditions.
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why 2 sides to discussions that have been scientifically settled?"
Because in America, the opinion of someone who has a 10'th grade education is equal to that of someone who has a PhD in geology on how old the Earth is.
Because USA USA USA USA USA!
I wish I was exaggerating.
--
BMO
Re:Why 2 sides (Score:5, Funny)
I believe we should teach the other side of every scientific theory. After all, if they're right there's nothing to fear from teaching the other side of the story.
I'll be petitioning the most enlightened Texas SBOE for the inclusion of the following into their public education curriculum:
Gravity: The law, or is it?
Thermodynamics: Perpetual motion via the power of belief!
Newton's Laws of Motion: There's no opposing reaction to stoning a heretic.
Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle: Jesus > displacement.
Re: (Score:3)
There are two sides to any discussion, 'settled' or not.
The discussion about climate change has at least two sides and it has not in any way, shape or form been settled yet. How can anyone even claim that there's a consensus concerning climate change when the basics are still being discussed?
The issues: We don't know if there's any unusual change occurring now. Some even argue that we're seeing no unusual change now. We don't know what kind of changes are natural and which are human influenced. We don't kno
why not teach the science consensus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change: the majority of climate scientists think it's true and a component is man-made, but a small and decreasing percentage of climate scientists disagree.
Evolution: There's all but no doubt, and essentially no reputable scientists in the field disagree with the core concepts.
QED.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Appeal to authority is not science. It is a logial fallacy.
Teachers should present the evidence and have the students decide for themselves. It would be an excellent exercise.
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prove to me that a+b=b+a, for all values of a and b.
Don't just say it's obvious. Don't just give a few examples and assume it will always work. Don't just subtract b from each side, unless you're prepared to prove that b-b=0 and a+0=0+a. Provide a rigorous proof.
Back from Wikipedia? Good. Now tell me again how we shouldn't have our students trust in scientific consensus, and how they should have to review the evidence and decide for themselves. Because right now, the commutative property is taught by appeal to authority. Teacher says it always works, so it always works. In your world, we would have to give each kid a copy of Principia Mathematica and wish them luck. Except PM has its own critical flaws, so I suppose we'll also need to introduce them to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Oh, but we can't trust in the translations of experts, so better teach them German first.
The fact is that people (children in particular) are not equipped to evaluate the truthfulness of every statement. We must trust in the consensus of the experts. The alternative is for society to regress to a point where it was possible for a single person to know all of human knowledge. I'm sure the creationists would love that.
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Insightful)
Prove to me that a+b=b+a, for all values of a and b.
Don't just say it's obvious. Don't just give a few examples and assume it will always work.
Umm, that's exactly how the vast majority of science works. We observe a few examples and assume it will always work that way (or at least under whatever constraints the theory was set up with).
The GP was talking about fallacies in inductive logic. You respond by requesting a formal proof in deductive logic. These things don't tend to play by the same rules. The vast majority of science is not prepared to (and is rarely required to) be as reductionist as trying to prove something like the commutative property of addition. (By the way, what axioms are we allowed? Peano? Zermelo-Fraenkel? Unless you have a specific purpose in requesting this bizarre exercise in mathematical analysis in a discussion about empirical science, your choice would be arbitrary anyway, since this has very little to do with the logic of empiricism....)
The fact is that people (children in particular) are not equipped to evaluate the truthfulness of every statement.
Umm, what the hell is "truth" as applied to inductive logic as practiced in scientific empiricism?
I definitely agree with your point that we, of necessity, have to trust in the opinion of experts. But the rest of your argument about logic is frankly a non sequitur, given that we're talking about science here, not Russell and Whitehead. Science is not formal logic. But that doesn't mean that the scientific method doesn't make use of logic -- but not really the type you're talking about here.
Aside from your general point about the necessity of relying on authority, I have no clue why this was modded +5 "Insightful".
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Informative)
My post was merely demonstrating that people must accept the word of experts because they can't know everything. I chose the example I did because it's kindergarten level stuff. If we all rely on the word of experts for even the most fundamental on concepts, how can anyone claim that trusting experts is a logical fallacy?
"Appeal to authority" is one of, if not the, most misapplied fallacy there is. Kids learn about it in Logic 101 in their freshman year, and then start throwing around the term all over the place, but they have no clue what it means. In actuality, appeals to authority can be entirely justified. Such appeals are only fallacious if the authority cited isn't an actual expert, or disagrees with the consensus, or has a motivation to lie. No one on this planet can live even a single day without trusting in authorities. From the commutative property, to the health effects of drinking bleach, to the stability of the bridge you drive over. Inductive, deductive, doesn't matter. Unless you've done all the work yourself, you're trusting in others.
Re: (Score:3)
I chose the example I did because it's kindergarten level stuff. If we all rely on the word of experts for even the most fundamental on concepts, how can anyone claim that trusting experts is a logical fallacy?
One further point -- I actually don't agree with this. I don't rely on the "word of experts" to believe that the commutative property exists in objects in the real world. Nor do I rely on the "word of experts" to believe that it exists among natural numbers. I can easily see that myself from the way the world works.
The flaw in your example is that you think that some sort of axiomatic proof is adding to a child's understanding or acceptance of the commutative property. I think the commutative property
Re: (Score:3)
So when we have to rely on experts to just progress in something as trivial as Commutation,
It depends on whether you think some sort of formal reductionist exercise on a completely made-up system of mathematical logic is "progress," I suppose. I personally think it's interesting. I think people who do things like it are cool.
But what you're really doing when you supposedly "prove" such a fundamental property is merely defining your made-up system a little more rigorously. You push a few more "axioms" into "theorem" status, but it's really just shifting around nomenclature and defining and ci
Re: (Score:3)
Finally, I would like to point out that modern science is the result of, and is perpetuated by people not simply accepting what they're told. So, it's definitely not reasonable to criticize someone for not accepting a scientific "consensus." Quite the opposite, there is little value is repeating what everyone else is saying, and that's all you're doing when you appeal to authority.
If you're going to go against a scientific consensus they you better be able to back up your position. There is even less value in being a contrarian simply to be a contrarian.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that you are using "appeal to authority" in the context of education, where it doesn't really fit. If someone tells you something, and you believe it, that's not an appeal to authority because nothing was in dispute.
But if an authority tells you something and it doesn't make sense to you or you think it is wrong I would contend that you should not simply accept it based on the reasoning that they know more than you do (to do so would be fallacious). There are a number of good reasons for this
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"What does the word 'concensus' have to do with science?"
Everything. Scientific consensus matters in almost every field of science: if you're some one off guy claiming something, that's about useless unless you get a lot of your peers to agree. If they don't agree when you show them the evidence, you're probably just wrong. What's regarded as "scientific truth" comes largely FROM the consensus of the scientists in that field. Sure, it can change, they might all be wrong, blah blah, but that's the best w
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they don't agree when you show them the evidence, you're probably just wrong.
You mean like continental drift theory, quasicrystals, evolution, and bacterial peptic ulcers? I'm not disagreeing that consensus is necessary to lend validity to a scientific theory, but science is incredibly skeptical, conservative, and resistant to new ideas; the whole point of science, really, is to keep presenting evidence in the face of doubt. Eventually, if no one can refute your hypothesis with their own evidence, they will grudgingly accept it. The next generation of scientists will then grow up accepting it as fact and doubting an whole new generation of correct ideas.
Re: (Score:3)
You might want to take a few science classes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have no understanding of what a proof is in natural sciences. This isn't math, where everything is deductive. It is induction, and it is a numbers game. Furthermore, consensus is a good proxy for whether a scientific theory has been dissected and found valid, or whether it has been discarded for lack of predictive power. Or do you spend your life going over every scientific theory that your life depends on? Of course not. You use the experiences and work of others for that.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I don't think you know what 'anthropomorphic' means.
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anthropomorphic aspect of climate change is pretty simple: it's when you look at it like a guy who's constantly farting in a locked room, but who keeps eating beans because they taste so nice. Which is a pretty accurate analogy, come to think of it.
Re: (Score:3)
rather Anthropogenic:
anthropo - human
genic - producing or causing
Anthropocentric simply means to looking at thing from a human focused perspective
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what your point was - there is debate about the particulars, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught.
Climate change is one thing, there are people who argue it isn't even happening. The causes are another thing.
The evidence against climate change basically fell apart, and all but the looniest of loons now cling to the idea that it isn't happening. There is no doubt from any sane person, and it should be taught just as we teach about ice ages.
What causes it is still in doubt, especially s
Re: (Score:3)
The evidence against climate change basically fell apart, and all but the looniest of loons now cling to the idea that it isn't happening.
There never was any evidence against climate change. But you do have plenty of people in effect claiming that it should not be happening...
What causes it is still in doubt, especially since we can't easily separate out whether the earth is in a cooling or w
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Informative)
A mathematician can't pinpoint errors in reasoning about climate change because he/she is not a specialist in the field. You need the knowledge to properly analyze the evidence. Serge Lang was a great algebraist/number theorist, and yet he was an AIDS/HIV denialist. Clearly his superior intelligence and logical powers were able to deduce that the AIDS researchers were wrong all along about HIV.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Informative)
Recall any great economists? [frbsf.org] Psychologists? [k12.az.us] Biologists? [macroevolution.net] Philosophers? [thegreatphilosophers.com]
Because those fields are run by incompetent hacks.
????
You're a lunatic.
Lang didn't deny AIDS...or so according to Wikipedia anyway...
...Lang's most controversial political stance was as an AIDS denialist...
Way to go!
Re:why not teach the science consensus? (Score:4, Informative)
An expert on quantum tunnelling! Can i get his opinion on car maintenance, Dress making and 1980 pop music? I am sure he is just as qualified.
Doesn't it remind you of the "this doctor does not believe that smoking causes cancer"? Except that in this case he is not even in the field.
Re: (Score:3)
Global warming science predicted that 30-40% of the Great Barrier Reef coral could die within a month. That was in 2006, and the reef is doing just fine.
Global warming science predicted the large Australian cities would be under severe drought. Didn't happen.
Global warming science was predicting an ice-free Arctic around 2008. The projection has been extended due to it not happening.
The UK Met Office predicted continual record-breaking temperatures in the 2000s, didn't happen (the infamous Phil Jones was n
The evolution of evolution articles. (Score:2)
Gonna post AC on this since it's a little off-topic, but isn't this the third or fourth 'science/evolution/education' article posted in the past 24 hours? It's an important topic, for sure, but it's beginning to smell a bit of spam sensationalism (not sensationalism as in over exaggeration but rather in over reporting to get ad clicks).
Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
...as long as all churches are required to have an atheist (e.g., Daniel Dennet) or a historic biblical scholar (e.g., Bart D. Ehrman) come in for every sermon or Sunday school lesson to present an alternative viewpoint.
Explain how science works (Score:3)
Quoth TFA:
McDonald advises teachers to start the year off with a short section on the nature of science. “Once I started to do this, I had fewer challenges in my classroom,” he says.
Sounds like a good way to deal with the "just"-a-theory crowd.
Shouldn't be so difficult (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
US National Academy of Science too (Score:3)
Indeed - the US National Academy of Science was asked by Congress to investigate the "hockey stick" and found that it was valid back in 2006.
Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong: [newscientist.com]
Details of the claims and counterclaims involve lengthy and arcane statistical arguments, so let's skip straight to the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science [nap.edu] (pdf). The academy was asked by Congress to assess the validity of temperature reconstructions, including the hockey stick.
The report states: "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world".
Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been improved in a number of ways, it was not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading up to the 20th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of the 20th century.
It is true that there are big uncertainties about the accuracy of all past temperature reconstructions, and that these uncertainties have sometimes been ignored or glossed over by those who have presented the hockey stick as evidence for global warming.
Climate scientists, however, are only too aware of the problems (see Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period), and the uncertainties were both highlighted by Mann's original paper and by others at the time it was published.
Update: as suggested by the academy in its 2006 report, Michael Mann and his colleagues have reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study and updated measurements from the recent past.
The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study. Like other temperature reconstructions done since 2001 (see graph), it shows greater variability than the original hockey stick. Yet again, though, the key conclusion is the same: it's hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.
In fact, independent evidence, from ice cores and sea sediments for instance, suggest the last time the planet approached this degree of warmth was during the interglacial period preceding the last ice age over 100,000 years ago. It might even be hotter now than it has been for at least a million years.
Further back in the past, though, it certainly has been hotter - and the world has been a very different place. The crucial point is that our modern civilisation has been built on the basis of the prevailing climate and sea levels. As these change, it will cause major problems.
Science, not religion (Score:5, Insightful)
I would imagine it is the role of the science teacher to educate, not pontificate - if students enter the classroom with different ideas, theories, or beliefs I would expect the teacher to entertain their ideas, beliefs, and theories and then work with the student to understand how their ideas, beliefs and theories balance against scientific facts.
The teacher is not obliged to give equal time to all theories that the students preset, but the science teacher has the task of equiping the students to come to their own conclusions based on facts. A science teacher that can't (or doesn't want to) defend the ideas and concepts they are teaching needs to find another profession.
Religions typically teach the "One True Belief" on a subject and ask the followers to "believe without proof, as an exercise of their faith," not science.
The purpose of the public school system (Score:3)
Is to teach skills that make people able to participate in society. If you're going to be catching alligtor for a living, you don't need much education. However the trend is for increasingly complex jobs as computers fill-in the easy, repetitive parts.
Then lets look at creationism. It posits a "because god made it this way" which provides a limit to understanding because we cannot possibly do what god has, because then we would be gods ourselves, and that's heresy. But call it "evolution" and "biology" and "chemistry" and we can teach these and they lead to skills and discoveries in genetics, medicine, disease therapy, etc.
And that's why creationism has no place in schools. It does not teach a skill.
We might solve a lot of these problems..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we let politicians write the text books, instead of having a quorum of people in their respective fields with masters degrees? Shouldn't the most educated in their respective fields have a say in what the younger generation is being taught, so they can be more prepared for higher education?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com]
Why is it so hard to purge the idiots? (Score:4, Insightful)
We don’t let people who can’t read teach kids how to read.
We don’t let people who can’t add/subtract teach kids math.
It should just be a hiring requirement for science teaches that they accept evolution as fact.
that isn't science (Score:4, Informative)
No, it should be a requirement that people who teach a scientific subject can explain the evidence for the prevailing theory, carry out experiments to test it, and use this to teach what science is all about. They should teach the scientific method and critical thinking. That is what science is about.
People who merely believe something without understanding the evidence for it have no business teaching science at all.
Re:Why is it so hard to purge the idiots? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only because you make invalid assumptions about how it must have evolved. Lets start with an amphibian and egg. Now lets say that a mutation causes the exterior to be a bit more rubbery. Initially 10% of hatchlings that could have handled the tougher exterior can't get out, but 10% more eggs survive being trod on by large animals. Except it's not static. Each generation that gets out of the egg has a greater concentration of the genes that give them the strength to escape the tougher egg. Repeat the process a dozen times over the course of a million years. Eventually you reach an equilibrium; the shell can't get tougher because the resources needed to escape it are expensive enough that the animal would have a higher energy burn, and fare poorly in times of drought or famine.
Fast forward a few tens of thousands of years. Another mutation causes the animal to develop one tooth earlier than it should. It's weak, but it allows weaker hatchlings to escape an egg of equivalent strength. The mutation spreads, aided by the occasional drought of famine, where the "weaker" animals survive. Later, another mutation makes this early, poorly formed tooth drop off; it was getting in the way, and it's better to grow strong teeth later. The egg shell toughens more and more, and starts becoming less water permeable as some individuals find a niche laying eggs near the water line where egg eating marine life has less access to it.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Tougher and less water permeable eggs make the eggs survive more often, and in more places. Small changes can be compensated for with existing intra-species variation, but if a novel mutation arises that deals with the costs of the new strategy more effectively, selective pressure will spread it. Follow this chain of events for a hundred million years, and you got from fish to amphibian, and from amphibian to reptile. It's not a whole bunch of lucky coincidences at once, it's one coincidence, adaptation to take advantage of it, then another coincidence and further adaptation, over and over, over the course of millions upon millions of years. It took billions of years to go from single cell life to multicellular life, a hundred million years to go from marine life to amphibians and so on. This is a mind-boggling scale of time; continents circled the globe in the time it took for mammals to evolve from reptiles. You don't see the continents shifting, but it happens all the same.
The tiny changes and recombinations occurring in animals today won't produce many new species "naturally" in your lifetime, but over the next 10,000 years? Million years? 100 million years? I wouldn't bet on animal life remaining unchanged.
Attribution error (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are two sides to the discussion. (Score:3)
There are also two sides to the discussion of whether (obligatory Godwin) Hitler was right, or pi is three, or the moon landing was faked.
Ooh boy, that's a lot of controversy to teach.
Let science deniers walk the talk (Score:3, Insightful)
Let people who don't believe in evolution be forbidden from accessing those medical treatments which are completely, 100% dependent on researchers understanding the ultra-fine details of the evolutionary process and, in fact, dependent on evolution being true for their advancement.
That pretty much covers everything from the proper use of antibiotics and the avoidance of MRSA, to gene therapy, to the attenuation process that creates vaccines and the defense they give against diseases like polio, rubella and smallpox. Let's see then there's pathogen tracking, so no CDC information for them oh and molecular epidemiology also.
Oh and here's one just for deniers, the molecules being developed which are capable of binding to bioterrorists agents like anthrax spores and ricin molecules are of course entirely dependent on the artificial, directed evolutionary processes utilized by the biotechnology industry.
Yes deniers, let's create a generation of students who don't believe in evolution but who do believe you can pray away the gay. What a fucking shining city on a hill we'll become under that regime.
Re: (Score:3)
How do you think you should teach science then? The actual problem is that most students are stupid, and they are raised by stupid parents. Throughout most of human history almost everybody hunted or worked in the field, and it's only now we expect the average individual to be able to think rationally.
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Realistically, you can't. Science is hard and learning about it doesn't pay off in the obvious or self-gratuitous ways that matter to most people. So, the motivation will always be low, lower still if you have to work a job that does not require you to know any science, as most jobs today are.
It is a lost fight, especially in a world in which the future looks increasingly likely to be much bleaker than the past, for everybody.
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I was doing some science outreach stuff at a museum a while back, and a seemingly intelligent looking thirtysomething woman with two children asked me if the Sun goes around the Earth, or the other way around. That is when I gave up.
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes to attitude towards modern science, three types of people develop:
Sadly, most of the science teachers in schools gravitate towards the third group.
I guess there are two trends that collide to this sad outcome. One is, as I said above, the complexity and hardness of it all. The other is that politicians in modern democracies dislike educated population. Add to this the lack of motivation from a powerful adversary in the past 20 years or so, and the picture is really bad.
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So, after someone you had judged intelligent based on a visual analogy of phrenology asked you a question about science she may or may not have had good reasons - such as being home-schooled by a crazy cult - to be ignorant about, you gave up on educating people on science? Bec
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Realistically, you can't. Science is hard and learning about it doesn't pay off in the obvious or self-gratuitous ways that matter to most people. So, the motivation will always be low, lower still if you have to work a job that does not require you to know any science, as most jobs today are.
It is a lost fight, especially in a world in which the future looks increasingly likely to be much bleaker than the past, for everybody.
Actually no, science is easy, we start using it long before we learn to talk as we build up a mental model of the rules governing our universe. Several studies have shown that infants and children attempting to understand a new phenomena generally experiment in a fashion very near the statistically optimal pattern for exploring a new problem-space, it's only later in life that we start expecting things to behave in neat, well behaved patterns and get stymied by counter-intuitive behaviors.
The problem is science classes generally make no attempt to teach science, just scientific knowledge, and much of that *is* complicated. And without an understanding of science itself, the knowledge is just so much trivia that you're being asked to take on faith. Teach real science, do experiments where the answer *isn't* completely known beforehand, and ideally where the answer actually matters, or at least is interesting, and you can start getting students to appreciate that unlike almost every other subject (except math) science is a living, breathing, cutthroat combative subject where theories don't get widespread acceptance without considerable evidence. Once they *really* understand the rules of the game then it becomes clear that science, while still flawed, is far more authoritative than any other field on the planet.
Heck, ideally I'd say hold a class-wide experiment once a month or so to figure something out - students work in small "research groups" attacking the problem from different angles, but by the end of the "research window" (days?, weeks?) everyone needs to reach a consensus on what the "real" answer is, with some sort of prize (pizza party? movie break?) if they're correct within a certain margin of error so that they actually care. Then, once everyone has agreed, bring in a professional who can provide a conclusive answer in an understandable manner to verify the results. Not only would that provide a taste of real science, but it would also provide a periodic reminder of the fact that in the face of an implacable universe the best speakers and most inspiring/popular/attractive students generally aren't the ones you want to be listening to if you want to get it right.
Because, at the end of the day, all you really care about in most pre-university science classes is
(A) giving everyone a general background knowledge of how the world works (they'll soon forget most the details anyway, so the big picture is the important part)
(B) inspiring those so inclined to pursue careers in research or technology (and nothing like an occasional project were you're one of the respected "inner circle" to inspire a lonely nerd)
(C) instill a certain level of respect for scientists in the form of an understanding that, unlike in virtually all other fields of life, when it comes to questions of how the world works within their area of expertise, their opinion really is worth a heck of a lot more than yours.
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I went to a public high school in Vermont in the late 90s and science was as you described. Evolution wasn't a question because we worked with fruit flies and selectively paired them to achieve a desired outcome. This taught you what evolution was and that it was real. It isn't hard to think that if I could make it happen in a few weeks in school that nature surely could accomplish a lot given a few billion.
I agree though, science is a process and you should teach the process. That's what was done for me t
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Re:Bigger Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
One person sees the glass half full, the other sees it half empty. You see a world that looks increasingly likely to be bleaker while I see a world that looks better and better with pollution levels going down and a world which looks better and is warming.
Its all a matter of perspective. But if we constantly tell children they are stupid and their parents are stupid, you are doing no good to helping matters. The children are neither stupid nor smart (same goes for parents.) (As GF says.) The problem is those who constantly tell people they are stupid and they have no hope in learning science. There is always hope to teach science, but the building blocks will never be there if people have this insane idea that they are smarter then anyone else and that most people are just stupid monkeys.
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't "believe" in either one.
I accept as fact Darwin's theorems concerning evolution based on observation and proven fact. As a Christian, this does not conflict with my beliefs.
I accept on fact that climate change as a constant thing that has happened before mankind and will likely continue afterwards. The only question that remains unsettled (in spite of shouting from either side) is how strongly mankind can and does alter climate, and what, if anything, we could *safely* do to reduce mankind's influences if indeed they are strong enough to provide adverse reactions to the system as a whole.
I limit my beliefs to matters of spiritual faith and of human emotion. Everything else requires hard evidence.
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yes, double digits (in years).
belief != religious faith.
also, social faith and trust in another person never equates religious faith. it's our experiences and trust that builds upon these experiences which allow such social structures to hold. why would a trust in another person ever require a religious belief ? (that one might hide behind words like "spiritual")
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying [wikipedia.org] to, but they're getting resistance for that, too: With few exceptions, teachers' unions fight against efforts to ground teacher evaluation in data and simultaneously resist giving administrators the discretion to remove teachers. [time.com]
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The phrase "just a theory" means that you do not know what you are talking about. Educate yourself.
Re:Bigger Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"Namely that there has never been an observed case of one species becoming another species (species being defined by the ability to reproduce withing the species, but not outside of it)"
Only, of course, while a rare event (it couldn't be otherwise) it *has* been observed and even produced in a lab. See i.e. http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/evolution/speciation.php [sciencemeetsreligion.org]
But even if that wasn't the case, it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway: as soon as you know that there are random mutations (trivially probed in a lab), that these mutations affect fitness (trivially probed in a lab) and that fitness affects alleles distribution (trivially probed in a lab), speciation is nothing but an unavoidable fact.
"My point is that there are legitimate alternative theories besides evolution"
No, there aren't. There are legitimate *ideas* about evolution (i.e. lamarkian versus darwinian) already disproved that nevertheless make for a good case about how scientific ideas get concieved and accepted or rejected.
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it so obvious that darwinian evolution *must* happen that there would be no point discussing it anyway
This is your fundamental error - you think Darwinian evolution is obvious therefore it must happen. Not everyone has your level of faith in the ability of natural processes.
No-one doubts that natural selection occurs, and that organisms change. We can observe change in the lab. But it is a tremendous step of faith to extrapolate that to how organisms *originated*, and how they obtained their incredibly complex features. That can't be observed, and it is dependent on the presence of an initial self replicati
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Okay, as long as we also make sure to point out that gravity, electromagnetism, chemistry, the atomic model of matter, and all other scientific knowledge upon which our civilization is based are also "just" theories, and that theory is a "term of art" in science that means something completely different than it does in in casual conversation.
As for speciation - the development of descendant populations no longer capable of interbreeding - we actually *have* observed it. It's not common because it generall
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We might also point out that the phrase "just a theory" is very useful, because it tells us that the speaker isn't speaking in scientific English. In the common speech, "theory" is basically a synonym for "guess", while in scientific speech, it means a hypothesis that has passed a lot of tests. These are essentially unrelated definitions, and anyone who uses the "just a theory" phrase in a scientific discussion tips off the listeners that they don't understand the most basic scientific terminology.
Ther
Re:Won't ever have a decent debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There IS no scientific debate, true. But a lot of people tend towards worshiping the concept of righteousness. It doesn't matter whether the label of "God", "Jesus", "Allah", or "scientific method" gets applied, it's still a label smeared across the idea that there is only ONE right way to act/think, and that all other alternatives are blasphemous. Most people have a psychological need for that kind of certainty.
I'd say for most /.r's that it's all too easy for us to get along with those who believe in th
Re:Won't ever have a decent debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people aren't sold on the theory. It really doesn't make any sense to a lot of people because 2 controdictory things must happen: the organism must first be best adapted to the environment, and the organism also must have mutations (most of which are not immediately beneficial) to continue change.
Since existing organisms are already in existing environments the first thing you state has been observed and is what most people would call a fact.
Since mutations have also been observed in organisms this would also be considered by most as fact
To continue what I perceive as implied (that these observation can't make evolution happen).
We have also observed that dna is responsible for the traits displayed in the organism. We have observed that if we change that dna, traits of the organism are changed. We have also observed that we can select the largest organism of a given population and that over time the average size of the organism will increase (e.g. cows or strawberries or my fruit flies in 10th grade). We have observed that selection pressures exist in nature so that when the environment changes traits observed in populations change. (loss of sight for organism isolated underground, colors of moths as pollution-soot changes or reproductive ages of fish changing with fishing laws)
We have observed that the same trait can be detrimental in one environment and beneficial in another (pigmentation's benefit/detriment depends largely on latitude; Sickle Cell Anemia depends on the threat of malaria.)
I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem.
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A complete failure to understand evolution. There are two kinds mutation and selection. Selection does not really add to the top it clips from the bottom and as such shifts the average over time so the species becomes more competitive in it's environment. Mutation generally requires vacancy within an environment, whether by major disaster, meteor, major volcanic action, planetary shift, climate change etc. This tends to generate mutations through genetic stressors and also allows them to survive in altered
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I'll just bet their a ha moment doesn't come about as a result of the teacr simply repeating "settled sciece" ovr and over again, but in working with the students to understand why their misconceptions are wrong, and why the what the teacher is saying is correct.
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With politics there are 2 sides. (Score:2)
Actually, with politics there are as many sides as there are people involved in the discussion.
The same with religion.
They may agree on very broad concepts, but each one of them knows that s/he is right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.
That is because those are OPINIONS.
Science is not based upon opinions.
Science is based upon theories that have to be falsifiable.
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That does not matter. (Score:3)
That does not matter. As long as the theories explain the available observations and are falsifiable.
Ideally the theories should suggest experiments that can be used to falsify them. Whether or not these experiments are possible to perform is another issue.
Re:With politics there are 2 sides. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see how evolution requires sexual reproduction to produce "distinctly different" (whatever that means) progeny. There are ample examples of speciation [wikipedia.org], if that's what you mean by "distinctly" different, wherein a population of animals are separated and over time, for instance, the two separated populations are no longer able to reproduce with one another. We have strong evidence for this, even if we haven't witnessed the event with our eyes, in the same way that you have incontrovertible evidence that your great-great-great-great grandfather was born, even though you know no one who was present, and there probably exists no written record of the event.
Re:With politics there are 2 sides. (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's because, barring some sort of parasitism, organisms DON'T give birth to distinctly different organisms, that's not how evolution works. Two house-cats mate and give birth to slightly different cats that possess some combination of parent attributes, plus some tiny random mutations, some of which will be advantageous, most of which will be harmless or damaging . Separate those cats into an environment where they can't interbreed with the other cats, especially if their "traditional" ecological nic
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My big hang up with people who just hate god/religion/whatever is that you have no proof these things do not exist and there is certainly proof, according to the conjecture put forth by the religious, that god does exist. And science doesn't work by "proving" things it works in the opposite way, you disprove things. So until god has been falsified, please stow the "god doesn't exist" talk because you sound very arrogant. People much smarter than you (not me) believe in god. You certainly don't know that with 100% certainty, so don't tell everyone else as if it was a proven fact.
This is the major point at which you stumble. Let's leave words like hate aside for a moment. People are frustrated with god/religion/whatever because people who claim to be acting on behalf of god/religion/whatever (g/r/w) have done some awfully horrible and stupid things. I'm not saying others haven't. But we've generally been able to speak directly on those issues. Whereas when we try to confront the g/r/w crowd, they claim a special status as unassailable because their belief is taken on faith. Let's c
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Many scientists have also been racist, or occultist, or all sorts of other -ists, that doesn't make those -isms rational or acceptable. In fact, scientists have no more trouble holding inconsistent beliefs in their heads as any other human being.
Re:you can't teach climate change as science (Score:4, Informative)
Try this experiment once: Try to convince someone that the sun goes around the earth that the earth actually goes around the sun. The chain of inference we had to use to deduce that is complex. That's why we didn't know until just hundreds of years ago. You can teach these things as science, even though you can't provide all the evidence from scratch.
Teaching climate change is easy. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When fossil fuels are burnt, they produce carbon dioxide. This will warm the planet. You can then show charts of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the global mean temperature. It's actually pretty easy to understand the chain of evidence.
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Sorry, I've been too busy to point out the other errors in your arguments. Since you ask, experiments that you can do in high school include: observations of planetary motions and moons, direct observations of planets through a telescope, spectrographic measurements of the sun, torsion balance measurements of gravity, tides and their relations to the moon, approximate distanc
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