http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/3/28/6/1

 

Volume 19 | Issue 6 | 6 | Mar. 28, 2005

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Editorial | Curiosity Won't Kill Science Classes

By Richard Gallagher, Editor

 

In this editorial, Gallagher cites three things that "prodded" his concerns for science education. One was a letter in _The Harvard Crimson_ that described a student's excruciating experience in a science class where everything was about getting good grades in order to advance their careers, without concern for intellectual appeal, passion, adventure, curiosity, etc. The second thing was the result of a Science Advisory poll that had the same dull, utilitarian outlook. [Hmmm, doesn't that follow from "survival of the fittest"?]

 

But it's the third part that's really interesting (I hope I will be forgiven for making this extensive quote):

 

< begin blockquote>

My third encounter has been a little more personal. You'll notice that we've foregone the Opinion article in this issue. In its place is an expanded Letters section, largely given over to responses to the Editorial of a couple of issues ago,³ on beating off the challenge to evolution from intelligent design. I am criticized by a fair number of the responses from "our" side, some rather strident. Here's an example from a blog⁴:

"You know what I hate most about the evolution/creation debate? It isn't the ignorance peddlers of the Discovery Institute or the gibbering insanity of Answers in Genesis. It's not the semi-literate know-nothings who pollute the comment boards of blogs with their repetitive drivel. It isn't even the fawning press coverage these dangerous right-wing ideologues occasionally receive. No. What I really hate is the child-like naiveté of some scientists who really ought to know better."

That's me. But I think I got off lightly. Even though I'm "most-hated" – is that anything like being granted "most favored nation" status? – it's for being a hopeless naïf, not an ignorant, gibbering, dangerous, semiliterate no-nothing polluter of bandwidth. Phew! Still, the question must be asked: Is this sort of self-important bluster helpful in the battle against proponents of intelligent design? I certainly don't see it as putting the best face on the pro-evolution argument to an interested public.

But to get back to science teaching, worse still, some (nominally) pro-evolution correspondents harbor remarkable views of science teaching. Consider this missive from a blogger named "Desert Donkey"⁵:

"The impulse to compare and demolish is strong, but high school students are basically in a position where they are taught well-established truths in most subjects. Math classes don't spend time questioning the reality of prime numbers. Facts is facts. Some type of critical thinking class for inquisitive students might fly, but I still think it has no place in an actual science class."

Critical thinking has no place in science class? Really? That bodes incredibly poorly for the future of science teaching. We're shelving our best weapon against intelligent design, and I find it incredibly sad that scientists who support evolution so strongly would have us shield growing young minds from the "dangers" of critical thinking.

If that's not dogma, I don't know what is.

 

References
1. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505618  

2. http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.238.html  

3. R Gallagher "Intelligent design and informed debate," The Scientist 19(4): 6.  Feb. 28, 2005

4. http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/this-is-depressing.html  

5. http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/what_was_he_thinking

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58465-2005Mar22.html

By Jay Mathews

Wednesday, March 23, 2005; Page A15

My favorite high school teacher, Al Ladendorff, conducted his American history class like an extended version of "Meet the Press." Nothing, not even the textbooks other teachers treated as Holy Writ, was safe from attack. I looked forward to that class every day.

My biology class, sadly, was another story. I slogged joylessly through all the phyla and the principles of Darwinism, memorizing as best as I could. It never occurred to me that this class could have been as interesting as history until I recently started to read about "intelligent design," the latest assault on the teaching of evolution in our schools. Many education experts and important scientists say we have to keep this religious-based nonsense out of the classroom. But is that really such a good idea?

I am as devout a Darwinist as anybody. I read all the essays on evolution by the late Stephen Jay Gould, one of my favorite writers. The God I worship would, I think, be smart enough to create the universe without, as Genesis alleges, violating His own observable laws of conservation of matter and energy in a six-day construction binge. But after interviewing supporters and opponents of intelligent design, which argues among other things that today's organisms are too complex to have evolved from primordial chemicals by chance or necessity, I think critiques of modern biology, like Ladendorff's contrarian lessons, could be one of the best things to happen to high school science.

Drop in on an average biology class and you will find the same slow, deadening march of memorization that I endured at 15. Why not enliven this with a student debate on contrasting theories? Why not have an intelligent design advocate stop by to be interrogated? Many students, like me, find it hard to understand evolutionary theory, and the scientific method itself, until they are illuminated by contrasting points of view.

And why stop with biology? Physics teachers could ask students to explain why a perpetual-motion machine won't work. Earth science teachers could show why the steady-state theory of the universe lost out to the Big Bang -- just as Al Ladendorff exposed the genius of the U.S. Constitution by showing why the Articles of Confederation went bust.

Amazingly, neither pro- nor anti-intelligent design people like the idea of injecting their squabble into biology classes. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which promotes intelligent design, said that requiring its use in schools would turn their critique of evolution "into a political football." Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education Inc. in Oakland, Calif., said it would distract from proven evolutionary research, crowd out other topics and create confusion.

Some fine biology teachers said the same thing. Sam Clifford in Georgetown, Tex., said that intelligent design is "a piecemeal, haphazard concoction" that he does not have time for. Dan Coast at Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County said that a dissection of intelligent design in his class would be seen by some students as an attack on their religion. They all seemed to be saying that most U.S. high school students and teachers aren't smart enough to handle such an explosive topic. But how do we know if we keep paying expensive lawyers to make sure the experiment is never conducted?

The intelligent-design folks say theirs is not a religious doctrine. They may be lying, and are just softening up the teaching of evolution for an eventual pro-Genesis assault. But they passed one of my tests. They answered Gould's favorite question: If you are real scientists, then what evidence would disprove your hypothesis? West indicated that any discovery of precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago would cast doubt on the thesis that those plans, in defiance of Darwin, evolved without a universal common ancestor.

That is the start of a great class, and some teachers are doing this, albeit quietly. John Angus Campbell, who teaches the rhetoric of science and speech at the University of Memphis, has been trying to coax more of them into letting their students consider Darwin's critics. Like me, Campbell reveres the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who said good ideas should be questioned lest they degenerate into dogma.

Turning Darwin into an unassailable god without blemishes, Campbell said, doesn't give student brains enough exercise. "If you don't see the risks, if you don't see the gaps," he said, "you don't see the genius of Darwin."

The writer covers schools for The Post. His e-mail address is mathewsj@washpost.com.

 

I noticed this gem in the current (April 2005) Reader's Digest, page 168. The context is an article that purports to provide answers to "quirky questions about the natural world."  I copy verbatim:

 

*****

Q: How did elephants come to have trunks?

 

A: Since a trunk doesn't contain bones, a fossil record from an ancestral animal that roamed the earth over 50 million years ago would be hard to come by.  Paleontologists have therefore had to get creative about studying the trunk's evolution.  By tracing changes in openings in the skull, they've found what may be the oldest of all elephants, a dog-sized creature called Phosphatherium escuilliei, which lived 55 million years ago and seems to have been trunkless. Scientists believe that the trunk developed through natural selection.  As Hezy Shoshani, a biology professor at Eritrea's University of Asmara explains, elephants grew bigger as they evolved.  Of course, as they grew away from the ground, they still had to reach down for food.  So the trunk was born--probably emerging from the upper lip and the nose, to ultimately become the tool elephants use for browsing.

*****

 

    So! While giraffes evolved long necks to reach UP for food, elephants evolved trunks to reach DOWN for it!  Would someone please explain why no other animals developed trunks as they "grew away from the ground"?  Talk about your "just so" stories!   How could the natural selection pressure to mutate a trunk be stronger than the elephant's inclination to simply lower its head?!

      Its amazing that, in Darwinist circles, any crazy speculation like this passes as "scientific."  And they want to know why we don't take evolutionary theory as seriously as the law of gravity!  This piece would be funnier if Reader's Digest didn't have a worldwide circulation in the millions.

 

Jim Perloff