No. I don’t think we should change the overall science curriculum in order to deal with possible religious objections, because there is probably some religion somewhere that objects to almost any scientific proposition, and there would be no end of it. However, it is quite possible to include evolution without apology on the high school science curriculum without insisting that it be positioned in the ninth-grade biology course, and I have repeatedly given both pedagogical and social-practical reasons for moving it to a higher grade-level.
Evolution is a fundamental bedrock principle in the life sciences. It should be taught in grade school. The only reason not to do so is people’s religious based and frankly scientifically ignorant objections because of their theological culture war agenda.
5 Likes
Your only “reason” is that conservative Christians don’t like it taught. That’s not a valid reason for denying all the other students a proper science education at an age where developing critical thinking skills is so important.
3 Likes
So while complaining about me imputing a motive for your action rather than asking, you impute to me a motive for mine rather than asking.
Nice job, Eddie.
Another showdown isn’t needed.
Good. It would have helped if you had affirmed the reasonableness of my point when I first made it, instead of ignoring it for thirty posts or so. It helps dialogue to remain constructive when one side occasionally gives points to the other side, instead of seeming to contradict the other side steadily almost on principle.
I’ve never said that everything is worthy of a university platform. I don’t think Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? is worthy of a university platform, for example. But that would not be because it is offensive to some religious people (because it explains away God as mere aliens); it would be because his arguments are academically of no value and therefore of no use to a university-trained audience. That his views might offend, even very much offend, some religious people in the university audience, doesn’t come into my thinking at all.
You seem to have the inability, or unwillingness, to try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see things from their point of view. For example, you seem to be unable to put yourself in the shoes of a religion scholar who, for example, thinks – for solid academic reasons – philosophical, philological, etc. – that Plato is far closer to the truth than Derrida is, and finds himself unable to get an academic job for holding that belief, while scholars who follow Derrida are employed all over the place. You seem to equate my suggestion that academics who prefer Derrida shouldn’t absolutely shut academics who prefer Plato out of their departments with the idea that departments should make sure they have a certain quota of fascists, racists, and sexists. You aren’t listening to the substance of my plea regarding balance in academic departments, but are instead invoking the trigger words – sexism, homophobia, etc. – that have the effect of polarizing discussion between us and blocking communication.
And you are not alone. Not just you, but a whole generation of academics (and you are evidence that it touches the science as well as the Arts departments), are quick on the trigger with the derogatory labels (sexist, fascist, etc.), and seemingly unaware how often the interjection of these labels into virtually every intellectual discussion loads up all those discussions with emotion and actually impedes mutual understanding. In this, you are very much a child of your era.
1 Like
Notice how Eddie shifts back and forth between talking about science and the arts as it suits him. If for example we say these sorts of prohibitions and protests are way overblown and not typical of most universities or that they are outside of our experience in academia then he will say “wait a minute I’m ONLY talking about the arts not the sciences”. Then he will drift back to talk about the sciences when it suits him.
Painting feminists, college professors, academics, liberals, the left as bogeymen is what these culture war people do. The goal is to create an enemy and position their ideology alone as representing truth and justice where they are the fair minded patriots “laying down their lives” for people’s freedom. It’s BS.
Again, I’ve been in academia in some capacity for thirty years. Are many, maybe even most professors leaning to the political left. Yes. Does that mean that conservatives or religious persons at public universities are under attack or discriminated against in any widespread or consistent or meaningful ways? Clearly no. There is very little evidence of this. The idea that there is a one sided adversarial position where the “left” alone is committed to a campaign of discrimination and ideological totalitarianism is BS.
The problem is that many conservatives (not all of course) and religious fundamentalists have gravitated to completely indefensible and often just irrational and immoral positions with regards to science, racial and gender equality, education, and the imposition of religious ideology in public life. To the extent that the left has done the same I’m against that too but I don’t see it to near the degree as I’ve seen with the right.
People’s actions have consequences. When Danesh D’Souza mocks children who have gone through a horrific shooting incident or peddles in racist tropes against Obama or Alex Jones pushes baseless conspiracies about crisis actors at mass shootings or child sex rings run by Hillary Clinton or if Ken Ham or Nathaniel Jeanson spread science denial to further their bigoted religious agenda we should recognize this for the BS that it is and not grant it a platform in the public square. It is completely absurd to say we should as Americans be prepared to lay down our lives for this sort of nonsense and honestly, as has been said already, people who boast about their willingness to lay down their lives for any speech in truth probably wouldn’t even be willing to be mildly inconvenienced to defend free speech.
3 Likes
As @Herman_Mays says, it’s the foundation of biology. It seems that they only reason for not teaching it is it may offend some people. Given the topic of this thread, I find that quite ironic.
1 Like
LOL. @Eddie will complain about the quality of public school education, AND defend the rights of fundamentalists to deprive students, especially those in poorer districts, of the high quality education that well-trained and dedicated teachers would provide.
Has anyone seen @Eddie and Betsy DeVos in the same room at the same time?
4 Likes
Yeah, no irony meter can withstand what Eddie is trying to do here.
Yet I presented you with evidence that in at least one other country, where evolution is not taught in grade school, nor in the ninth grade, belief in evolution is much higher than in the USA, and high school graduates focusing on science graduate at least as competent as, if not more competent than, American high school graduates who have been forced to take a three-week unit on evolution ninth-grade biology. So your apparent conviction that American science education will be an utter failure if students are not indoctrinated into evolution in the early grades simply lacks any empirical basis. I thought that scientists believed in yielding to empirical evidence.
Indeed, your own case seems to falsify your above-stated belief. You have declared that you did not have a single lesson on evolution during your school days, yet you have become a (successful, I presume) scientist and biology teacher. Your lack of the three-week evolution unit in ninth-grade biology clearly did not prevent you from achieving scientific excellence. Obviously it is possible to learn about evolution even after high school, and still go on to a productive career in biology.
Is there anything in that very elementary, very introductory, three-week unit in ninth-grade biology that a bright undergraduate science student couldn’t very quickly “make up” simply by reading, and from attending first-year university courses on “Genetics and Evolution” or the like?
It is very telling that you view an education in a fundamental core principle in the life sciences as “indoctrination”. Would you characterize educating children to learn algebra and “indoctrination”? How about teaching children the earth is billions of years old? Is that “indoctrination”? Is every globe in every classroom in America a form of “indoctrination” towards a spherical earth?
That’s because I had an interest in the life sciences since an early age and sought out that knowledge on my own initiative. We should not in education be excluding fundamental core ideas in the sciences to coddle some narrow and ignorant ideological viewpoints and unfounded irrational culture war fears with the hopes that students will pick it up on their own somewhere else. That’s not how education works Eddie.
1 Like
No, I have not done this. I don’t think fundamentalists should have any veto power over science curriculum. I do think it would be prudent, and would not harm American science education in the slightest, to move the evolution unit out of ninth-grade biology into a higher grade. That would not prevent students from hearing about evolution. Higher-grade science course are open to all who wish to take them. And taught at a higher grade level, evolution would be taught in a more sophisticated way, producing a deeper understanding of evolution.
As for funding and quality issues, the current American educational system is a disgrace. Once again, Americans could learn from other countries, who come far closer to equalizing educational opportunity for all, because they don’t allow rich districts to have markedly better schools than poor districts, and who place subject specialists in high school science classrooms from the ninth grade on, rather than drafting Phys. Ed. or Geography teachers to fill in staff gaps for the science courses. But American science educators, convinced that they know everything and unable to conceive that maybe other countries have learned some things that Americans haven’t learned, insist on following the pattern of high school science education that was launched in the era of Sputnik. It’s pathetic. All the current top state science administrators should be fired, and new staff brought in from England, France, Scandinavia, Canada, New Zealand, etc. And States should combine and redistribute school boards and school board funding in such a way that each new board has, on average, the same amount of funding as any other board. If these things were done, the jump in quality in American science education within about five years would be widely noticed. And then everyone would realize that the pathetic state of American high school science education has had only a very little to do with fundamentalist interference in three weeks of the ninth-grade biology curriculum, and has been almost entirely due to structural problems that have social and economic and political causes unrelated to anyone’s beliefs about evolution.
Well that’s ridiculous. Fundamental bedrock ideas that are organizing principles for entire fields of scientific inquiry should be taught more not less. Only people who view an education in evolution as “indoctrination” would argue for less evolution content in the public school curriculum.
I have not recommended this. I think evolution should be taught. But you have provided not a shred of evidence that US science education will fall to pieces if the evolution unit is moved from the ninth grade to a higher grade. Your claims are sheer assertion, having no basis in the evidence of science pedagogy of other countries which do biology education, and science education generally, better than the USA, and produce a higher percentage of belief in evolution among their populaces.
You can substitute every single 9th grade class and subject into that sentence - that doesn’t constitute an argument that no classes should be taught in the 9th grade.
No one is claiming that without a 9th grade unit on evolution, no student will be able to become a successful biologist. You know that, yet you continue to beat the same strawman.
3 Likes
As others in this discussion have stated, this is the wrong approach. Evolution is fundamental to the life sciences. Teach it, and teach it well and accurately, in grade school.
2 Likes
You said it shouldn’t be part of everyone’s curriculum, instead suggesting it should be an elective.
Well, it’s conservatives who are the one’s that have pushed the entirely local control of public schools that has led to these sorts of inequalities so this is one you can’t blame on “leftists”. I would be thrilled if we moved away from funding schools in the US with local property taxes and made school funding more equitable and even greatly increased state and federal funding for education.
I said nothing about less teaching of evolution. I think there should be more teaching of evolution, but that it should be done at a higher grade level, when students have more basic biology, basic chemistry, etc. under their belt and therefore can arrive at a more sophisticated understanding of evolution. I’m making a point about timing and the overall shape of the four-year science curriculum, not recommending any reduction of the time spent teaching evolution over the four-year period. Your problem here is lack of administrative imagination. You think that any change to the antique system of science education created in the early 1960s will mean less study of evolution. That needn’t be the case.