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Texas Board of Education Supports Evolution
somanyrobots writes with this excerpt from the Dallas News:
"In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be 'weaknesses' in the theory of evolution. Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life. Texas is particularly influential to textbook publishers because of the size of its market, so this could have a ripple effect on textbooks used in other states as well."
Things are turning around for the better :)
Finally Intelligent Design is getting the boot it deserves.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I'm all for teaching evolution but would someone please explain to me what the issue was with teaching the strengths and weaknesses? If science teaches us anything it is that we should always continue to question and refine our studies, not idly stand by and accept them as fact. No one is saying we have to introduce creationism or try to make evolution appear only as a theory (which some might argue it still is), but there is no reason we need to teach our students to blindly accept it as fact, without doubt or admission of weakness. This is not the spirit of science and frankly not in the best interest for those who probably already don't care that much about it. Whats gives?
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Evolution is not the only theory taught in school. Gravity is another theory. I suppose that Texas schools should teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the Theory of Gravity, too.
I entirely appreciate that this is a debate about I.D. and about religion in the classroom.
But that aside it is a great shame that we teach all science as hard "fact" with little experimentation or room for asking "Why?"
If you've gone though a Science education you know that you learn from the textbook and everything you read is gospel.
God forbid we'd ever want kids actually thinking for themselves or questioning anything, if that happened they might, you know... Push the field forward...
But in the academic world the "geniuses" are those students that can memorise the most trivia (see TV game shows for example). While truly intelligent lateral thinkers get put in the bottom classes and made to feel dumb.
I hope we like the world we made for ourselves...
Welcome to the civilized world.
Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?
The TFA said the scientific community widely accepts Darwin's theory, while biblical proponents reject the theory. Thus, the state board forced teachers to teach pros and cons in the 1980s.
I guess the debate was so serious that the state board had to compromise to satisfy the creationism parties (who can be rich and powerful).
I guess evolution is a really thorny part of religion (specifically, blind belief). If students understand that humans are developed from fish and apes, then creationists have a harder time pushing their own agenda to these students.
Any idea whether churches in Texas in the 1980s actually had to report their income, pay taxes, and donate the proceedings to poor people and worthy causes?
Children are impressionable. They are (usually) unable to weigh the pros and cons of arguments and instead defer to authority figures. There are some theories which are not legitimately challenged in today's scientific world.
Should we teach alternative theories to the reason why things fall down? (Intelligent falling perhaps) After all, the Theory of Gravity is only a theory, not a fact.
Or perhaps that "the weight of a body on the surface of a heavenly body is the reaction force caused by the acceleration of the surface of the heavenly body away from its centre."
http://www.copples.clara.net/gravity.htm
This is an alternative theory of Gravity. It may even be true, however, no one seems to be trying to teach kids the controversy... because there isn't one. The science taught in high schools is well supported and, as mentioned above, not challenged by academia in any real way.
We have an obligation to our children to shield them from ideas which masquerade as science because they lack the skills needed for proper scientific inquiry. I can go to an average high school class and, assuming they don't have any smart asses, teach them about the horrible problems associated with dihydrogen monoxide. Chances are I can convince every one of them to firmly assert that they would be willing to ban water.
http://www.snopes.com/science/dhmo.asp
86% of freshman supported a ban on water,
12% were undecided
2% correctly identified it as water.
It's not that difficult to dupe the public as a whole, let alone children in an authoritative setting. You teach the best science available and continue to teach it until a better theory presents itself. It may take years for this "better theory" to get from not accepted to partially accepted to almost universally accepted, however, IMHO we shouldn't be teaching it until it gains the support of the majority of the scientific community.
Leave the debate on alternative theories of gravity to the Ph.D's who (probably) know what they are talking about. Teach it in the schools when you've convinced a gross majority of them. Convincing a gross majority of the general public does not make it a scientific theory.
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
I think it would be valuable if schools taught methods and logic. Not just knowledge, but also the way of how knowledge can be arrived at. Teach people what is and what isn't a conclusive argument, point out the factors that complicate deriving valid conclusions from one's observations, and show that how experiments can be set up to minimize those factors. Preferably also teach statistics, so that people can calculate the probability of two things being corerlated vs. the probability that an observation is due to other factors.
All these are valuable skills, not specifically in the evolution debate, but in every aspect of life.
As for my stance on religious issues...I am convinced that we have no conclusive evidence one way or the other on most of them, and I would say that, until we do (which I think will never happen) everyone should be free to believe as they do. Nothing gives me the right to force my beliefs on you, and the same applies in the other direction.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Testing gravity on small distances is extremely hard because gravity is so weak. See http://www.stanford.edu/group/kgb/Research/gravity2.html for example. Cosmology is ongoing research, as you can see from the discussion around dark energy. In particular, measuring cosmological distances is a difficult problem. So one cannot say that gravitation were fully understood on cosmological scales.
It's not like a high school freshman is going to be scarred for life by hearing two sides of an argument. "These people believe this for this reason. These other people believe this for this other reason."
They might not be scarred for life, but they won't learn much science. Scientific debate isn't about valuing everybody's opinion - its about objectivity, logic and evidence.
This isn't even about a debate between science and faith: its a debate between science and bogus pseudo-scientific FUD which attempts to dress religious fundamentalism up as science. Even mainstream religion thinks the debate is absurd.
There are almost certainly gaps and weaknesses in the Theory of Evolution. However, it still explains more than any other theory on offer, and you don't throw it out because it fails to dot a few "i"s - at least not until you have a new, better theory.
When Newton's theory of gravitation failed to accurately predict the orbit of Mercury, the scientific community didn't throw Principia on the fire and go back to crystal spheres and epicycles - it went on to make good use of the understanding given by what Newton's theories did predict, until that smart guy with the bad hair came up with a better theory which someone then went out and proved. That's how science is supposed to work.
PS: I'm all for books on evolution having a label in them which points out that its a theory with which some people disagree provided that, in return, every copy of the Bible is required to have a preface by Richard Dawkins. Fair's fair, eh? :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Children are impressionable. They are (usually) unable to weigh the pros and cons of arguments and instead defer to authority figures. There are some theories which are not legitimately challenged in today's scientific world.
Maybe in grade school - but I don't think I've ever met a high schooler (myself included when I was in HS) so impressionable.
The whole DHMO thing is really an unfair example, as it involves misleading scare tactics (100% of people who consume it die, for example). That's not presenting an opposing idea and letting people come to their own conclusion, but rather intentionally presenting well-known facts in extremely misleading and overcomplicated ways in an attempt to trick them - it's more of a trivia test and social experiment than anything else. While I don't support teaching creationism or intelligent design in schools by any means, they're not really leveraging those tactics in order to make people believe in them (aside from the whole "do as I say lest you burn in hell for all eternity" thing, anyways).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Has anybody thought about the fact that this is an intrinsically (north)american problem?
The evolution versus superstition issue is only one symptom of a much bigger problem in our schools, which is that they are rewarded for failure. Unlike the European system, where schools have to compete for students, in the USA children are simply assigned to schools geographically or politically. This has been going on long enough, that far too few Americans are capable of critical thinking. This is good for politicians who want docile followers, but very bad for the people.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If by "The rest of the civilized world," you mean to exclude predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, then yes, it's just an American problem. (I wouldn't say "North American" problem; evolution isn't much of a problem in Mexico or Canada.) Muslim versions of Creationism are gaining ground.
This may become a problem in the UK and other parts of Europe, as Muslims will probably react to secularism much in the same way American Evangelicals have. We're starting to see it happen.
I think they are headed the wrong direction with this.
Evolutionary theory is vastly unimportant compared to a lack of Scientific Method. I see the requirement of showing weaknesses in Darwinian Evolution as forcing the employment of Scientific Method on difficult, emotion laden, and controversial issues. Beating the method into young impressionable skulls is far more important than whether they believe in creation by amoeba or creation by God. Teach them to think, don't tell them what to believe.
Just IMO.
-D
In the context of this hot-button topic, this is an important and necessary decision, but it's probably in general a good idea to impress upon students that scientific theories are never perfect, they all have strengths and weaknesses and even the most successful (e.g., evolution, Newtonian mechanics) leave plenty of room for refinement. Scientific theories have their own kind of Darwinian evolution, and while I don't necessarily want introductory classes to undermine everything they're teaching, it might be helpful if a part of science education were to provide better insight into the nature of the scientific enterprise than they do currently.
That's not presenting an opposing idea and letting people come to their own conclusion, but rather intentionally presenting well-known facts in extremely misleading and overcomplicated ways in an attempt to trick them
Congratulations, you've just summarized creation science, intelligent design, or whatever they're calling it at the moment.
"Creationism" is as simple an idea as "water". To fool people into thinking it's science, its proponents rely on the unfair DMHO trick you object to.
I just wish they'd stop asking "Do you believe in evolution?" when some stupid journalist questions a politician. It's just makes people think evolution is a belief. Really, valid ways to put in effect get the same info would be questions like "Do you think evolution is valid?" or "Do you accept that evolution is a valid scientific theory?" I mean when you ask the first question my impression is that you don't really get science. (Not a surprise since I think alot of journalists are basically scientifically illiterate.) What it actually makes me think is that the person asking it isn't so much pro evolution because they're really for science but because conservatives hate it. (Which is a stupid reason to be for a scientific theory.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Texas as far as I can see takes no position on what specifically currently is accepted by scientific community as science, leaving that once again as it had always been before, up to publishers of science books. That seems a wise choice.
And Texas likewise makes no limitations on what may be presented in courses on history, literature, comparative religion, anthropology, and so on. That also seems wise. The only problem was teaching religion in a science course. That problem is now solved.
404: Prayer Not Found
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Indeed. And I'll admit to being a bit surprised at my home state. Pleased, but surprised. We have a LOT of anti-intellectual, "Christian" conservatives here...
I actually support Evolution and Thunderbird. Each has its virtues and downfalls. Evolution's integration with Exchange systems saves me from the horrors of OWA, while Thunderbird's extensibility makes it extremely flexible.
So, what does the Texas Board of Education use as a back-end for their mail system?
Wait, what was the summary again??? And why is Evolution capitalized in the article's title???
:%s:work:/.:g
You know, even in Texas, to get a near-majority on a school board, anti-evolutionists have to basically lie by omission when running for office and not say anything about it. Very Christian, eh?
Even many Texans who don't believe in evolution themselves understand that there are going to be bad consequences for their kids' educations and the ability to attract biotech.
As a biologist, I'm not aware of any "weaknesses," in terms of inconsistency with the evidence. I've read those promoted by ID/creationists, and all are false or downright fraudulent.
But there are certainly areas of evolutionary theory where unresolved questions remain. These are appropriate for discussion in classes at the appropriate educational level--graduate courses, or high-level undergraduate college courses--where students have the educational background to understand the issues.
No, the equations of Newtonian physics are always wrong. Sometimes they are wrong by such a small amount that the error is not practically important, but being only a little bit wrong is not the same as being right.
Hmm. So, if faith is one of the highest virtues, and therefore God has hidden his existence intentionally as a test of faith, then all of the ID folks that point to various things as "irrefutable proof" of God's existence are therefore calling their God imperfect, non-omnipotent, and flawed. Or they are implicitly admitting that their observations are unprovable and rely on faith, and are therefore tacitly unscientific - thus NOT a scientific theory/fact.
This is one of the biggest problems I have with ID. I am an athiest, but if I were religious I would prefer Evolution over ID. The thought of a clockmaker God, one who has built a beautiful and intellectually engaging existence for us, challenging us with infinite puzzles and opportunity to view the beauty and complexity of His Creation is considerably more compelling than one who just took the easy way out and made a bland universe that simply is, and has no deeper meaning.
I guess that's just me. I'm a scientist at heart - I love the challenge, the discovery, the layered complexity of the world I live in. That is true beauty. I guess the ID folk just prefer to have all the answers given to them so they don't have to think.
This post is contentious, to be sure, but I have karma to burn...
Oh, was that my outside voice?