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Teachers Back Away From Evolution In Class
RedEaredSlider writes "A study (abstract) from Penn State shows that a lot of teachers — some 60 percent — are reluctant to teach evolutionary theory in the classroom either because they fear controversy or they just aren't comfortable with the material (as not every biology teacher was a science major). It shows the importance, the authors say, of training teachers well before they step into the class."
Could someone explain?
What are the state requirements for someone to become a licensed biology teacher in the U.S.?
So the reason US students fall behind might be because some teachers don't want to teach the theory of evolution?? Yeah, that must be slowing down the US production of Evolutionary Scientists. Let's see the ridiculous straw arguments now that this somehow explains why we are behind in Math and other Sciences.
If three people with scores below (1) are talking to one another in a forest.... I mean slashdot, does anybody hear them? ;-)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
If even the teachers aren't educated enough to understand this - what hope is there for the rest.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I think it's probably because most science majors don't go into teaching. From what limited information I gleaned from some of my friends who are teachers, a lot of them have some sort of general education degree rather than a specialized background. Unlike other developed countries (especially the ones who kick our butts in education), we don't recruit teachers from the top of the graduating classes in their fields, which is why we have such terrible science education.
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You must be new here. Perhaps you just arrived off the boat from a strange faraway land or you're using one of them new fangled distance communications devices.
Teachers are primarily required to have a "teaching" degree. Actually being trained in what they are teaching is not really expected.
Welcome to America.
If you find a teacher with any real training in what they teach then you've just encountered a happy fluke.They do happen on occasion but they certainly aren't the norm and "knowing what you're doing" usually is not a requirement.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Slashdot = USA. You're welcome to visit and participate, but it's a US-centric site and stories are going to be US-centric.
How can one be a Biology teacher without having a major in at least one of the sciences? Sad. Schools ought to demote these persons to HomeEc or English, and hire some actual degreed science majors to do the teaching.
Maybe they can't do that because of Union rules.
Wow. It's pretty evident you don't understand what's happening in schools in America.
Having dated a couple teachers, let me explain to you how it works. If you're a teacher (and I'm talking grade school or high school) you get shit on. You don't get paid shit and your 'customer' treats you like shit. What's worse is that you cannot refuse your customer and it's your duty to make sure no child is left behind.
So let's say you get a degree in biology. Any lab job or anything else will pay much better right off the bat than a teaching position in grade or high school. Why anybody would get a degree in education is beyond me. Most teachers I think are psychology or sociology majors that, if they teach something like biology, have taken some specialized courses in teaching that material. Not actual high level biology coursework -- because they're not teaching that to students.
Your attempt to blame this on the unions amuses me. Public schools don't make money. That's not what they're there for. They're not some corporation or car manufacturer, they're a public utility that provides a human right to education. As such when a school is operating in the red, it would normally be really tempting to just cut teacher's wages. The unions are there to prevent crap like that from happening. Furthermore, they can't walk away from a customer so really bad interactions occur. And the unions are there to make sure that the teachers have the appropriate representation and responses. Schools don't compete with each other for the best students like a manufacturer competes for customers. The same can be said of hospitals and nursing unions. I don't know how a union would make sure that you can't teach Biology without being a Biology major.
The fact is that teachers have a really crappy job, they don't get paid much and that's why you don't see someone graduating with a Masters of Science in physics to go teach fourth graders science. Maybe you pay extra to send your kid to a magnate school or some private school where they guarantee that the teachers are such distinguished individuals but certainly not a public schools and until you're willing to pay a lot more in taxes to make those jobs desirable to such a graduate, I'd shut up.
My work here is dung.
It's ridiculous, but science is being bullied in our Western democracies...
There are fights about the greenhouse gas, about evolution, and several other topics... and if teachers say something about that, they are said to choose a side and teachers should be politically neutral.
That, of course, is ridiculous. If teachers can no longer teach science, because some theories (which have a lot of evidence) might undermine the political course set by our Great Leaders or because they might upset certain religious people (science always does that), then we might as well close our schools.
Why stop at creationism? Might as well throw in a language class or two in Klingon while you're at it.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Now the evolutionary theory, which follows a degree of scientific rigor (compare it to other theories to explain the same phenomenon) is controversial. What's next? Advanced physics teaching that the sun goes around the earth? Carbon dating deemed heresy because we all know the earth was created in 7 days?
God Bless America.
Is THAT hard to go to the library, take a book and read it to prepare a class? Geez, they don't even have to do it in a yearly basis.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
How do the conclusions reached by the various scientific disciplines coincide with those contained in the message of revelation? And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth
...
... ... It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences
new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
Interesting times, indeed.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Believing in God doesn't mandate a belief in Creationism (though believing in Creationism requires the belief in God). Anyone whose faith is so fragile that it could be damaged by a rigorous class in evolutionary biology should go back to CCD or Sunday School or whatever their faith's equivalent is.
No, they can't teach Creationism since we've already had that trial and it has been determined in court that ``science is what scientists do''.
People who believe in the literal Word of God as the Bible remind me of the grand-daughter of a family friend --- he was a woodworker, old school, wanted me to be his apprentice so he could put me to work re-sawing wood rather than purchase a band saw. He made a cradle as a gift for the grand-daughter in question, for her to keep her dolls in --- she was very impressed when her mother told her, ``Your grandfather made this by hand.'' and immediately evinced a desire to see his and to see his shop and to watch him make something. The visit was arranged and upon arrival, the young lady was taken out to the shop and the large door rolled open, revealing rack upon rack of chisels, saws, hand planes, a simply unbelievable quantity of clamps and other hand tools --- the girl let out a shriek such as only a 5 year old girl can and yelled, ``Mommy! You lied! Grandpa doesn't make things by hand! He uses tools!''.
God is quite capable of using DNA and RNA and quantum mechanics and other theories which we have yet to learn about to make people and the world.
Moreover, those who believe that humanity is incapable of learning how God works are being blasphemous and not remembering the lesson of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:6) which indicates that humanity's learning capacity is without limit.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Well, looking at what is today so far...
1 Story about OpenSrouce (not really US-Centric)
A story about Egypt
A story about conficker (has a worldwide scope)
A Japanese company updating firmware
Russian Media comments on a russian terrorist attack
A site with an Australian link about messaging aliens
A streaming site comparing ISP speeds in US and Canada
A comment about the latest product from a Japanese company
Facebook used as evidence in US Courts
Not very US centric is it?
I hate how pussified all of our teachers have become! Afraid to teach evolution???? WTF??? It's a theory as solid as a fossil and these fucking people cannot man-up about it and tell the religious freaks that would have us living in the dark ages to fuck off and die? No wonder everything is about to go to hell in a hand-basket!
-Oz
Why should the teachers "grow some balls"? Seriously, they are there to teach, not to get into some great philisophical debate which can have very real and permanent repercussions for them and their careers - the debate is for the public and the politicians to get into and sort out, not for the class room.
Like it or not, a lot of people have very real issues with evolution (I am not one of them), and those issues can extend to causing problems for those willing to teach their kids.
Refusing to teach it because of the political and ideological issues surrounding the debate is most certainly a valid stance for a teacher to take - a teacher shouldnt have to put up with hate mail or threats or harrassment any more than the rest of us. By forcing them to teach it, you are forcing them to open themselves up to attack.
If you want your kids to be taught about evolution so desperately, run your own little class on saturdays (or even sundays). Take the debate on yourself.
...shows that a lot of American teachers...
Fixed that for you.
Even though I am from the UK, it was pretty clear to me that "A study from Penn State...means that teachers..." was referring to American teachers.
This is why everyone attending university gets ends up a shining star: professors, having accumulated years of knowledge and wisdom in their field, all make excellent teachers.
[my wife is a teacher (15 years teaching), she's just glad she's got an engineer husband to support her teaching habit... I'm just an enabler, I guess]
Because they studied the "teaching" half of that job title.
I don't know how the American school system (well there's no such thing I guess, how the US school district then) works, but when I was in high school in another land the teachers were "science teachers". The guy who tought me biology at school clearly knew his physics (well his high school level ones anyway) but also taught chemistry and biology.
Aye, word of His Great Noodlyness the Flying Spaghetti Monster gets the attention he deserves!
I am officially gone from
At least here in the UK there's a shortage of maths and science graduates who teach, because they can get higher salaries in the private sector. There's no controversy here about evolution. It's part of the curriculum they have to teach kids for their exams as well as related areas such as genetics.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Unsurprisingly, the summary is wrong. 28% actively teach evolution as if it is a correct theory, 60% teach both evolution and ID and do not make claims as to their validity. The last 12% actually only teach creationism. All of this survey was done with biology highschool teachers.
Could someone explain?
What are the state requirements for someone to become a licensed biology teacher in the U.S.?
In lower grade levels teachers aren't necessarily hired for a particular class- the school will ask them to teach anything it needs. So a physical science teacher might be asked to teach biology for instance. They're not going to be completely incompetent (usually), but it is also true they won't have as in depth understanding of the subject.
Oh dear. Anti-union BS alert! So the unions have been calling for larger classes and lower pay for teachers, yes? After all, that's one reason for poor recruitment (just ask any HR department on their hiring technique for the upper management).
And I guess that it was the unions insisting on paedo suspicions on all teachers, annual checks on the background and the continuous persecution of teachers, yes?
Unions also made parents toss lawsuits and complaints at teachers who didn't give their little dahling an A in class?
I guess it must also be the unions that insist that unruly kids cannot be punished or dealt with by expulsion too?
If the union is "partly to blame", then it's MOSTLY government and busybody parents who are to blame, since THEY are the ones who generate the most absurd environment possible for teachers.
This really worries me. Are teachers afraid of religious fanatics who want them to teach the bible in school? Or are teachers too dumb or not enough educated or well trained to be able to explain why evolution makes sense? Next we know the big bang is not taught any more, and Galileo isn't, and we go back to the stone age.
Smart people should have more children. Otherwise, evolution is in favor of the anti-evolution people.
no, I don't have a sig
Sarah Palin is that you?
"However, my view is that it is down to the parents to do the teaching, and to delegate to schools as they see fit, and also to make up the difference."
It's called the school board. That's where parents raise issues in regards to what little Johnny is taught in school. And no it's not the responsibility of parents to do the teaching. If it was then kids would be home schooled and I would not have to pay school taxes!
"No-group has a right to have their pet subjects taught to children"
Evolution is not a pet subject.
Moron.
If you want your kids to be taught about evolution so desperately, run your own little class on saturdays (or even sundays). Take the debate on yourself.
The problem with your line of "reasoning" (and I use the term most charitably), is that you seem to equate the theory of evolution with any number of mythological stories that purport to account for how creation came to be. The first one is not like the others, at all, despite what Glenn Beck and The Creation Museum have managed to make you believe.
So, if you want your kids to be taught about your mythological version of creation so desperately, run your own little class, and stop expecting science teaches to seriously consider your religious beliefs as anything even remotely approaching valid science.
If you want your kids to be taught about evolution so desperately, run your own little class on saturdays (or even sundays). Take the debate on yourself.
More to the point, if you care about your kids' education, you won't put them in public school, which is not about education first, but about teaching your children to put up with things no one should ever put up with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And weep. The idiocracy in action.
I honestly believe that a it is the duty of a teacher to teach the subject as best understood by current science. (Which, at times, means potentially going against the administration.)
Then again, I'm an idealist. :)
.: Max Romantschuk
It's almost like shuttling weak students who are afraid of math and science into teacher training programs was a BAD idea.
(Disclaimer: I'm employed by a college with a tremendous population of education majors.)
Im not equating it with anything, Im saying that if there is a real credible reason for the teacher not to teach it (and loss of job or threats against their person most certainly is a credible reason) then they shouldn't be made to teach it.
Would you advocate that a teacher should be forced to tell the sex ed class that abortion is an equally valid method of birth control? Or should they be allowed to not cover something thats going to get them killed?
If you want your kids to be taught about evolution so desperately, run your own little class on saturdays (or even sundays). Take the debate on yourself.
Or move to europe. I'ts kind of unthinkable that there could be schools not teaching evolution. Every time someone even slightly hinted at the possibility at teaching something else, the resulting public outcry removed him from his office.
On the other hand, I wonder what the numbers would look like if the survey asked teachers if they were reluctant to teach creationism in class. Probably much higher, in public schools at least. (Given that trying to teach religion in public school is *illegal* for good reason). I'm not sure there is anything to worry about here. Unless you happen to be a creationist.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Perhaps the real reason is because they've lost too many discussions from *students* who are well-versed enough in both the theory of evolution and its alternatives to be able to teach it adequately. I am a young Earth creationist, and not because "the Bible told me so." When any of you can accurately understand the scientific arguments for creationism, I will be happy to listen to arguments against them. My issue with the political / bureaucratic side of evolutionary theory is that even its most ardent proponents are too ill-equipped to engage in rational debate that they have to effectively bully their way into the education system. I have the same issue with religious right-wing politicians who think "faith is enough." God gave us brains so we can use them to understand the world in which we live, not check them at the door when someone says something we don't agree with.
If I got it right, both chemistry/biochemistry teachers had chemistry degrees, the maths/physicists had degrees, but I'm not sure who taught biology since I was in the Sci/Tech program intead of Sci/Nat. The thing is though, the "controversy" never came up at all. While we got some backstory on "scientific thought" and the evolvment of the scientific model, the focus seemed to be on teaching us basic physics neatly intertwined with the math courses. That the scientists who worked out the models was using fallible tools and understanding, and that the models themselves where so "high up" from our understanding that we would have to study a lot more to concretely understand them where sort of implicit.
The religion courses where compulsory, but that guy (who at least seemed like he had a degree of some sort, he "seemed academic") mostly seemed keen on trying to teach us to think about religion in the abstract besides teaching us about the fundamentals of the major religions like Chatolicism and Islam etc., (Eg., "what is sin, as a concept, from a christian perspective?") but I'm quite certain creationism and related concepts where only mentioned in passing unless I missed that class.
In "Junior High" I don't think the (all female) bio teachers had a degree either, since they taught mostly from the books (it seemed). We had "sex ed" in bio class, but it was more like "genital anatomy". They took in some sort of weird female consult (who I now am perfectly sure had Aspergers) for actual sex ed, which included condom usage, oral/anal sex (briefly) and "the importance of cuddling". The most fun part of that year was our Social Sciences teacher (great guy, had been in the jaeger corps when he was younger, apparently had enough "teaching" university education to give him a Masters equivalent) putting on the Monthy Python "Every Sperm is Sacred" skit.
Emotions! In your brain!
From TFA:
Teachers who are unable or unwilling to teach the theory of evolution in biology might be one reason U.S. students are falling behind in science, according to new research. [. . .] The findings come at a time when the national Center for Education Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, released findings that said only 21 percent of students in grade 12 scored at or above "proficient" in 2009, with 60 percent reaching the level of "basic."
First off, bad reporting -- what are those statistics referring to? When we go to the NCES website, we find this is referring to science performance in general. This trend in biology teachers is distressing, but I'm not sure bad teaching of evolutionary teaching is resulting in 88% of students not achieving high marks in, say, physical sciences, earth sciences, etc. NCES itself notes immediately after the statistic in its own report:
Twelfth-graders who reported taking biology, chemistry, and physics scored higher than students taking less advanced science coursework.
In other words, students who take more science and harder science do better on science tests. Duh. I'm not sure the teaching of evolutionary theory is even on the map compared to problems like students not taking science, not being interested in science, and probably poor science teaching in general, particularly in the low-level science electives for students not taking real bio, chem, or physics. I taught high school math and science for a few years, and I can definitely say that the teachers assigned to teach these dumbed-down science courses were some of the worst in the school -- often coaches or people with science degrees or related degrees who weren't able to find a job doing anything else because their skills were so poor.
Is the teaching of evolution a problem? Sure. But I'm not willing to believe it is even in the top 20 causes for these students performing poorly on tests of scientific knowledge in general.
What the Catholic church did for geocentrism in the Renaissance, the mega churches and funny-mental Christians are now doing for intelligent design. With all of our problems at hand I wish I lived in a nation that was mature enough to focus on important tasks and not obsess on homosexuality and evolution. Sadly, some children will visit the http://creationmuseum.org/ "Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden's Rivers" (I swear, I'm not making that up) and have their beliefs reinforced as fact. Seriously! Creation, like Santa, should not be taken seriously as an explanation for how things have come to be.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Is knowledge a 'pet subject' to you, to be ignored at the discression of the parents? Perhaps it should be up to the parents whether or not their kids are taught to read, another obvious 'pet subject'. But most of all kids should have a permission slip from their parents if a teacher is expecting to teach kids how to 'think', the most subversive 'pet subject' of all time.
This is really the reason why kids don't receive education. IMO part of the education is to teach discipline, but teachers now have no teeth nor incentive. This is the real problem.
The article is really a flamebait. It says, "Teachers who are unable or unwilling to teach the theory of evolution in biology might be one reason U.S. students are falling behind in science, according to new research." This is not at all where the issue is. I don't see how not teaching evolution will make students fall behind in science, when you have plenty of hard sciences like Chemistry and Physics that will have immediate and obvious application in technology innovation.
When it comes down to evolution, they need to separate origin of species from the package. When you invent new drug to save the world, or when you study genetic disease, you need to know natural selection and mutation. But neither origin of species nor speciation have any bearing whatsoever in science innovation. Don't bundle this controversial, useless knowledge to your science education, and blame the teachers for unwilling to teach it.
And again, it's the lack of respect and classroom discipline that makes the student fall behind. It's not the missing material.
I once had a signature.
Yes, yes, you're very enlightened, we Americans recognize the innate superiority of the European educational system, have a lollipop. (I think I'm justified in assuming that's where you're from).
Now, would you cut out the snide smugness and come HELP US fight these religious fundamentalist zealots? I dunno, donate some Euros to Teach for America, encourage exchange programs between your country and Texas, anything.
If this really bothers you, quit making wisecracks and do something about it.
It works like this. You go to college and get a degree in biology. You face several choices:
1) You could go be a biology teacher. You could make 30-35K a year to start (not awful, but not great) or even less depending on how much education funding in your state has been slashed recently. In 20 or 30 years you *might* make twice that. You have to spend you days dealing with kids who don't really want to learn what you're teaching them, and parents who alternately abrogate all educational responsibility to you or tell you that your teaching is wrong or even immoral (sometimes the same parents do both!). You probably also have to spend a couple years going to night school getting certified in order to not get fired.
2) You could go work in a lab for 40-50K a year and eventually more. And not deal with any of this crap.
3) You could go to graduate or medical school and make much more money later on down the line as a professor, senior lab tech, doctor, etc.
Which do you choose? A surprising number don't go with option (1) for some reason. This leaves us with a shortage of teachers in biology which gets back filled by people with degrees in "general education".
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
An English major with an accurate understanding of the sciences should certainly be allowed to teach to the level of his comprehension, though a science graduate should obviously be preferred. The real reason teachers fail their students is because most of them, 90% or more in my own district, would sooner cheat them out of a proper education than risk their careers to even a minimum extent. They concern themselves only with how they look to their overpaid administrators so that they, themselves, will one day be overpaid administrators. And so on, and on, and on...
It seems the survey must be mistaken. Those that would not teach are not teachers.
..when I can't do the job I was hired to do, I'm either trained in how to do it or replaced by someone that can do it. If I were a biology teacher and couldn't teach biology, I should be trained in biology or replaced by someone that can teach biology. So you're telling me that these people don't even have a HIGH SCHOOL level understanding of evolution? How can you even call yourself a teacher if you refuse to teach known science because someone might not like it? For people that don't believe in evolution, fuck them. It's science. They still make those people that don't believe in medicine about medicine and medical topics. They still teach Jews about the Nazis even though they're offended. They still teach blacks in America about the slavery era. What's the problem?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Unless you're a teacher yourself, you have no idea just how much balls it takes to fight this battle.
Scientists who see that should feel a moral obligation to point out what's happening. It's good to see that some do.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"I don't want to live on this planet anymore."
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Not to mention anyone going to the trouble of getting an advanced degree in a hard science is probably expecting to have more financial rewards than a teachers salary.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
When religion and politics are prioritized over science and the pursuit of new knowledge, we are moving backward. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is increasing its science and technology expertise and we are all "finding religion." If we all become Amish, that would be one thing, but no one is prepared to give up what they have now and fail to appreciate that the status quo is not sustainable.
Religious nutbags need to be suppressed for the good of human kind. And to be perfectly clear, if you believe in a god at all, you are, in my opinion, a religious nutbag.
Actually, if the post is asserting that teachers should be trained more as teachers before they can become teachers, then that is the wrong conclusion.
The main problem is that people who are qualified in subjects are not allowed to become teachers, unless they take two years out from their life and get a teaching degree. This is _why_ we have non-scientists teaching biology, as the posting claims.
The Teacher's Union has a stranglehold on the profession. Lots of people (such as myself) who would like to spend a few years teaching and who are very qualified in subjects are prevented from spending a few years in that role. Do we have qualified teachers as a result of the current policy? Apparently not. Time to try something else.
More to the point, if you don't want a working public school system and think that education is something the parents have to afford and not something a child is entitled to, don't act astonished, if all you get is a dysfunctional public school system.
Not so bleak ?! Sir are you kidding ? 1/3 of the student have a proper scientific education, about 2/3 are taught that science and religion competes for truth, which is absolutely wrong at least from a scientific point of view, but also from a real religious point of view I suspect, and goes to Sunday school everyday. How can that be positive ?
Science and religion do not compete for truth, they don't oppose, they are completely orthogonal :
The reason we have few competent teachers is simple: Education is one of the most poorly compensated professions in the USA and has generally atrocious working conditions. Education attracts many teachers, but most last less than 2 years on the job before switching professions. Very few competent people are willing to grind away their soul day-in, day-out for pennies. At the same time, the cost for a college degree and certification is skyrocketing. It just doesn't make economic sense to be a teacher.
The public has an incredibly patronizing attitude that teachers should accept miserable accept out of the goodness of their heart. That attitude worked back when women faced systematic artificial barriers in most other professions. In our grandparents generation, we were effectively subsidizing our education system by restricting opportunities for women. That was true in the 60s. It's not true now. Women are competing in every profession, and now education salaries must also compete.
Blaming the Unions is a popular game, but they are not the central problem. If schools seriously want the top college grads to go into education, then obviously they need to compete with other opportunities that top college grads are offered. But you can't offer people a starting salary of $33,227 and then bitch and moan when your top applicants are C students from state universities. The Unions are basically the only force keeping teacher salaries competitive. States with a heavily unionized teacher work-force are better compensated and, unsurprisingly, produce better results
Sorry, no, teaching does not necessarily imply or require debate. You can teach a dog tricks. You can "re-educate" dissidents with imprisonment and regular beatings. It is simply that in social constructs where knowledge possesses value-in-itself any effort to transfer it naturally leans toward the bi-directional. (Which, further, is not necessarily implicative of 'debate'.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I've spent many years learing about evolutionary theory. It seems quite intuitive to me. But it isn't intuitive to many people because it's unlike anything they observe normally. Among scientists, evolution isn't controvercial, but among others, it is. Therefore, others need more convincing. But telling them to "just believe because you're an idiot if you don't" is just religion. To most people, evolution vs. something else is just a war between factions. There's no science in it. And while religion remains relatively stable, evolutionary theory keeps changing; what's "true" one day is "false" the next. The way that evolution is taught is partly responsible for this controversy.
I'm sure it exists, but I've never been able to find it; there's something that would really help: An up-to-date complete treatise of all the basic evidence that demonstrates the foundations of evolutionary theory. Observations of microevolution in the lab, sequences of fossils and how they were dated and how we're certain that they're from the same lineage, numerous clear examples, multiple convergent lines of evidence (fossils vs. dna), etc. In science class, they don't teach this. They teach the end results of the science as though it were FACT, but it's NOT. It is a fact that it's a good theory, but the theory itself cannot be deemed fact.
I have a little girl, and I don't want to just tell her "evolution is true, and those creationists are idiots." I want to show her the science. Besides, its misleading to say that "evolution is true". Evolutionary fact observed in the lab is true. Evolutionary theory is a MODEL that we STRIVE to MAKE true and is the best model we currently have. If it were TRUE, we'd be done. No more to discover. Rather, it is a gradually improving approximation.
My highschool opened the first internet lab in a school in our state thanks to a grant one of our history teachers got. He started up a class that ran an online magazine and it was listed as an english class. He has a doctorate in english, a masters in history, and a couple of bachelors in other areas, but because he was "registered" at the school as a history teacher, they took the class away from him a few years later and gave it to an english teacher because he wasn't "qualified". The same school allowed an ex-hospital lab technician teaching on-level and honors biology because of her degree in nursing. Schools generally don't follow any logical thought processes when doing anything.
Orwell was an optimist.
As I've posted elsewhere, I understand how hard this subject can be to teach in some communities. But comparing it to teaching abortion in the schools is a false analogy.
Grade schools exist to teach students facts, skills, and deductive reasoning.
Abortion is a moral issue about which I have strong beliefs, but which I understand are not universally held. My views on abortion are not facts, and deductive reasoning does not lead to a logical conclusion on the subject. Evolution *is* a fact -- or as damn near a fact as one can get without doubting one's senses and powers of deduction -- and the process that led Darwin to the idea is a great demonstration of deductive reasoning. Thus, evolution belongs in schools, abortion does not.
There aren't any. Someone qualified to teach middle or high school is qualified to teach, not in any specific subject. It boils my blood every time my wife tells the story of her HS chemistry class. The teacher had been teaching history, and the school needed a chemistry teacher so, he got told to do it.
What did their class consist of? He would print out a page of paragraphs from the text book, and blank out certain words, the class period would be spent reading the text book and filling in the missing words. No labs, no lecture. Just word find in the text book.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'm trying hard to read this as more than a complaint that "Oh noes, my pet-theory/favourite-subject isn't being taught as much as I think it should"
The general form of the story is well known.
In this case it is a scientific theory so scientists see it as bad for future science.
It could just as easily be engineers claiming about the poor quality of mathematics teaching, or CS professors complaining about the lack of independent thinking.
However, my view is that it is down to the parents to do the teaching, and to delegate to schools as they see fit, and also to make up the difference.
No-group has a right to have their pet subjects taught to children. Except the gubbernment, of course.
But- they are allowed to whine and make a noise about it.
The idea behind the public school system is, at least in theory, to give everyone the basic knowledge necessary to function in the world.
People need to be able to read, they need to be able to write, they need to be able to do math. Folks need to have at least some basic understanding of classic literature because so much of the modern world is built upon it. Folks need to have at least some basic understanding of history, they need to have some understanding of how our government works, they need to have a basic understanding of science.
We consider it fairly normal to know that the heart pumps blood around your body, for example. It may not be necessary to know exactly how many bones are in the human body, or be able to name them... But it's a good idea to know that humans have bones, and worms do not.
Obviously, individual families and parents are going to impart their own wisdom along the way... Or, at least we hope they will. But the whole point of a public school system with expectations and requirements is to establish a baseline of sorts. A foundation to build upon.
Now, you can certainly argue that any particular bit of education is or isn't necessary... Do folks really need to learn geometry? Is it essential to read Romeo and Juliet? Do we have to teach evolution?
I would argue that the scientific method - the process of testing and refining a hypothesis until you've got something useful - is absolutely essential. It's the foundation of the entire modern world. And without a grasp of the scientific method you're going to have a hard time establishing critical thinking skills.
And I would also argue that evolution is essential. The theory of evolution was developed by scientific observation and testing, it isn't something some random person just thought-up out of the blue. It has some basis in reality. And it goes a long way towards explaining how the world around us works. Why diseases change and adapt to new hosts or drugs. Why certain creatures live in one place and not another. Why we have the tremendous diversity of life on our planet. That one theory provides an awful lot of answers.
Now, I suppose, if the problem was just a lack of funding or time or something... If they just couldn't squeeze everything into the curriculum... I wouldn't be so bent out of shape. I'd be very curious what was being taught instead of evolution. And I might very well suggest that it was more important to teach the basics of evolution than to dissect a frog. But I'd at least understand what the pressures and limitations were.
As it is, however, the pressure is not one of funding or time. The reason evolution is not being taught is because it conflicts with an alternate "theory". One that was, in fact, simply thought-up out of the blue by some guy. One that is not based on the scientific method. One that does not have any basis in reality. One that cannot be objectively tested, or used to make any predictions. One that may, possibly, offer some emotional solace... But is absolutely useless in understanding the actual world around us.
I would be just as offended if they stopped teaching Shakespeare in classes for no other reason than because Twilight fans were feeling threatened.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
If the Evolution/Creation makes teaching biology such a problem then why not teach something else.
Ok, a balanced coverage of the sciences which includes biology would be best of course but as the article says "Many high school students in the U.S. take no science classes at all, and for 25 percent of high schoolers, biology is the only one." Ideally getting a valid diploma should require more than that but if it doesn't then why push Biology so much specifically. How often does this question come up in chemistry or in physics?
I wonder if some good science could be worked into a class about electronics? I suppose that would be more of a technology than a science class but there is certainly a lot of physics and even some chemistry involved if you explain how and why things work. I remember as a kid in school I used to get so disappointed because on the rare occasion when our science textbooks got into anything remotely technological we would skip it. It's like science had to be something you could only study on paper, not something you could actually work with yourself. As tightly bound to technology as our current society is I think actually having some understanding of the "magic boxes" we are all surrounded by might do more good for waking up the dormant minds of the masses today than knowing where we come from and how the organs of a nematode function.
My math teachers were math majors in college. My English teachers were English majors in college. My science teachers were, well, adequate at teaching the curriculum they were given. Of course, in 1980, NOT teaching about evolution in biology class was akin to not teaching what a noun or verb is in English class.
As someone who was born in the U.S. but grew up in a Chinese family, let me tell you that the differences are stark. The U.S. is already a third world country by ideological and cultural standards. The population is lazy, self-entitled, undereducated, science-illiterate, unversed in either informal or formal logic, and completely averse to quality standards, quality control, or doing quality work.
All that's left is the resultant 1-or-2 generation slide into broken economy, broken infrastructure, broken governmental systems, etc. America is getting by on inertia and its population isn't doing the work to maintain its current standard of living and production, much less return it to some past glory or other.
China, on the other hand, is ruthlessly pragmatic, wholly rational-instrumental in its current approach to the world, science and math obsessed, achievement-oriented, and completely cold-blooded about it. The achievements are stunning to anyone that looks at what has been done in a few short years, and the expectations and determination are much higher. People that are busy worrying about "human rights" in China really don't get it; most of the Chinese couldn't care less about human rights right now. They want Progress, capital "P", they believe it comes from science, work, and sacrifice, and they're willing to give up almost anything to get it. They want to dominate the world economy and they're well on their way.
The recent furor over Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" demonstrates at the micro-level, in very clear terms, why China will shortly surpass the U.S. Incidentally, I grew up in a family much like that. Grades were all-important, people were called "trash" and "garbage" when they didn't achieve or perform, and standards were witheringly high. I resented it very much when I was a teenager. By the time I was in my 20s, I recalled it all with fondness and in my 30s I wish I had worked even harder than I did to meet those expectations. And at the end of the day, I don't feel "abused" at all and plan to work hard to raise my own daughter with very high academic and intellectual standards.
My wife and I are currently trying to decide whether this process will require us to leave the U.S. for either China or Eastern Europe (where she's from, and was a child prodigy at top schools under the old Soviet satellite system) in order to get a good education and avoid the dead weight of American anti-intellectual culture holding our daughter back.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I think you answered my flamebait the worst, so I'll continue the discussion from your post.
"Evolution is not some 'pet theory' but part the framework of humanist enlightenment that has proven itself again and again." is a baseless statement with the same sort of authority as my flaimbait; which is merely this: "that's how I like it".
I'm not a young earth creationist or even nearly one, but from a distance I can't see the difference between the position presented here and the one presented by "creationists".
Both groups sum up to "right thinking folk are against it" and it is an embarrassingly weak position to argue from.
The person who talked about the school boards was a bit better, but the school boards teach the things demanded by parents who call for accountability and less so the things demanded by other parents - which is to be expected.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1350807/How-humans-97-orangutans-New-research-shows-DNA-matches.html
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Oh sweet, so now all I have to do is threaten some teachers, and it will be reasonable for them to stop teaching things I don't like? Awesome! I can't wait for society to become even more ignorant through base cowardice and fear of unpopularity, that's always produced such great things in history, like, you know, the holocaust and pogroms.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Actually, if the post is asserting that teachers should be trained more as teachers before they can become teachers, then that is the wrong conclusion.
The school in which I work at as an IT tech demonstrates this well. The ICT teachers are fine with the basic theory they teach year round, but as soon as they are asked a question outside of their 'comfort zone' they are utterly clueless. It's quite amusing to replace their Windows machine with a Linux one.
So one is a moral issue, while the other is not. Nice - you have just separated the two based on your own beliefs and morals.
You still aren't grasping the basic facts of the issue here - teaching evolution, no matter how correct or factual it is, can still get teachers into a lot of shit. Why should they be forced to take that shit for you?
Abortion is not a moral issue at all, its the simple disposal of the feotus within the female - its an easy and quick medical procedure. *We* make it an issue, just the same as the religious groups make evolution an issue - some people disagree with abortion and thus it becomes something that is difficult to teach, and the same is becoming true for evolution. You don't make teachers teach about abortion, so why make them teach other difficult subjects?
Im not equating it with anything, Im saying that if there is a real credible reason for the teacher not to teach it (and loss of job or threats against their person most certainly is a credible reason) then they shouldn't be made to teach it.
Oh, that's just great. So the people who want to stop the in-school abstinence programs and teaching creationism in biology just need to get more violent?
Could someone explain? What are the state requirements for someone to become a licensed biology teacher in the U.S.?
TFA says they're "[not] comfortable," not necessarily because they're unfamiliar with the subject.
But the crux of the study is what the authors call the "cautious 60 percent" who neither advocate for the science of evolution nor push creationism, but simply avoid the issue altogether. Teachers may want to avoid controversy . . .
The part about not being prepared, contrary to what the summary seems to say, refers to the students in the classes:
Not having biology taught properly, Berkman says, makes it harder for students to understand science later on. A sound science education is important, he adds, given that science and technology are so important in everyday life.
You (generally) need a teaching degree to teach in the US. You may or may not need another degree in your particular field of education. (But I don't know why you wouldn't want one). This is one barrier to someone who has a degree in a particular field leaving practice to become a teacher: they usually need an MS in education to get a certificate. I've heard of some places making temporary provisions in cases of dire need of educators or with the understanding the teacher was on track to receive the degree and get his/her certificate.
And everything I just wrote is state-by-state and even district-to-district, so YMMV. What I've seen may be entirely different from others' experiences.
I'd suspect that the teachers are more concerned with the creationist parents coming and complaining to them than they are about the evolutionist parents. I have a theory (well, it's really a hypothesis) as to why, and I'm sure others do, too.
I am not a crackpot.
Honestly, I find this report hard to believe.
I wouldn't be totally shocked to find it was embellished to make a point or generate sympathy for evolutionists, because I just can't beleive creationism is gaining a foothold over real science.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The scarier part of the summary is this: "not every biology teacher was a science major". It is, unfortunately, true. Teachers can get certified to teach biology with a degree in education and a minor (or even less in some states) in biology. Contrariwise, a person with a B.S., M.S., or even Ph.D. in biology is considered unqualified to teach their subject without significant financial and time investment for certification. While I understand that not everyone who can do science or has an advanced degree can teach well, is it not better practice to at least have some path by which they can easily and practically attain a teaching position in a quick and inexpensive manner? When non-science majors with a minimum of science education are considered more qualified by the establishment to teach science than experts in the field, is it no wonder that we are lagging in science education?
As a former teacher (and one who has done his fair share of fighting to get the right thing done ), I can tell you that it ain't fun to buck trends, even if you're not messing with political hot potatoes. I say this for two reasons:
* In nearly any school district, a primary or secondary teacher can lose his/her job by bucking curriculum "recommendations" from the district, period.
* Trying to enact change by yourself, and especially without public knowledge or support, is an exercise in pure frustration. I lucked out when getting Linux put in to replace UNIX (and to displace a good share of Windows coursework). Why? Because Novell was headquartered in Utah at the time and was a HUGE donation source for the schools, and because the school districts were still fairly agnostic about OS preferences (Microsoft hadn't really gone out of their way at the time to lavish 'gifts' on Utah schools). In spite of all these factors, I still had to explain to a number of school districts *why* Linux (and not, say, AIX, Tru64, Solaris, BSD etc... you know, the "useful UNIX versions"). Hell, I even spent a summer week on and off the phone (and fax) with the Utah state Attorney General's office trying to explain the frickin' GPL to them! There are nooks and crannies of influence who must be satisfied, and all of them will amaze, astound, and make you tear your hair out. Now if it's that much of a pain in the ass to do this for a technical subject, imagine what kind of roadblocks have to be knocked down to get something political pushed through. ...and if you think I'm kidding, Google for the Scopes Trial... it seems rather relevant, no?
Sorry man, but seeing what most teachers get paid, and what they have to put up with? I wouldn't blame them, especially in this economy, for not wanting to "man-up" about it. Hell, most of them are, sadly, too busy counting the days until retirement anyway.
Now if you want to cultivate a vigorous group of folks who will push the boundaries of their craft and actually enlighten kids? First you're going to have to pay them what they're worth, and then you're going to have to take a machete to the unholy bureaucracy that public education has become. Good luck convincing taxpayers to help with the former, and doubly so when it comes to trying at the latter. Oh, and then you get to weed out the dead wood and the Unions. On those fronts, you'd have an easier time accomplishing World Peace. :/
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Good old 1980... what a civilized time to be a young man. In history class we learned about the Scopes Monkey Trial and all had a good laugh at our ancestors' backward ways...
...shows that a lot of American teachers...
Fixed that for you.
TFA and even TFS states the study was done at Penn State. TFA even more clearly states that the study was conducted in the US. I know, this is Slashdot, no need to read TFA, just insert some redundant US-bashing -- redundant because the article itself is rather convicting.
I am not a crackpot.
Alas, for the dumbening of the US.
will.i.am _
_ you believe in an intelligent designer? A lazy one, who needs billions of years to give us his words, which is in its first parts contrary to evolutionary knowledge? A creator of people who have to told nice little tales about 5yo kid to convince scientist, geeks + nerds. You kick your society back into stone age, if your science based on fairy tales. There is no afterlive, there is no god. And people are intelligent, because they don't believe in gods
_ it's thinking.
You don't make teachers teach about abortion, so why make them teach other difficult subjects?
How about, "because abortion isn't a fundamental part of any reasonable biology curriculum."
Seriously, you can't see the difference here?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
What kind of God is it you have that simply snaps his or her fingers and "poof" everything is created just as is convenient for your personal gratification? My God placed all the necessary building blocks of life into our galaxy (and likely others) and then amused him/her self watching how life developed through evolution. You shouldn't need to tell your daughter creationists are idiots, just that they are mis-guided and don't understand the basic facts of life on our planet. If the detailed explanations you seek from science to reassure you that evolution is indeed fact were applied to your religion it would fail miserably.
More to the point, if you don't want a working public school system and think that education is something the parents have to afford
Uh no, that's not how this happened. This happened because parents didn't care, not because I don't care. They don't involve themselves sufficiently with the education process and then are surprised when their children aren't educated. School has become what it is because parents were happy to have someplace to pack their kids off to so they could avoid actual parenting.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A good teacher trying to teach something they don't know is indeed a problem, but a subject-matter-expert who isn't the best teacher has its own issues.
Yes, I know degrees don't tell the whole story, but still...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
They just taught what they're told to taught.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
So, if you want your kids to be taught about your mythological version of creation so desperately, run your own little class, and stop expecting science teaches to seriously consider your religious beliefs as anything even remotely approaching valid science.
The GP is not endorsing creationism, just shying away from the argument with its proponents. This may sound like a cop out to anyone not familiar with fundamentalists in the US. It is kind of a cop out, but not everyone wants to fight tooth and nail over high school curriculum, even though we'd be better off if someone did.
I guess we do cave too much to the fundie fringe, but just try arguing with those people. Give it a try, face-to-face with these folks and you'll see what I mean -- arguing with them on the internet is only a sample.
I am not a crackpot.
The US used to be great. It used to be the land of opportunity. Now, it's the land of the petty, the vindictive, the greedy, the power-hungry and the entitled.
The never-ending debate about evolution (which is clearly evident to anyone with a brain and at least 1 eye), will never be settled. Religious organizations (pick your denomination) refuse to give up control of their sheep. True science threatens that.
Meanwhile, the science zealots refute Faith, even though they can't disprove it using their own vaunted methods.
It boils down to a simple matter of agreeing to disagree and allow others to live their freaking lives as THEY choose to.
Federally funded school systems should stop playing politics and trying to control people with textbooks. Present the main theories and let people think for themselves (or not).
Genetics Proves Evolution: The Creationist's Galileo Moment
When chicken embryos start to develop they have teeth buds and the beginnings of multi segmented tails. As they develop their DNA tells the developing embryo to absorb them. Much like human embryo's absorb embryonic gill slits. Now if you turn off the genes that control this absorption instruction you get chicken embryos that develop long multi segmented dinosaur tails and meat eating dinosaur teeth complete with the serrated inside edge. Other studies have also been successful in regressing feathers into scales.
This is not hypothesis. This is not supposition. This is not interpretation. This cold hard, hold in your hands see with your own eyes type reproducible proof. It has already been done, in Canadian universities no less, and is documented and reproducible. One more thing. No DNA was ever added to the bird DNA. This was done using 100% pure chicken DNA.
They have proved that bird DNA contains genes that create dinosaur characteristics. The only way this can happen is through the evolutionary process.
So like when Galileo first pointed his telescope at the heavens and learned that Aristotle was wrong modern scientists have pointed their microscopes at developing bird embryos and learned that they are correct. Evolution is real.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-How-scientists-bringing-dinosaurs-life-help-humble-chicken.html
Note:The 'Daily Mail' isn't the gold standard for scientific reporting but here it does a good job of describing the research so the public can understand it (creationists excepted). Names of people and institutions where the work was done are given allowing Internet searches to the relevant papers and science reporting.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Christians around the world give thumbs up for evolution. What went wrong in the U.S.? Come on now, you're an embarrassment to the world.
All US Christians favor teaching creationism as science in exactly the same way as all Muslims are terrorists. Please, please, read that twice before bashing or modding.
I am not a crackpot.
...When I need them ? You deserve at least "+6 insightful" on this one.
What the hell 'Murika. I'm from an ex soviet country and even here, in order to teach something you must have a degree in it from a higher education institution.
This aplies to everything, especially things like Biology, History etc...
The only place where you can get away with not having a diploma is perhaps PE.
"It shows the importance, the authors say, of training teachers well before they step into the class."
Yeah. Cuz we couldn't work _that_ out by ourselves.
Simple, increase pay for teachers and slash taxes for them. Hell, that should be the norm, otherwise the government is taxing it's own money that it is givving to the teachers. Ouroboros anyone?
...why China is outperforming the US in education?
I'm thoroughly fed up with the hypocritical, narrow-minded, ignorant attitudes of American society, especially with respect to religion. We have a President who, in his State of the Union address, talks about the need to do a better job at innovation and education, and here we are, wasting time, money, and effort teaching religious doctrine in science classes in public schools! Meanwhile, the Bible-thumpers are lamenting that their jobs are being outsourced to China and India. Maybe you would have a job that didn't involve greeting people at Wal-Mart if you actually learned something besides how Jesus died for your sins, dumbshits. Maybe you wouldn't have had to default on your subprime loan if you had learned how to think critically when you were in school, instead of obsessing over the opiate that is American pop culture.
It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly, overwhelmingly, willfully stupid some people are. You would think these religious freaks would be able to connect the dots, but evangelism has never been about getting people to think for themselves--quite the opposite, in fact.
That would depend on the grade level in question. Most primary teaching certificates will require an elementary education degree, but secondary certificates typically require an education degree as well as a dual major in the field of their primary subject (or at least a boatload of credit hours).
What can (and often does happen) is that in a small school or cash strapped district (often both together) they don't have the resources to hire a biology teacher who might only have enough students to teach two out of the six periods in the day (and you certainly can't expect a teacher to move to town on 1/3rd of a entry level teaching salary). What happens then is a case where you might hire a chemistry teacher who also teaches biology, physics, and all of the math (often teaching multiple subjects in a single class - i.e. the kids on the left get trig while the kids on the right get algebra).
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
Yeah ... [citation needed] because all other indicators paint you as a liar unless you're talking about a private/magnate school. You have either discovered a statistical anomaly or are confused about what is meant by "public school."
If we want well trained and highly educated people to become teachers, we have to be willing to pay for it. If you had $75k in student loans, why on earth would you become a high school or middle school science teacher making next to nothing? We don't pay teachers what they're worth and it's only rarely that we happen to get incredibly passionate and intelligent people in the career since there is no motivation to become a teacher once you leveraged the rest of your life on a costly education.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
It's entirely possible that the English teacher raised a fuss to the administrators, who caved in like the spineless cowards they are. This is another example of the careerism I talked about, but in a different context. As for the ex lab tech, if she had an accurate understanding of biology to the level being taught, why shouldn't she teach it? Were there better candidates?
" ... as not every biology teacher was a science major ... "
Would that be acceptable in any other subject area? That, say, not every music teacher is an arts major.
America, Home of the Brave.
What? That's crazy talk. No, that's worse, it's socialism!, just like trusting the government provide health care, pensions or a basic necessities like food or shelter.
Note that this is entirely different from trusting the government with an arsenal of weapons and tens of thousands of people under arms. That's perfectly ok.
--srj/mmv
In my home state, "Education" is a college major. Someone who "only" has a PHd in biology would not be qualified to teach in High School, as they would need a Bachelor's in Education. I was an education major for about a year at my Alma-Mater, and, at the time, you had to pick a concentration:
Now the part about actual scientists not being qualified to teach science may seem silly, but the program does cover a great deal of psychology and child behavior classes, since a great deal of the job is dealing with other people's kids, despite the fact that you have only slightly more authority than the janitor or cafeteria crew.
(Can only speak for Canada/Alberta here - but I have several friends and relatives in the teaching profession)
When you get your education degree, you do specialize - you go to school to be a math teacher or a science teacher or an English teacher.
When you get into the schools, it seems to be a whole new ball game - you get put where the school needs you, and it may be a subject you know little or nothing about. Add a bit of office politics to the mix, and suddenly your expert English teacher is stuck teaching math...
Nope.
The basis of ID is exactly opposed to the basis of Evolution. Evolution posits that the way to understand scientific truth is to use the scientific method. The basis for Intelligent Design is that there is something other than natural processes that caused life, and we can phrase it in a pseudoscientific language to mask the fact that it is unfalsifiable and not a scientific theory at all, simply an assertion. As a contrast with this, Darwin (On the Origin of Species) wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
Where Behe (Darwin's Black Box) says that falsifying intelligent design only requires replicating evolution in the lab. It's been done repeatedly. He insists on a "Evolution of the Gaps," where once something is shown to be able to evolve, there is something else that is irreducibly complex. Take hormone-receptor complexity; it is an example of "Irreducible complexity" frequently used. Or it was, until this:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5770/97
Considered, examined, rejected.
Sorry.
I'm a concientious
Instead of arguing about evolution, the teachers should teach about religion.
When I was going to school, teachers wouldn't not miss the chance to tow the party line, and voice their opinions. Many would talke about their support for the US against communism. My 4-th grade teacher would denouce the Civil Righs movement and say that to join the "Black Panters", you had to kill a white person.
Don't miss this opportunity to remind students that the Catholic church protects pediophilacs and sacrifices children. Tell them that Jesus was a political criminal. Remind them that the Bible says that during the trial of Jesus, Piotious Piolot gave Jesus a chance to demonstrate that he was the "Son of God". Why did Jesus perform miriacles on other stated occasions, when he had a full entarage just waiting for Him to prove himself?
Instead of being silent, use the occasion to read these quotes:
http://dailyatheistquote.com/list.aspx
I am sure some will sink in!
Yeah. Because we should *never* make teachers teach difficult subjects. *rolls eyes*
But seriously, perhaps teachers chose teaching as a career, and as such should just suck it up and abide by the national curriculum. If they don't agree with teaching up to the standards dictated by the curriculum, perhaps they shouldn't have chosen teaching as a career at all.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
That's probably what my post would have looked like (with more F*CKING! emphasis) had you not been faster.
I mean I know now that you're a pretty backward country but how can someone teach something he doesn't know ?
Greanted you need some sort of training to teach (a teaching degree of some sort, we call it CAPES in France) but to actually apply for the CAPES you NEED a bachelor or a masters degree in a relevant field.
We are of course talking about highschool teaching here or middleschool not primary, but I doubt you have actual biology classes in primary school do you ?
What exactly is the point of training someone to teach something he doesn't know ?
I'm really astonished for lack of a better word. This is by far the most f*cked up thing I've ever heard of.
I'd suspect that the teachers are more concerned with the creationist parents coming and complaining to them than they are about the evolutionist parents.
I suspect you're right - and schools these days are fairly risk-averse when it comes to parents and curriculum. Once you start down the "you don't need to teach the kids this" path, it's pretty hard to stop.
Which reminds me, I need to read up on our local Idiot Act (gov't passed a law allowing parents "to have their child excluded, without academic penalty, from instruction, exercises, and the use of instructional materials that deal primarily and explicitly with religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation". My daughter starts kindergarten this year, and I'm *so* looking forward to abusing this rule in the name of sanity. ("Well, Mr. Teacher, I see here that you're using Timmy and Suzy in your math example. I feel that you're implying a heterosexual relationship here, and thus I don't feel my daughter should have to learn about multiplication in that manner. We're gonna go to the park instead.")
(closed captioning for the humor impaired) Yes, I'll make sure my daughter learns multiplication.
What happens is that to be allowed to teach you don't have to know much about the subject you are teaching - but you have to be licensed to say that you can teach - which is a completely different matter. 3-4 years of study in how to become a teacher but only superficial knowledge in the subjects you are going to teach. The method of teaching is more important than the knowledge.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why? The USA have separation of religion and state, why should separation between religion and the educational system be any harder? Religion should be taught in church, sciences at school. End of story.
Next time I see a teacher teach creationism at school, I swear I'm going to find a way to teach quantum mechanics in church.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Perfect answer, hopefully the point is made.
I am from India. I have to differ from your world view. I travel between India, US and a bit of China. The idea of Americans as lazy, self-entitled, undereducated, science-illiterate is lazy generalization. The same can be said of any community.
The idea of America still remains. This country still attracts the best of the talent across the world (even if getting a visa is a pain in the back for anyone out of G7.) This is the only country where you become an 'American' the moment you are in the political borders. And the political system more or less works (compared to the rest of the world.)
What can cause a decline to US is the assault on the American middle class...I hope the plutocrats are not so stupid as to kill the golden goose.
You can bring up your child in China or India or anywhere else. Nothing wrong with that. Your child should be fine if you give him/her the right values. But I can see you made sure your child is an American citizen.
Tat Tvam Asi
please
"Evolution occurs" should not pose any issue to any theists.
"-Only- evolution occurs" as a complete, exclusive causal explanation for intelligent life does, but it also is an unscientific, untestable premise, and for these reasons shouldn't be taught as "science" anyway.
The latter equivocation is, unfortunately, the only form of the premise Dawkins et al care about...
I don't know where you formed this belief, but it seems completely wrong. Watch this discussion between Dawkins and one of those nutjobs from a group trying to force creationism to be taught in schools. In it Dawkins explains how he tries to separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system. He goes on to explain why it's important to him that she accept evolution as fact, even if she does so believing that it was all guided by her christian god. This is because as a scientist and educator it is his responsibility to get people to look at and understand the evidence instead of dismissing belief and refusing to look at evidence. He calls the evidence elegant and seems honestly passionate about helping people to educate themselves, even if they hold irrational beliefs about things that can never be proven or disproven.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Abortion is a valid choice for terminating a pregnancy. It's not illegal, and it's very much a real option. You don't have to teach that it's good/bad, only that it exists. Sexually active teens should be aware of their options, even if you don't agree with them.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
It's blaming religion, not praising it. I agree, it should be more neutral, but you seem to have it wrong.
Public release date: 12-Jun-2003
Natural selection's fingerprint identified on fruit fly evolution
Researchers at the University of Rochester have produced compelling evidence of how the hand of natural selection caused one species of fruit fly to split into two more than 2 million years ago. The study, appearing in today's issue of Nature, answers one of evolutionary biologists' most basic questions--how do species divide--by looking at the very DNA responsible for the division. Understanding why certain genes evolve the way they do during speciation can shed light on some of the least understood aspects of evolution.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/uor-nsf061203.php
My comment: Natural selection is scientific fact. Evolution by natural selection is the theory.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
A majority of these articles are posted on US-based websites and frequently (though not always) from a US perspective.
Wow, talk about a gross understanding of science and the scientific method, not to mention a complete and utter lack of understanding of what the theory of evolution is. I think you should get a better grounding on this subject before attempting to deconstruct it.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
With a daughter who will be entering the school system in a few years I find this very concerning. I would be absolutely fucking furious to find out that teachers were avoiding teaching evolution properly.
I don't even understand the problem here. I'm convinced that the so-called controversy has been overblown on all sides. Perhaps I live in the wrong (right?) part of the country but I've never met anyone, even those who were religious, who didn't except the idea of evolution. The Catholic church has formally embraced evolution. Do a few idiots in these other sects of Christianity really have that much pull over scientific discourse in this country? Is the media simply blowing things out of proportion for the sake of ratings boosts? I have found that some people do tend to overstate the threat religion supposedly poses to them.
But then, it seems American culture has this imbecilic tendency be polarized about every damn thing and they're quick to throw the baby out with the bath water. Certain details regarding evolution turn out to be wrong, which is inevitable, and the ignorant see that as evidence that the entire concept should be abandoned.
Is this some kind of concerted effort to make Americans stupid at everything?
Fear for your job safety. Fear for your career prospects. The stress of endless fights with your superiors. Even if that's not an issue, the sheer grueling exhaustion of fighting the same battle with students' parents, year in and year out, forever.
I applaud your idealism and enthusiasm, but fighting for what you believe in gets *exhausting* as the years drag on.
I find it ironic that scientific people, that pride themselves on being open minded, are so willing to be closed minded when it comes to the THEORY of evolution. Nothing is conclusive about it.
Scientists use science to form mutable beliefs. A scientist believes whatever the best supported theory is, best supported by scientific testing. Evolution has been tested and slightly altered and tested again and again and again to the point where, while there are still details that are in question, you'd have to be a complete moron to have actually studied the data and think that it will ever be "disproven". For all practical intents and purposes, it is a fact.
In fact, there have been numerous scientific studies on the possibility of creation.
There has not been a single scientific study I know of that presents any support for creation of our species being guided by an intelligent being. You claim there have been "scientific studies". Fine, what experiment was performed, what test, what study that would falsify intelligent design? That is a requirement for a scientific test you know. Evolution would have been disproven if we had found the mechanism for coding human growth and it was not inherited directly. Evolution would have been disproven if there had not been a mechanism that inserted random errors into DNA. Evolution would have been disproven if all the DNA we found was not related in a hierarchy. Evolution would have been disproven if the rate of changes and the age of the planet had conflicted. Evolution would have been disproven if fossils with intermediate characteristics between other fossils could not be found to have ages consistent with the change. Evolution would have been disproven if studies of environmental stressors did not lead to predictable changes in characteristics for quick breeding populations. I could go on, but there really isn't a lot of point.
You cannot dismiss creationism simply because it is associated with religion.
Agreed. You can dismiss it because it has no scientific support as a hypothesis.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun has been proven. Period.
No it hasn't. You can prove math and formal logic. You can only find overwhelming support for a theory such as heliocentrism. Also, typing a period, then the word 'period', then another period is idiotic and redundant. Please stop doing it.
I find that species that evolve into completely different species requires more "faith" on my part than believing in a creator.
If faith enters into it at all, you're not forming beliefs scientifically and you're just another irrational person forming your beliefs based upon emotion and trying to justify them with rationalizations. Please take the time to learn the scientific method as it is probably the most useful intellectual tool of the last millennium and responsible for pretty much every technological advance you rely upon today. Your ignorance is dragging the rest of us down.
I'm not calling teachers wimpy, but they have very little to fight for anymore. They *are* going to fold on their curriculum if there's enough public pressure (read: further threat of job security). Often they quit teaching altogether.
Here are some example of topics that teachers just won't teach in California:
1) All 4-6 grade students in California have to learn about the Spanish Catholic missions built throughout the state and how much the natives welcomed the religion and the establishment of permanent cities. Except that's not how it happened, teachers know it, and they teach it because it's part of the California standards. If they say, "The Catholics came to the west coast, enslaved natives, forced their religion on them, and killed those that tried to keep their own religions.," they'd be tossed out on their asses.
2) No president chopped down a cherry tree and then ratted himself out to his father.
3) Many of the founding fathers owned slaves.
4) Slavery was popular and the entirety of the initial financial success of the states was built on the backs of kidnapped, raped, beaten, and worked black people.
5) The Civil War still produces some animosity throughout the South.
6) The "first Thanksgiving" may have happened, but it was cautious and tenuous at best. The pilgrims soon saw the natives not as temporary saviors, but as savages who needed to go away or be purged. Even if they changed to Puritan Christianity, they would have still been seen and treated as beings just above animals and far below humans.
7) The US is *not* a meritocracy. That was the plan, but classes carried over from Europe and further developed here. That's a myth perpetuated by people who want *you* to work hard for *their* benefits.
8) No, not everyone can be president. Not anymore. You need to have a saintly background and/or a TON of money. ... the list goes on and on. Essentially, anything that forces children to confront tradition is sharply argued against and often the source of bad reviews. Call it the "snowflake" or "hover-parent" phenomenon if you wish, I call it the "litigation scare".
It shows the importance, the authors say, of training teachers well before they step into the class
Actually, somewhere around the 1960s-1970s, most states adopted a notion of having colleges offer education majors and required teaching certificates. The idea being to teach teachers how to teach. Unfortunately, they were taught how to teach, but not what to teach. I was lucky in high school. My math teacher had a degree in Math, my chemistry teacher was working on her dissertation in Chemistry.
Now, though, math and science majors are not allowed to teach in schools, unless they posses a teaching certificate, which usually is an additional 60 hours of credit work. It seems that we as a country would be better served if teachers were required to major in some subject matter and take a couple of courses, like a minor, in managing the classroom, etc. Maybe then, we wouldn't have biology teachers unsure of things like evolution.
And a couple of other things (just to clarify). The Biology class for teachers did not have a special focus. (I.E., it wasn't "how to teach biology", or anything like that; it was just a plain old biology class, with less emphasis on controversial issues).
I took the "real" Biology class because it was a requirement when I switched from Education to Computer Science. Biology Teachers have to take the "dumbed down" biology class, and computer programmers have to take the "real" one.
-1 Flamebait
The moderation on this forum is shit. There is not one word in this paragraph deserving the -1 HIT and making the post invisible. ----- "How can one be a Biology teacher without having a major in at least one of the sciences? Sad. Schools ought to demote these persons to HomeEc or English, and hire some actual degreed science majors to do the teaching."
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
College level?? In Europe, teachers have usually masters in their field. At least at the high school level...
Evolution -> has gaps large enough to drive a truck through, assumes no real design in the universe, that the patterns in nature are all random happenstance, presumes the lack of any driving force, fails to explain DNA properly, pretends that "irreducable complexity" does not exist.
Creationism -> A broad term encompassing those believing in evolution guided by "intelligent design" over vast swaths of time, and the "young earth" crowd espousing a literal 6 * 24hr day creation. (I'm not even getting into a word study on the hebrew word of "yom" and how it can be literal or figurative).
Why can we not teach that we don't have the answer because we are standing at the end looking back and guessing how we got here? We dig through the scrap heat of history and try to put the pieces together. We cannot prove via the scientific process the existence or lack of a driving force, because if it exists, it has intelligence, and if that intelligence far outstrips our own, then it can thwart or avoid our tests.
Rather we could simply teach our kids rational thinking and that truth exists, and they are choosing what they choose to believe.
The separation of Church & State does NOT necessitate the separation of God & Country.
If they would teach biology they would not have to teach evolution, lighting the path of the ignorant leads them to the truth. No one should be able to become educated and stay a creationist. I realize that there are heads-in-sand people out there, but mental illness is not an excuse.
They cannot teach it because God punishes liars, even though he also teaches to forgive them, and stuff :D
You are completely ignorant of both, the practicalities of teaching evolution, as well as the history of Dawkin's et al.
Every creature ever looked at has a history of evolution. SO at this point, yes evolution is a natural and ongoing process fro all things. It' is the only known way. You can not speculate that there is some magic reason that it doesn't occur because that is on sense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
Why is it always evolution? Seriously. Why do you care whether people understand biological evolution?
Of all the things I could wish were taught better in class, the top of my list would be math, communication, history and physics. Evolution's niche of biology affects me almost oh lets see, never. Physics, math, communication and history on the other hand all actually have major effects on society at large.
PS Communication includes reading, writing, logic, spelling and grammar. Math includes financial basics like loans and compound interest as well as other basics.
These are where we are failing our children, IMHO, not evolution of all things.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
You still aren't grasping the basic facts of the issue here - teaching evolution, no matter how correct or factual it is, can still get teachers into a lot of shit. Why should they be forced to take that shit for you?
So, biology teachers should ignore the central unifying facts of biology to avoid trouble? Let's take that a step further. Let's not teach about the Civil War because it gets people upset. Let's not teach about the Holocaust in case Johnny's daddy is a Holocaust denier. Let's not teach about slavery in the south. Let's not teach about the history of the Native Americans. Let's not teach about the Cold War, or the Protestant Reformation, etc.
No matter what you are teaching, it will likely upset some wanker. The teacher's job is to teach their subject. The administration should be running interference for them if they are catching flak while adhering to scholastic standards. If we back down from this, then we might as well throw in the towel right now on education in this country, because all you are advocating is pandering to the local prejudices.
You don't make teachers teach about abortion, so why make them teach other difficult subjects?
If there is a class that touches on abortion(say, US History or Sex Ed.), then, yes, they should be teaching it. If my high school aged kid got out of those classes without a mention of abortion, it would be a travesty.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
The problem with your line of "reasoning" (and I use the term most charitably), is that you seem to equate the theory of evolution with any number of mythological stories that purport to account for how creation came to be. The first one is not like the others, at all, despite what Glenn Beck and The Creation Museum have managed to make you believe. So, if you want your kids to be taught about your mythological version of creation so desperately, run your own little class, and stop expecting science teaches to seriously consider your religious beliefs as anything even remotely approaching valid science.
OK, so I've re-read GP's post like 4 times now and I can't find a single place where he makes any reference to his religious beliefs and the only thing he says about his thoughts on evolution is that he doesn't have a problem with it. Where do you get off suddenly deciding he's a witch^H^H creationist believing, glen beck following, creationist Museum curator? I swear, it's people like you who attack anyone and everyone that says anything that isn't overwhelmingly in favor of evolution and smiting the disbelievers thereof with a religious fervor not seen since the crusades that diminishes the worlds view of science and makes it harder to convince people of the truth. Evolution doesn't need your crazed defense anymore than gravity does.
A short reminder for those who forget - half of all teachers in America quit within 5 years.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Our college professors don't have Bachelors degrees in Education, but they are some of the best teachers in the world. Foreigners flock to the US just to attend our colleges and universities.
In other words: I don't buy the argument you need an Education degree.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The GP is not endorsing creationism, just shying away from the argument with its proponents. This may sound like a cop out to anyone not familiar with fundamentalists in the US. It is kind of a cop out, but not everyone wants to fight tooth and nail over high school curriculum, even though we'd be better off if someone did.
I guess we do cave too much to the fundie fringe, but just try arguing with those people. Give it a try, face-to-face with these folks and you'll see what I mean -- arguing with them on the internet is only a sample.
I do, man. Yes, they are over-the-top blowhards sometimes, but we can't afford to let them overrun actual education in this country. Yes, that means that we will get into stupid pissing matches with idiots. That's the price we pay for protecting society from the barbarians.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Believing in God doesn't mandate a belief in Creationism (though believing in Creationism requires the belief in God). Anyone whose faith is so fragile that it could be damaged by a rigorous class in evolutionary biology should go back to CCD or Sunday School or whatever their faith's equivalent is.
Let me tell you a story on how we deal with creationism in Belgium. I went to a catholic high school, no particular reason it was just the best in the area, and as part of the deal you get an hour of religious instruction each week. This class was taught by an old priest, couple years away from retirement. We had 1 (exactly one) creationist in our year, an evangelical christian, and one day he brings up creationism in this class and how a catholic school should treat the subject more seriously (there was literally just one sentence in biology class to the effect that "some people don't 'believe' in evolution" and that was it.) So this priest just looks at him and then laughs out loud in his face and it was like a cartoon where you see a character slowly become red from the bottom to the top of their face, like he was about the explode. You see this priest was a teacher and an intellectual and didn't have any problem reconciling all of those things with his faith and wasn't about to go about ignoring evidence to make this guy happy. These biology "teachers" in the US should be ashamed of themselves.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Certainly sounds like somebody that spent four years studying teaching at an American university.
A teacher who teaches politics still has to teach political systems they disagree with.
A teacher who teaches "belief systems" still has to teach belief systems they disagree with.
Note/Disclaimer: I cringe that I just referred to science as a belief system, but you get my drift.
Refusing to teach it because of the political and ideological issues surrounding the debate is most certainly a valid stance for a teacher to take - a teacher shouldnt have to put up with hate mail or threats or harrassment any more than the rest of us. By forcing them to teach it, you are forcing them to open themselves up to attack.
So your argument is that the proper way to stop harassment by religious nuts is to let them have their way regardless of the fact that they chose to resort to violence in response a teacher doing their job? That's a ridiculous and morally offensive suggestion.
Teachers in primary education are generally not responsible for determining what goes into the curriculum, and when they do have such authority it's their duty to give their students an appropriate and unbiased education on the subject matter. It is not their place to pick and choose topics based on what parents or they themselves (or random crusading crackpots) believe. So long as they are not being intentionally provocative (e.g. advocating for or against abortion or claiming there is or is no god) they are not "opening themselves up to attack" as you claimed, and suggesting they are betrays a disturbing lack of objectivity, civility and respect for the law.
A tack which I've always generates some traction is to state that they could be right. God may have created us an monkeys separately and completely formed, but he also created an awful lot of evidence that we are decended from a common ancestor. I wonder why he did that.
They aren't "forced" to.
They can find another job.
But if they aren't teaching evolution, then they aren't teaching biology.
If they're paid to teach biology, then they're responsible for teaching evolution.
Mod this up. The incentives to become a teacher are slim. Speaking as a former educator and son of one.
Science is doing fine in schools . Read this for counter point.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/kids-study-bees/
You can teach kids that the Easter bunny made the world but when they go to compete in the global science arena they don't bring him along. Why? Because real science just is. Everyone knows the formula for gunpowder, there is no discussion.
Texas (for example) is an uber conservative christian state . Lets examine this good christian state. You can, buy an assault rifle, fully auto class 3 weapon, electrocute a retard, castrate a pervert (with real castration),Meet up with one of the hundreds of hate groups(most hate groups), Knock up a teen (highest teen preg rate in USA) ETC. What a joke.
PS: I don't think the original poser RTFA where is this 'study'? I see a link to a bunch of retards trying to sue their way into converting a public school to a private christian one.
Now go ahead and prove evolution by creating life from scratch in the lab.
I'd be happy to oblige. Now all you need to give me are a planet much like what earth was like about 4 billion years ago and a few hundred million years time to run trillions of biochemical experiments. Then I think it might be quite easy.
Ongoing evolution on the other hand is another story.
Evolution can be seen for example in the DNA of all living things. It can be simulated on a computert. Observed in bacteria in almost real time and traced in the fossil record. It is after all a very simple concept that only requires variation and selection. I highly recommend Relics of Eden a book written by a christian. Anybody who read that would have a really hard time to deny that humans are the outcome of an evolutionary process.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
A recent program on PBS (I think) that discussed the The State of Tennessee v. Scopes in 1925 where a teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution. It was said after the trial (teacher was found guilty and fined $100), schools across the country continued to teach biblical creation. After the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, evolution was brought into school curriculum because, "we are behind the Soviets in teaching science."
As science is taking a backseat to sales, marketing, and religious dogma, I can see how evolution will be removed from school curriculum. But then those godless commie's in other countries will churn out more engineers and scientists while we bitch and moan.
mfwright@batnet.com
In Europe, this ain't even an issue. Evolution isn't taught in school, it is fact. School explains the fact same as school explains gravity. You have to be educated that gravity exists, just how it actually works.
That evolution is even up for debate shows a LOT about the USA. There shouldn't even be a debate. You don't debate facts. And if you claim evolution is not a fact... happy beard in the sky day.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Funny you should mention that! I was taught evolution in a Presbyterian school. Of course, I was taught that it was a fallacious theory, but the teachers said that we needed to understand it nevertheless. On one field trip to a museum where we were given a lecture about creation and the dinosaurs, the teacher fell asleep!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
makes medicine, makes the internet, makes planes fly, explains why birds fly and where babies comes from also tells us that evolution is how we got to where we are. Modern biology *is* evolutionary biology. If you want to become a doctor or a scientist or even a moderately informed citizen--you need to understand evolution and fit it into your belief system somewhere just like millions of other people before you have--including millions of engineers/doctors/scientists who are also Christians.
Try that.
I'm not sure why this story wasn't tagged as troll, it seems to merit it. As the RTFAers have noted, it misstates the actual results. I presume this "exaggeration" is to spark a bunch of posts by others for whatever jollies the author gets from such, which seems trollish to me. Sadly, one of the few thoughtful posts gets smacked by "you're stupid" replies, even though it comes for a person with a pro-evolution belief (person wondering about a good source of facts to support teaching her daughter the theory). She has a good point, one I've often had as well, that just because a bunch of people believe something to be true doesn't make it so, no matter how well educated or respected they may be. So better to demonstrate the facts and then explain why the theory is the best explanation. If you have the facts as a basis and are teaching students how to think for themselves, then by all means go ahead and also teach every theory or major notion in current circulation - critical thinking is what you want to stimulate, not turning out regurgitating puppets. Those here touting the line that we need to educate students so they know evolution is the truth - really? That's how you want to phrase it? Evolutionary Religion 101 perhaps? We'll teach you what is the "truth" as we see it and make sure you get educated so well no one can tell you otherwise. Now who have I heard accusing who of doing just that on a related subject?
All life around you proves evolution. Just as pretty much everything around you proves gravity. Or conservation of energy. Or that is something can fail, it will fail. Or that my cat canhascheezburger if I am to busy commenting on Slashdot, proving that the ordinary housecat has evolved to the top hunter of the world, the one that gets others to do the actual hunting.
The real proof however is in watching a creationist try to explain away T-rex. Real scientist are not sure if T-rex was a hunter or a scavenger. Creationist claim he was a plant eater. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum No, I did NOT make this up. This place exists, but it shouldn't. America, hang you head in collective shame)
I don't know what the plants were like in T-Rexes time but they must have made being a vegan a LOT more exciting back then.
Small birds evolving different beaks to deal with different seeds because the best seed eater is the best breeder? I can buy that. T-rex ordering a salad I can not.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I laugh because given the probability that creating life is so small, and even smaller is the ability to create life which can design microprocessors, create musical masterpieces which can be reproduced, lament another's passing and be joyful when your team wins. I love when scientists beat the drum of evolution because it gives them purpose. As scientists they have a natural tendency, indeed the need to discover and can't help themselves when their discoveries are so trivial that they can't fully explain life. Evolution is the only thing that most scientists can grasp and not even presenting another theory on life is ridiculous. If evolution was indeed the mechanism by which we came to be then wouldn't you expect that over the millions of years other species could in fact create music, write down some plays or something...where are the species which are "close" to human but not quite....Chimps, Whales, Ants...c'mon. No, it seems that we are so far above the other creatures that inhabit this planet that we must have "evolved" this way. It's like saying that given the same ingredients and lots of time only one pie out of 1 trillion attempts is good enough to eat...everything else is no edible. Really, it sounds as though we cannot imagine something greater than ourselves, something that is so abstract from our limited thoughts that we will not even admit that it's possible that evolution is not how we arrived at this place. Sure we can make genetic soup, but all we know for sure is that if we create something that is more advanced than us we will destroy it because of natural selection...which would seem to conclude that evolution is it's own worst enemy.
If I had the power to set curriculums but didn't have the balls/backing to take a stand against mystics, here's what I'd do.
Don't stress evolution. Instead, talk about how science works. Explain what a "theory" is, how they come into being and how they're tested. And then do not move on until the student understand these basics. Make it 50% of their grade if you have to.
Only then can you get into details. If the mystics demand that faith be taught as a rival to evolution, let it happen; all you have to do is frame the issues in scientific terms. Let's see how long faith lasts as a "theory," in the face of kids being assigned to come up with falsifiability tests for it. Let's talk about exploratory experiments and all the observed evidence that leads people to suspect and form the "theory" of creationism. It'll be a mockery and the mystics will demand creationism be withdrawn from science class, since those fucking science teachers keep talking about things in terms of science.
You see, what the mystics don't seem to get yet, is that a science class that teaches evolution but not creationism, is actually neutral on the subject of creationism. If creationism is forced on the class and gets discussed as science, that class will necessarily become anti- religion, not pro- religion. There is no way to talk about the world in terms of observation and confirmation and not have religion come out looking fishy. So the last thing religion proponents should want, is for their subject to come up in a context where students have to look at things in those terms. They should be fighting to include creationism in literature class, where it's actually pretty strong and will come out looking good.
The job of a science teacher isn't to tell kids how the world works; it's to tell kids how to figure out how the world works. Don't let the kids ever walk out with the impression (which they'll tell to their parents) that you told them they are "descended from monkeys." Give them evidence; it's not your fault that 100% of the available evidence just happens to suggest that humans and apes shared a common ancestor. Invite them to find any evidence which doesn't fit.
Give in on the specific theories, and fight hard for the method. They can't question you on this. The nuts are able to get away with saying, "science class should expose our children to all the possibilities," but they won't get away with "science class should teach our kids to ignore their observations" or "science class should not explain how theories are tested."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The irony being that if we paid the teachers enough in the first place, we wouldn't have people stupid enough to be "teapartiers".
As opposed to insanity, that is, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? I think most people agree that education is really important, including most teapartiers. I also see agreement that a considerable portion of public education isn't working. But disagreement comes in figuring out a fix for the problem.
As I see it, underfunding the teachers is a problem, but it is more a symptom than the core problem. In my view, the core problem is that many public schools have strayed from and in some cases have abandoned the primary goal of educating and training students. And as long as a school doesn't try to do its job and there's no incentive to improve things, then additional funds are pretty much wasted.
We can talk about how "stupid" the teapartiers are, or we can talk about fixing yet another case where government throws good money after bad.
Seriously, that's one hell of a coherent argument.
I find it kind of funny - since around 1950 or so, Catholicism has officially had zero problems with evolution as science (and said nothing on the matter until then), and you'll find the same story with most of the mainstream denominations.
IMHO, the ID vs. Evolution crap (seriously - the whole controversy and ensuing politics are pure crap) has come about exactly as you've described... and came from two general sources:
* reactionary fundamentalists who found common cause with right-leaning commentators and politicians
* arrogant elitists who found common cause with hard-left politicians and commentators.
A pox on all their houses. :(
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...and logic gets a flamebait moderation. How troublesome that parents should be responsible for their children outside of food and clothes.
This is definitely good news for me. My wife and I play a very active role in educating our children. So while all of those children whose parents just dumped them off at school are getting a horrible education, my children will be surpassing them. For instance, my son in Kindergarten can read above a third grade level here in Georgia while the MAJORITY of the children in his class can barely read at all. It pisses me off too when the teachers act like my children were just born smart and that I am lying when I tell them that we study TOGETHER atleast an hour a night beyond what the school has been teaching them.
My children understand evolution and who Darwin was. My 9 year old daughter knows basic algebra and American history. I plan on teaching her beginning programming concepts this summer as well as more advanced writing techniques.
I manage to do all this while working a 60-80 work week. I'm not saying I'm some kind of super parent, quite the opposite. I'm saying that if I can manage to raise intelligent, well rounded, and physically fit children, then anybody can. You just have to prioritize your life and realize that what REALLY matters is your children.
Sure, I have no real hobbies. I don't play video games or watch sports. I spend almost ALL of my free time taking care of those children and continuing my education by taking distance learning college courses. If a parent isn't willing to sacrifice their time, then they shouldn't have had children.
So I say go ahead and let the teachers avoid teaching fundamental science, I'll teach it my damn self and MY children will have an advantage over all of those children whose parents can't give a damn.
"It is not enough merely to win; others must lose."
— Gore Vidal
That creationists and evolutionists stop bickering. The fact is that we are here NOW (for better or worse) and we need to enjoy the present and spare some thought on the future.
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. That's 152 years ago, six generations ago. Within less than a decade, the fossil record provided overwhelming proof that his theory of natural selection was correct. Late 20th Century and early 21st Century genetic research has provided additional irrefutable, supporting evidence. Charles Darwin was correct. Scientifically this has been known for well over a century.
And yet Creationism, a.k.a. Intelligent Design, still prevails in many classrooms.
We have historical precedence for this, the Ptolemaic system. It held sway scientifically for over 1400 years. Many regarded the Copernican system as blasphemy many decades after it was scientifically established. It took centuries to overcome this hurdle.
I suspect the same will be true for Evolution versus Creationism. Perhaps in 2111, Evolution will be taught in every American public school classroom ... but then again, perhaps not.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
The way to deal with it is to tell the student that whether or not they accept evolution...
There is an even better way which points out that really they probably believe in evolution too. Just ask them whether they were worried about the swine flu outbreak last year or the bird flu a few years before. Assuming that they respond that these were valid causes for some concern ask them why because, if there is no evolution, then there will be no change in infectious diseases either so there is nothing to be concerned about. Then let them think about that for a while.
While many people may profess otherwise when push comes to shove they do believe in science. This latest science-religion controvesy is utter nonsense. Science and religion have coexisted well for hundreds of years. Yes, with occasional conflicts - but lets not forget that a lot of science was actually conducted by religion early on. It only seems to be recently that a few idiots on the fringe of religions seem to have garnered undue support...which is probably not unrelated to the declining educational standards in schools.
" it's what scientists accept that will be taught."
This is total antithetical to science. The fact that scientists accept it is not the reason it should be taught, rather the reason is that all evidence scientists accept it is because ALL evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that evolution is a fact. We are the way we are because our ancestors evolved in ways that left us with the genetics that we have. There is no other rational explanation.
The teacher should have pointed out the fallacy in the student's reasoning. The student nor the teacher evolved from "monkeys", but it is virtually certain that both evolved from an ancestor that shared an ancestor with ancestor of monkeys. In this context the teacher would then be in a position to begin to enumerate the great many reasons scientists know this to be true. Namely, the many features their ancestors share in common. More importantly, not only do they share such features in common but what we know about the genetics of each of these features indicates that these features share their "similarity" all the way down to the molecular level of organization. Consequently, if they did not descend from a common ancestor one is forced to confront the necessity of developing an alternative explanation that doesn't involve anything about these organisms that science has been able to learn in the past 200 years, whether it be their anatomy, their physiology, their genetics, their ecology, their behavior, or any other known aspect of their biology. There is no testable, scientific alternative explanation that has yet been proposed. Scientists accept the theory of evolution 1) because there is no credible alternative explanation, 2) all efforts to scientifically reject Darwin's theory have been rejected as inconsistent with observable facts, and 3) because of its explanatory power. We can learn even more about the biology of these animals by examining the consequences of evolution by means of natural selection.
America hasn't jumped the shark. Sharks will probably outlast America, as it lets its education system fall behind in science and technology to other nations, such as the Chinese. In the end, survival of the fittest has some very real consequences.
Teachers have become political toys within the system. A parent may call a mayor,a principal,a congressman, and the teacher is left twisting in the wind. The only way that teachers can actually teach is to eliminate parental influence on the school system. And it's not just in the sciences either. Classics that should be studied in literature may easily upset parents due to racial or ethnic portions of the works and God help the teacher if some nut job parent considers any portion of a classic to sexual in nature. There is no greater hazard to education in America than the tragic malformed,ignorant, all too common, parent.
You understand that criticism was not only completely content-free, but presumes to know my personal depth of awareness of a topic by some unspecified psychic means?
Sorry, I'm pretty well versed both in scientific method and philosophy of science, as well as evolution in particular. If you have a particular point, other than "your argument just shows how ignorant you are, and given how ignorant you are, I need provide no counterargument at all", please present it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I seriously don't understand all the hub bub. Look, there is only so much instructional time in Junior High and High School Biology anyways. When I was in High School, the teacher spent, 1 Day describing the basics of evolutionary theory, and in fact then said, however some people believe in creationism. Which you believe is not important for the context of this class, as we are focused on actually examining and learning about the differences in life. Evolution didn't even get brought up for the next 179 days of the school calendar. Frankly, I was fine with that, if I wanted to learn more about bio, then with a bit of basic understanding, then it would make sense in College, or advanced AP bio to be introduced. I just can't get over people throwing a fit over something that really I don't understand why its 1. a big deal, or 2. why it is such a big deal based on the total class room time actually spent on it. Maybe the way science was taught has changed in the last 20 years... who knows.
I knew a teacher in Austin who was paying for school supplies out of her own (underpaid) pockets. And I remember seeing statistics that there were more non-teaching staff than teachers in the district. Time to google...
The school district employs 12,183 people. Of these, 6079 are teachers (that is less than half). Now look at the reductions:
In other words, teachers are 49.8% of the staff, but 86.9% of the reductions.
What they ought to do is fire 450 administrators.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Teachers are in the top half of earners in virtually every state of the union. That is without taking into account the huge amounts of vacation time, and very nice benefits. The myth of the "poor" teacher needs to stop. No one is claiming that they are making millions, but when you are in the top half of earners for your state, claiming destitution just makes you lose credibility.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology. This is fundamentally self-contradictory, but he's making lots of book-cash from it.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated. This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Because he, you know, feels like it. And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Interesting. Let me check whether I can "speculate" on it.
Oh yes... I in fact can, and just did.
Whether I can forward it as a testable claim doesn't matter at all to what I am free to consider possible, because neither can the claim there are no other significant causal factors be tested.
The reality is, we do genetic engineering now. Genetic engineering could have been done by some other form of intelligence at some point in our history. This will remain a reasonable assertion even after you tell me I can't think that.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The creation story, as told in the Bible, is a parable, intended to make intelligible to primitive tribes that God had created the world --- it's not literal historical truth, and it's only attempts to view it as such which cause the difficulties which you cite.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Our college professors don't have Bachelors degrees in Education, but they are some of the best teachers in the world.
In some cases, yes. Science, in general, is having a problem, lately, in connecting with normal people. Never mind being able to explain complex subject matter to a room full of twelve year olds. So, yes, learning how to communicate with children, how to motivate them, and how to discipline them is very important in the elementary school and (let's face it) freshman high school levels. I would like to see a "fast track" program for experts in the field who don't want to have to sit through four years of school because half of the courses they took twenty years ago no longer "transfer", but teaching science to a room full of kids takes far more than just knowledge of science.
The best teachers are quite often the ones nobody likes. In fact, I didn't even like the best teacher I ever had. She was a stodgy old German lady with a thick accent that taught me in fourth grade, but she did three things for me that no teacher before or since came close to:
1. She recognized that I was having genuine difficulties learning and paying attention and she suggested my parents see a doctor. Out of that I got ADD and Tourette's diagnoses. I'm not medicated for them now but they're much easier to cope with, knowing what they are.
2. The school got a grant for 20 TRS-80 computers and none of the other teachers wanted them, so she took the whole batch and taught us all how to type.
3. She noticed my interest in programming and had me teach the other students a bit about it. Did a lot for my confidence and pride, of which I had just about zero at the time.
That said, she was very cold and strict and a lot of the parents didn't like her because she was so standoffish. She was a great teacher, though, even if it wasn't appreciated.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
In the US, the counties pay the teachers, and the state and federal governments tax them. The state and federal governments also give money to the counties. But it's far simpler to have government employees pay taxes just like everyone else than deal with the complexities of exempting them, esp since multiple governments tax them.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Hint: the "government" that is paying them is not the same "government" that is taxing them.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
This brings us to one of the first claims of religion:
to know god, god must first reveal himself to man
and also to one of the claimed claims of God that he will reveal himself to all his creations: http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/27.30?lang=eng#29
"I rejected my Redeemer, and denied that which had been spoken of by our fathers; but now that they may foresee that he will come, and that he remembereth every creature of his creating, he will make himself manifest unto all."
- now when? That's his business, but it would be a low sort of creator that forgot his creations.
Anway, I just wanted to demonstrate where philosphy leads when it considers science and religion. Maybe Godel got there first.
Science and religion are useful independent, but the quest for truth makes a tool of them both; and I'm after truth, not a plausible debating position. If there is a god, and one worth knowing, I expect him to notice that and take an interest; I expect to find him. I find the journey very satisfying, very delightful, and very subject to rational scrutiny. One might wonder if god is more scientist than religious - after all superstition so often masquerades as religion.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
You cannot dismiss creationism simply because it is associated with religion.
We also dismiss the non-religious "theory" of boogeymen under the bed. And we accept religious truths and philosophies ("do unto others..") that are useful and supportable. Creationism is not disregarded because it is religious, it is disregarded because it is useless. It provides no testable hypotheses to suggest there is anything correct about it.
I find that species that evolve into completely different species requires more "faith" on my part than believing in a creator.
Speciation has been observed. Repeatedly. I fear you will need to retreat with your god to a new gap.
The "theory" of evolution is testable, useful, and has repeatedly and correctly predicted real-world results. Just like the "theory" of gravity, when something is consistently true we regard it as truth. And just like the effect of outer space or quantum physics on the theory gravity, we will continue to adjust our understanding of evolution as research clarifies more details of how it works.
If you are alive and can quote a verse from the Bible, you can teach in Alabama!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Federal law requires that they have had the equivalent hours of a science major before they can be "highly qualified" to teach science. For instance I'm a Social Studies teacher who majored in History in college, but recently I've considered getting an endorsement to teach Science to make myself more marketable. I already have a minor in Geology. To get a science endorsement I would have to take the equivalent of a BS in Chemistry or Biology before I can be hired as a Science teacher. While I technically wouldn't have 'majored' in science, the program hours would have to be equivalent or I cannot be endorsed. The summary is misleading. For the most part (and the article says this) teachers don't teach evolution because they're attempting to avoid controversy and angry calls and visits from parents. My father is a science teacher and when he gets to his one month section on evolution (a unit he developed) he does all sorts of things to try to placate parents like send home letters before hand. My father isn't one to duck controversy, but parents are a pain in the ass.
I don't believe anyone was claiming destitution. The point of the original posts above was to state that, apart from the political/cultural issues, there is a financial disincentive for science teachers to keep teaching. My mistake was not being clear about this--that I voiced support for the previous posts would seem to indicate I agreed with their arguments for financial motivations, however.
On a personal note: My wife earned 22K as a new teacher in her first job. Average starting salary for a new professor like me--33K. Needless to say, we both bailed on teaching. I realize one data point does not make a statistic. Nationwide, teachers tend to burn out or make the same decision at around 5 years in. This actually is another disturbing trend in education. We can't seem to keep teachers. Why would that be, if their benefits and vacation time are irrationally good or high, per your argument?
Part of this may be in part due to most teachers working under a 9 month contract with little economic opportunity for the other 3 months. Yes--you can score papers for testing companies thanks to NCLB/RTTT or get a minimum wage job, but does that really make up for the lost potential? Teacher attrition rates would seem to indicate that it is not so.
On your other point that teacher benefits are much greater than those of professionals in other occupations, I would have to agree if this were 20-30 years ago. When I was growing up, we never had to worry about going to the doctor and my parents seem to have done fine for retirement. That said, the current state of affairs is not as nice. In one of my wife's teaching positions, her school had to bargain for healthcare and benefits individually rather than as a state collective (as in other states). In a small school with some aging teachers this didn't work out so well. We had minimal coverage and just hoped not to get sick or need a doctor. As far as retirement goes, I think you'll see that there are two outcomes that seem to have demonstrated themselves over the last 10-15 years. They are: 1) the privatization of teacher pensions/retirement options--subject to the same crash as any other occupation so no real incentive there, and 2) the reduction in or state de-funding of pension/retirement plans due to other budgetary needs/issues.
Claiming that teachers receive disproportionate benefits and vacation time is does not seem to hold true. Otherwise, I should think you would see a trend toward a much higher teacher retention rate as well as a boom in the number of students of teacher preparation programs. Having worked in a university in a state which produced a surplus of teachers, as well as working closely with departments of education, I can tell you from experience that neither one of these are occurring.
Sorry, they do not all make excellent teachers. I had one that was an excellent researcher. His research work was astounding, but the sad fact was the even with a class of three intelligent upper division physics students who wanted to learn the material, he was just not able to teach it. The guy could integrate by parts three times and then do a Laplace transform to an equation and come up with the solution in his head without even thinking about what he was doing. We would have to badger him for the above information which he stated was "trivial". So trivial that he couldn't write it up on the board to show us how it was done. He just was not a good teacher and he was not the only one that I had that might have been a leader in their feild, but lacked the ability to teach the subject to others.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
What does that have to do with it? That's a book about the philosophy of theology, not the science of biology. If someone writes bout their theological beliefs that means they can't separately act a a teacher that does not push those beliefs in an educational setting?
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology.
Yes he does. He is also in the science and education space. That doesn't mean one always has to interfere with the other.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated.
Which as an educator is exactly what he says.
This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Which is him speaking as a philosopher, not just a scientist, although one might say it would be unscientific to form a belief with no scientific support.
And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
Object all you like, but don't go forming completely incorrect opinions about the beliefs of others and then telling others that is what Dawkins or someone else says when, in fact, you're saying just the opposite of what he's actually said (as demonstrated by the video I linked to). It seems it is you that is having trouble separating your scientific and religious beliefs as you're failing to recognize his contributions as a scientist and educator in the field of science and making unfounded suppositions about his beliefs as biased by your opinions of his philosophical beliefs and your assumptions about how you wrongly think that influences him.
In short, you need to be more careful about slandering people when you tell us all what someone "and his ilk" believe. Do your research first.
This isn't my observation, don't recall where I first heard it but suspect it was /.
Some near optimum designs are 'natural'. Function dictates the design. For example the water trap at the bottom of basically all flush toilets (including overseas designs; 'trench', integrated bidet etc etc).
For a thing like a toilet the natural material is ceramic. Ceramics can last for geological time scales.
The reason we know there wasn't a short lived intelligent dinosaur species is that we aren't finding their crappers. Lizards in general get even sicker then mammals when exposed to their own shit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They are in the top half of earners in a group that includes the 75% of people who do not have a college degree. Being in the top-half there is not remarkable.
No one claimed teachers were destitute (well, except maybe the teachers' unions, but fuck them). What was claimed was that teaching high school science is far less lucrative than other possible options with a science degree. Science teachers (high school; tenured college professors are another story) are NOT in the top half of earners among people with science degrees.
Microevolution was invented by creationists after they could no longer claim that evolution had never been demonstrated in the lab.
You can't let the creationists control the language. They know nothing about the subject, why would we humor them? They have a long history of using dishonest tactics in discussions simply to muddy the waters and then claim their is a controversy where non exists.
When we force a new species in the lab the creationists will just move the goalposts anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You assume a "theory" that assumes facts that are not falsifiable (e.g., the existence of a extra-dimensional creator) is, in fact, a theory. You also completely misunderstand what the theory of evolution states and ignore all of the observations that have been made to date that support it.
There is no evidence that life can arise and change outside of natural selection, and the pressures it induces, outside of a laboratory. And there is zero evidence that the entire universe is, itself, a laboratory. Until there is, the flat claim that "only evolution occurs in the natural world" is a bone fide one with no problems attached to it. For you to say there are problems of that nature with the theory betrays your own desire to have an invisible sky wizard be behind everything, when that simply isn't the case (or at least, it's neither a falsifiable position nor is it supported by any evidence).
In short, you neither understand evolution nor the scientific method, despite your claims to the contrary.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I don't know about your university, but in mine, most of the science and math professors were foreigners. Hell, one of my calc professors could not speak understandable English; after the first few lectures, he quit trying and just worked problems on the board. If you couldn't follow along, that's what the TA's office hours were for.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
anyone with a strong science degree is making more money somewhere other than teaching. so either we have to pay science teachers more, or we need to accept that science isn't being taught by science majors. take your pick
Are music teachers ignorant/incompetent in music? Well, science teachers should not be ignorant of science or incompetent in teaching it. If that makes a science teacher more expensive than a music teacher in your country, then so be it. Solve your problem, don't just gripe about it.
and i will bet you a GNP that every other country has the same problem
So you now owe me the GNP of Finland. There is no problem teaching science here in Finland, where teachers traditionally come from the upper half of university graduates (being a teacher does not make one wealthy, but it confers respect and social status), rather than the dregs as in some other countries. Moreover, those who teach math or science in high school are expected to be qualified in the same areas that they teach.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I can assure you that in most of the EU, you go to your local school and that's that. Wherever it's tried, choice just leads to ghettoisation.
In Belgium, freedom of education is in the constitution. So pupils (or their parents) can choose to which school to go (rightfully so in my opinion), but it does indeed lead to ghettoisation by religion.
Almost all schools are funded by government. The largest school network is the Catholic one. They teach their own programmes, have their own inspection and all that is being paid with state money. The second largest network are the community level schools (we have a Dutch-speaking, a French-speaking and a German-speaking community). Some schools are not state-funded, I think a couple of Steiner, Jewish and Sudburry schools are truly private (and consequently expensive).
My kids, not believing in any god and therefore avoiding Catholic schools, go to a Dutch-speaking-community high school in Brussels. (I insist on my kids making their own choices on what to believe in and what school to go to - their mother tried to convince them on Wiccan nonsense but she has little credibility being in mental hospital for years, my own mother tried to talk them into believing in Jesus.)
About 80% to 90% of the pupils in their school are muslim. The vast amount of them does not believe in evolution - which is a pity because only half a century ago the muslims had no problems with evolution.
There now is discussion on whether it would be a good thing or not if there would be a separate muslim network or not. A very first muslim school has opened recently because muslim girls are not allowed to wear a veil during class in community and Catholic schools.
Most teachers in community schools are atheists, they have to be very creative. My son's French teacher once drew 2 rectangles on the blackboard. The first one was a painting of god by an atheïst, it was emty, since there is no god. The second one was a painting of god by a believer, it also was emty because god forbids making depictions of him. Some students accused the teacher of blasphemy, because he had made a "cartoon of god" (no formal or official accusation, just during the class discussion after him drawing the rectangles).
In the Catholic high schools (which I attended, before going to an atheist university), evolution and big bang are accepted by almost everybody.
An up-to-date complete treatise of all the basic evidence that demonstrates the foundations of evolutionary theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
Read it from beginning to end. You're welcome.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I think you missed that religion and science are branches of philosophy that try to answer different questions.
That is probably the way things should be. If it were, religions would progressively be confined to irrelevancy for everyday life, or perhaps limiting themselves to conducting rites of passage for individuals in society.
Unfortunately, most religions cleave to any of several pre-scientific mythologies which are arbitrarily deemed to be unquestionable "truth", rather than being rooted in abstract philosophical narrative which can be revised based on contemplative analysis and observation. This results in a tendency for religion to attempt to answer questions which are clearly in the domain of science (i.e. testable hypotheses). A well-known example is the "power of prayer", which is susceptible to real-world double-blind testing with statistical analysis of results - hint: prayer was demonstrated to be powerless in the tested scenario. In the worst cases, zealots attempt to override scientific results by aggressively brandishing their stone-age mythology - resulting in the tragedy of ID being taught in science classes.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
A tack which I've always generates some traction is to state that they could be right. God may have created us an monkeys separately and completely formed, but he also created an awful lot of evidence that we are decended from a common ancestor. I wonder why he did that.
And the response you'd get to that is a smugly confident "He did that to test our faith".
Now, you may note that response works for any argument they want to win without straining their brains very much. They don't see it that way. They simply see it as "convenient" and stop thinking at that point.
There really is no reasoning with the painfully anti-science people. Come to think of it, that's sort of the definition of anti-science people.
I encourage everyone to find out which side of this issue their local teacher union is on. It's very likely the science side, and this is an example of why tenure has an important function of protecting academic freedom. People pooh-pooh the role of academic freedom in k-12 schools, but it does matter.
We used the issue in one of our interview questions when deciding whom to endorse for the local school board elections. And I live in a pretty conservative area.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
"Just over 5 years ago", yup, it's a slow news day...
You're confusing teaching with educating. Don't worry, much of the rest of education system makes the same mistake.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm from Hungary, ex Soviet satellite state (Hungary), and at the university I had a professor (head of CS department) who trained to be a math-physics teacher, but got involved in math research (statistics) so he became a full-time mathematician.
This is how things work here:
if, you want to be a highschool teacher you need almost science degree. In the old, undiveded 5 year degree program scientist and teachers got the same subjects in the first 3 years, then teachers get some additional pedagogy, psychology lessons. In elementary school, you need a teaching degree, plus some coursework in the subjects you'll teach, but it's less advanced, and these teachers were trained in 3.5 year programmes. In the last 4 years we switched to bsc/msc programmes, but I don't know how that does apply to teachers.
So let me think this one through. We start with razor teeth, killer claws, and end up with... A chicken. I think I'll stay unevolved thanks ;)
Sorry, friend. Something or someone makes you very angry about the education system, teachers or perhaps your own experiences in school. Did you want to have a conversation or harangue me? No point for me to continue if you aren't interested in hearing someone.
Are their hours really that much longer than the average, or are your math skills as poor as you claim these teachers' to be?
No shit. I heard Obama talking about how more and more jobs will "require an associates degree".
Now, I can understand requiring some sort of special degree, and/or some sort of very specialized experience for some jobs.
What I can't imagine, is how any job would require an associates degree. Is it just a statement about how abysmal some high schools are that a generic "HS Diploma" doesn't cut it? Because, from any reasonable school, I don't see where an associates is anything more to brag about.
Oh nice, you, took all those pre-req classes that basically exist to even out the gaps between different peoples high school experiences, great.
Honestly, that recent survey of math scores really scared me more about the future of the society I live in than anything else. Its sad what our educational system has become in some places.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
These teachers are obviously intimidated by all the righty thugs who seem to be calling all the shots these days. These dupes of the plutocracy are unwittingly aiding the war against the middle class by leading the charge against education in this country with their anti-science, anti-intellectual agenda. Add to that the fact that soon, only the rich will be able to afford a college education and we'll end up with a generation of weak minded fools who will believe everything Glen Beck and Fox News tells them.
This post is LAW where prohibited by VOID. Prosecutors will be violated.
Shorter. Their hours are shorter than most. That is why their hourly rate puts them at a higher earning rate than if you count them by the year. No math problem here.
Ahhh... You are poor at math, so I must be angry.... You do realize that your comment makes no sense.
Well, at least they aren't in the bottom 25% of earners, despite their math abilities. That's something.
Perhaps ironically, all of my PE coaches in highschool had kinesiology degrees. Two of them taught History outside of Phys. Ed. Funny
Perhaps you should refer back to what I said as my position. I did not state that any more than "evolution occurs" should be presented as science. That is precisely what I am saying remains in the scope of science, and that claim is accurate.
It was, and is, my position that both the notion of another intelligence impacting the evolutionary process, and the lack of such, are untestable hypotheses. As such, a science class should stick with what is in the scope of science--processes that are testable and universally demonstrable. Predispositions as to worldview shouldn't have more than an anecdotal place in classroom discussion, from my view.
However, I'm fully aware that equivocation of "science" occurs into the realm of "censorship" with frequency, as long as the predominate position of "science" coincides with one's personal preferences.
"'Science' excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological premises"... "Occam's Razor excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological considerations"... understand that both of these statements, at base, are false in the manner you are carefully using them. That is the manner in which I'm reading what you are saying--carefully delineating scope (per particular science of philosophy positions), and overstating Occam's Razor to be a statement of validity rather than conceptual economy. That is how I'm interpreting what you are saying, and how, I suspect, you wish me to interpret it--though, in fact, the statements are disingenuous under analysis.
Thanks for noting I'm free to post whatever I want, whenever I want, here on Slashdot. And I certainly will adjust my knowledge of, and therefore postings regarding, any given subject, when and if an actual compelling counterargument is presented to me. So far, I haven't seen it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"Slander". Okay, I'll review the evidence of Dawkins' supposed "separation" on your link and, for balance, some links on his (profitable!) calls for arresting the Pope, if you'll look up the definition of this term.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Sorry, apparently my direct statement of two words, "evolution occurs", as being the valid scope of scientific presentation, was too confusing. I in no way indicated I thought theological, or extraterrestrial, factors should be included in the theoretical structure to be presented.
I think maybe you had a stock argument to present, and detected something theological nearby, so decided to make your counterargument to a position I didn't state.
For the record, though, whether existence is "evidence" of non-evolutionary factors is purely a subjective usage of what you consider "evidence", and what inferences you choose to consider such from demonstrable processes. That is the case within the context of science (admitted or not--every scientists' analysis is based on hypothetical inferences from "knowns", whether or not individually tested). And, for a theological context (which again, note, I'm not claiming is the context of science), I'll go ahead and say absolute evidence is individually available, and you need not be other than ignorant of this evidence, nor need it correspond to your preference for an exclusionary definition of "evidence", for it to be, quite definitely, evidence.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I had a 7th grade math teacher that everyone hated (because he was excited about math). I was in his class reluctantly because I scored high on placement tests but hated being in the same class as all the rich kids. When I was in front of the class, I did my work just fine. When I was in the back of the class my scores crapped out.
The teacher, noticed the pattern and paid attention to me while I copied problems from the board for the daily quiz and saw that I was constantly squinting. I remember doing so, but thought it was normal and it was hard for anyone to see from the back of the class.
He contacted an optometrist buddy of his to hook me up with a free eye exam (my first ever) and I even got a pair of glasses out of it. I couldn't believe how clear the world was. I had no idea that's how I was supposed to see the world. There were even more starts in the sky... but they weren't as sparkly... just little pin-holes.
The stars are so much more wondrous with astigmatism.
Which religion(s) use this type of description? I have to admit that I know quite little about many religions but this description does not feel familiar to me, not from any religion anyway - and while I am probably mistaken on some religions I very much doubt that it is so with all...
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.