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Classroom Clashes Over Science Education
cheezitmike writes "In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion."
Why 2 sides to discussions that have been scientifically settled? Have the other side of the discussion in Sunday School.
Climate change: the majority of climate scientists think it's true and a component is man-made, but a small and decreasing percentage of climate scientists disagree.
Evolution: There's all but no doubt, and essentially no reputable scientists in the field disagree with the core concepts.
QED.
Why aren't they debating over how to actually engage students? Regardless of whether they teach evolution or creationism or climate change or how to tie your shoes, the way they're doing it is wrong and everybody knows it. They could be spending their time fixing the education system, but instead they're wasting it on this.
Gonna post AC on this since it's a little off-topic, but isn't this the third or fourth 'science/evolution/education' article posted in the past 24 hours? It's an important topic, for sure, but it's beginning to smell a bit of spam sensationalism (not sensationalism as in over exaggeration but rather in over reporting to get ad clicks).
While a good idea in theory is to teach 2 (or more) sides to every issue, you'll always have teachers who believe one way or the other (just like any of us) and will always skew things towards that one way.
You're going to get some teachers skeptical of evolution and some teachers who are die-hard man-made global warming believers. Chances are slim that you are going to get much of any intelligent debate of either of those issues. Same thing with politics, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
there's a right way and a wrong way.
there is a place for religious education for those who want it. it's called sunday school. it has no place in public schools.. and private schools should teach science first and leave evolution or intelligent design or whatever they call that nonsense these days to the religion classes.
Balanced views are fine but *only* if the alternating view isn't filled with psuedoscience or peppered with half truths or partisan politics. ...but as for creationism, gtfo of science. Scripture/Religious class all fine and dandy but science... no.
So determined to stay the laughing stock of the civilised world.
...as long as all churches are required to have an atheist (e.g., Daniel Dennet) or a historic biblical scholar (e.g., Bart D. Ehrman) come in for every sermon or Sunday school lesson to present an alternative viewpoint.
Actually, with politics there are as many sides as there are people involved in the discussion.
The same with religion.
They may agree on very broad concepts, but each one of them knows that s/he is right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.
That is because those are OPINIONS.
Science is not based upon opinions.
Science is based upon theories that have to be falsifiable.
Quoth TFA:
McDonald advises teachers to start the year off with a short section on the nature of science. “Once I started to do this, I had fewer challenges in my classroom,” he says.
Sounds like a good way to deal with the "just"-a-theory crowd.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Just have the Conservatives provide the peer-reviewed science behind their assertions. If it's actually science, there should be something testable to support it. If it isn't science, it doesn't belong in science class.
If they overlap enough, it's a sign that climate change is real.
Why not teach actual science, e.g. classical experiments in electrostatics or mechanics or button-sorting in biology or anatomy?
It's not like kids need to grasp evolution or climate models at an early age. The former is almost better handled in history of western philosophy course and the latter in a history of the logical methods of science in the 20th century.
I would imagine it is the role of the science teacher to educate, not pontificate - if students enter the classroom with different ideas, theories, or beliefs I would expect the teacher to entertain their ideas, beliefs, and theories and then work with the student to understand how their ideas, beliefs and theories balance against scientific facts.
The teacher is not obliged to give equal time to all theories that the students preset, but the science teacher has the task of equiping the students to come to their own conclusions based on facts. A science teacher that can't (or doesn't want to) defend the ideas and concepts they are teaching needs to find another profession.
Religions typically teach the "One True Belief" on a subject and ask the followers to "believe without proof, as an exercise of their faith," not science.
Ken
Until I hear environmentalists address why in the Earth's several billion years temperatures in the 1800's are the perfect climate that we must not diverge from.
Until I hear environmentalists explaining that climate change is constant, but that rapid change could be a concern.
Until "Stop Climate Change" is regarded as a joke like "Stop Plate Tectonics"
Until I hear environmentalists explaining the possible benefits of a warmer environment along with the detriments.
Until I hear environmentalists use arguments involving cost/benefit ratios that don't approach the infinite.
Until then I will regard environmentalists as zealots who are in no way interested in a truthful discussion about managing our impact on our world.
That does not matter. As long as the theories explain the available observations and are falsifiable.
Ideally the theories should suggest experiments that can be used to falsify them. Whether or not these experiments are possible to perform is another issue.
Of course not. That would be evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong.
Is to teach skills that make people able to participate in society. If you're going to be catching alligtor for a living, you don't need much education. However the trend is for increasingly complex jobs as computers fill-in the easy, repetitive parts.
Then lets look at creationism. It posits a "because god made it this way" which provides a limit to understanding because we cannot possibly do what god has, because then we would be gods ourselves, and that's heresy. But call it "evolution" and "biology" and "chemistry" and we can teach these and they lead to skills and discoveries in genetics, medicine, disease therapy, etc.
And that's why creationism has no place in schools. It does not teach a skill.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Why do we let politicians write the text books, instead of having a quorum of people in their respective fields with masters degrees? Shouldn't the most educated in their respective fields have a say in what the younger generation is being taught, so they can be more prepared for higher education?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?_r=1
The number of people who believe that God has his hand in the creation of the world has not changed much in the last 30 years. What is going to change in the near future to make a difference in those numbers? If people haven't figured it out in the last 30 years, I have my doubts that 30 more years is going to make much of a difference. http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origins.aspx
Clashes over putting religion in a science class.
It has no place there.
Invisible sky beings that grant wishes and the fake religions around it are a joke.
Pay your taxes and then you can have a opinion about something until then suck my ass.
...and promoted as a way to rebel against the dead hand of the "flat earther" Superstitionists.
Teachers can't do this, but if any students are reading this post:
Your conventional authority figures want you to be stupid cattle. They despise reason itself and they want you to be slaves. To them.
The kids in the 1960s were actually right about The Man before most of them sold out and got old and scared.
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. As you age your physical power and independence will allow you to reject your authority figures as most deserve.
Cultivate a "fuck you" attitude but learn how to mask it lest you be in situations where Bible Thumpers have the power to punish you.
Trust no one. Not me, not anyone.
Learn and use Critical Thinking or you will end up like the retarded fat fucks you see shuffling around Walmart who believe everything Fox News tells them.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
When I was younger I was highly religious but even in that time our 'conservative' school taught evolution. It seemed even the churches were happy about it. It took away the ability of any one church to really subjugate the school.
Just the notion of evolution is failed in their mind, Aunt Mommy and Uncie Daddy did not produce something better
The great mistake being made here is that they need not be mutually exclusive. It may trouble people here to no end to know that some of the greatest scientific minds throughout history were also deeply religious. There are those of us with enough presence of mind to be able to separate our faith in god with our faith in science. We readily admit as scientists that we do not know the origin of life, the universe and everything, and at the same time we as Christians (at least me) readily admit I don't know what god is or who Jesus is, or how the whole god thing works. I take it on faith that both of these things will be true. I have the observable evidence of the universe around me to prove out, or at least not falsify, a lot of what science has taught me. I have the same observable evidence of the universe around me to prove out some of the stuff that Christianity has taught me. A lot of the stuff is pure bullshit, but the idea that we should all just get along is certainly not a purely scientific concept (and not exclusively Christian). That's not a bad idea. At the same time almost nothing that science has taught us has been bullshit, but the stuff that is bullshit is just about as bad as the worst Christianity, or religion in general has handed us. Stuff like eugenics and biological weapons, for some people GM foods and other "evil capitalist" ventures science has made. I can list the transgressions of science and religion all day long, but they are not interchangeable entities.
What if it turns out, as I suspect, that god is math. Most all of the attributes science applies to math the religious apply to god. What if the background radiation is god? As a scientist I know that these things, until falsified, can most certainly be true. Just as true as the almost near certainty that there is life on other planets. There's just too many planets for there not to be. I know this with just as much certainty as I know god exists, not 100% confidence. But wouldn't it be great if it turned out that the stuff in the bible was perhaps a superior being trying to talk to people who viewed his/her/it's form as a god? Do dogs and cats (ok, dogs) not look upon us as gods? All honest geeks know the saying "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (Google just told me it's one of Clarke's three laws). So who knows, maybe god isn't math but a super intelligent omnipotent uber begin.
My big hang up with people who just hate god/religion/whatever is that you have no proof these things do not exist and there is certainly proof, according to the conjecture put forth by the religious, that god does exist. And science doesn't work by "proving" things it works in the opposite way, you disprove things. So until god has been falsified, please stow the "god doesn't exist" talk because you sound very arrogant. People much smarter than you (not me) believe in god. You certainly don't know that with 100% certainty, so don't tell everyone else as if it was a proven fact.
We don’t let people who can’t read teach kids how to read.
We don’t let people who can’t add/subtract teach kids math.
It should just be a hiring requirement for science teaches that they accept evolution as fact.
If the religious parents of a child explain "give the answers they want even though we know they are wrong thanks to the Bible," the fact remains that the student is being exposed to evidence that undermines his faith.
This is what the religious practitioners all fear. When a young and impressionable mind is exposed to challenging information, no amount of preparation can prevent at least some of it from making an impression. So, it is not sufficient to keep religious discussions in the church and to allow secular discussions at school. Any exposure to religion-undermining memes *at all* is a threat to parent's goal of keeping control over their child's beliefs.
No amount of enlightened philosophizing will convince such parents that it is ok to keep secular education secular. And telling them to send their kid to private school is no good either; most religious parents either can't or won't pay for it. They want the property-tax-funded public education for their child, and they want to filter out anything that might challenge their religious beliefs, and they are going to fight for this tooth and nail.
You can't silence them through rational argument. There is no convincing them, and we are stuck with them. Your only option is to get just as involved, and just as pushy, and just as loud as they are.
"pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion".
Science requires that there be two sides to the discussion. Einstein's theories are STILL being tested, and attempted to be disproved, by good, solid scientists who understand that the nature of Science is inquiry and disagreement, and trying to advance real understanding by questioning conventional wisdom and dogma.
Religious Zealots think that there should not be more than one side to a discussion.
Ergo, I have just become convinced that the climate change fanatics are religious zealots.
I find it odd that the theory of evolution is shown in a light of being an evolving science which is correct in that the theory changes as more and new evidence is discovered. Yet the theory of climate change is shown as more of a dogma where the scientific community is a consensus which it is not and any dissent to the contrary is put down as being "unscientific".
There is plenty of evidence refuting the claims of anthropogenic climate change which is available to anyone who has an internet connection and can find google.com
Teaching science as a dogma is contrary to the scientific method. The ACC folks just can't see that the dogma they're teaching is just as bad as the scientific consensus against plate tectonics which was taught in schools well into the 60's. Real science is not a consensus. Only in the fullness of time will the truth be discovered but wrecking our economy in the name of a theory which is far from proven is the wrong way to go.
Here is a particularly scholarly site which puts the "ACC consensus" in the proper light. http://geologist-1011.net/
Sounds like you're just looking for an excuse to disbelieve. Why not look at the evidence and see for yourself what the facts are?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The science topics don't cause controversy. The controversy is caused by people who for religious and political reasons refuse to accept scientific evidence.
The students greatest enemy normally is his family. For example a family in which mom and dad are not reading books on a regular basis will produce an inferior student with few exceptions. But when it comes to parents infested with conservative doctrines it may not even be possible to educate a child. There is already very strong evidence that removing children from their homes combined with an environment that emphasises learning will boost kids to star levels rather easily.
Now what political leader will advocate removing children from their families? It might be the same leader willing to advocate strict birth control by the state. In other words on items of real importance the topics are taboo and can not ever be dealt with in a democratic state. Sadly only an absolute dictator could cause such things to have importance.
At the very least we need to isolate schools from the ability of parents to influence the educational process either directly or through elected officials. Removing education from mundane society actually has a real history. For example the numerous nations that would not allow arrests on campuses even with a warrant. Universities used to be able to shelter the same way that churches could shelter people from state powers.
In order to understand climate change as a scientific subject, you need differential equations, statistics, thermodynamics, and computational modeling. Neither teachers nor students have anywhere near the necessary background. Not even the graph showing average global temperature increase is something that people in high school can generally understand how it was derived or what kind of statistics went into creating it. Anything you can teach about climate change in high school is going to be superficial and based on a political agenda.
That's completely different from evolution. People in high school have the necessary skills to understand evolution, what the evidence is, and how it works. They can even carry out experiments to demonstrate it happening and look at the raw data and understand how it leads to the conclusion that we're here because of evolution.
No, it should be a requirement that people who teach a scientific subject can explain the evidence for the prevailing theory, carry out experiments to test it, and use this to teach what science is all about. They should teach the scientific method and critical thinking. That is what science is about.
People who merely believe something without understanding the evidence for it have no business teaching science at all.
What two sides? Facts do not have sides. One can be pro-something or anti-something when it comes to reasons or explanations. The bible explains why the world is so without any facts. So I would not call creationism a fact or process and hence, not a part of science. A lot of the time, the bible can be proved wrong which makes it a poor source of scientific fact.
This is more about censorship by the tyranny of majority. Its bad that violent chemical reactions are banned from school. But this?
"Some people can't grasp the passage of time a million years"
This one phrase sums up the entire argument of ther fundies. You see, they firmly BELIEVE that the earth is only 7,000 years old! Nobody is going to convince them otherwise because that would require them to think objectively about things. They simply refuse to do that thus it is a waste of time argueing with them. What thinking people must do is to confront them in public forums.
I'm wondering why Sex ed. isn't called out as another controversial topic. I'm sure that the zealous Christian orthodoxy has strong feelings about sex ed., and especially contraception related teachings in the classroom.
-- obligatory (but true) caveat: my comments my own, and don't reflect my employer or colleagues' positions.
When a gang of thumpers start in on you, nothing shuts them down faster than knowing the scriptures better than they do.
I say read the Bible. In fact I highly recommend it. Think of it as recon.
1. The stories, the parables, the characters, the words, the sayings. If you do not know these words, you lack tools in your grammatical toolbox. There are thoughts you do not know. There are ideas you do not possess. You are missing part of the shared culture and language that you are immersed in. There are things you are unable to discuss with wise men because you lack the words to do it.
2. The Stories in the Bible are not at all what the preachers and the churches tell you. The church wants 10% of your cash, and the preachers may want to know you 'Biblically'. The church is a mind control cult.
3. The stories in the bible are not what you think. If you have not read, you do not know the means and methods used to gain power and control. And it is about power and control. It is rather plain about it.
4. The bible tells you how to recognize false gods, false prophets, false preachers, false messiahs. Religion was not started yesterday. There have been false preachers for thousands of years. If you don't believe that is fine. But you will learn to recognize a true man of god. And you will learn to recognize the 95% that are false christians, the deceivers, the liars, the charlatans, the charismatic cult leaders, the scamsters, the predators, the crooks and the bullies. You learn to recognize and call out those that would be God rather than those who serve God.
READ IT. REJECT IT. I wish you all would. Try it, install, thrash it to bits, talk about it with your friends, and throw it away.
If you have not read it, how can you fear what you do not know? How can you trash what you do not know?
And read it for yourself. Go direct to the source.
The preachers use the Bible to control you. What they preach, you usually cannot find in the scriptures.
When you are done, as an exercise, figure out how you can tell a Cult from a Religion from a Political Group from a CIA Psyop.
Gospel means 'Good News'. Good Gospel is clear and immediately useful. It uplifts. Good Gospel promotes Life. If a preacher is telling you that you are bad, a sinner, to fear, to submit, he trying to control you. And if you are ignorant, you have no defenses.
Lastly, there are some really good sites that have a web page for each line. Each original line has 10 or 20 different translations. I find some translations are quite different from each other.
And to go with the translations are commentaries by several authors on each line.
No need to struggle with English from the middle ages.
We say a TV show the other day about the origins of the universe. It was neither true scripture or true science. It was propaganda. It was to serve somebody's agenda, to plant a world view in your head that served their purpose.
Know science. Know the Scriptures. Read it all. Comprehend it. Make up your own decision.
Don't be ignorant. Don't let anybody else tell you what is says, what to think or what happened. Observe first hand.
Be careful The scriptures are powerful stuff. It will disturb your chi, your calm and your dreams, but it passes.
Religion is politically disruptive. It says that the King is not the highest power. It says that even the King must answer for his deeds.
It says that the King is not a God.
Kings don't like to hear this.
Sometimes I have been know to thump too, when it suits my purposes.
And once again, I have no hidden agenda to convert you, I could care less what you believe. Or what you think.
But I hate ignorance, fools and followers.
I take it you aren't familiar with the term "Nobel Disease"?
HAND.
An appeal to authority isa logical fallacy. Saying "some expert says X so you must believe it" doesn't prove anything. It is not a valid counterpoint to any logical argument.
If an expert says something, and that's good enough for you, that's fine. But don't throw that out there and expect people to be impressed by it. You're basically saying you're too busy to look into things for yourself, and you don't have anything useful to say, but you're are chiming in anyway because you like to hear yourself talk.
And we certainly shouldn't teach that kind of "critical thinking" in a "science" class. What's the point of school if you're just teaching people to believe what they're told? Trust me, they do that naturally.
Finally, I would like to point out that modern science is the result of, and is perpetuated by people not simply accepting what they're told. So, it's definitely not reasonable to criticize someone for not accepting a scientific "consensus." Quite the opposite, there is little value is repeating what everyone else is saying, and that's all you're doing when you appeal to authority.
This is Slashdot, and it is obvious the typical political viewpoint leans far left of center here. Thing is, that is exactly the problem. This place is an echo chamber and all these posts reinforce the same viewpoint. This is why climate change is so obvious to some people, and so suspicious to others: it is highly politically charged. I still remember when the climate change indoctrination started back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was, and has always been driven by politicians who are, you guessed it, very left of center, like the posters here. You could ignore this, and look to peer reviewed articles, and extremely young conference proceedings and journals to convince yourself its about 'truth' and not politics, but, I'm sorry, you would be very wrong.
Typically empirical scientific knowledge is wrong, very wrong initially, less wrong later on, but almost always wrong. That's just the way it is, we all learn about it in school. Not all empirical scientific knowledge is equal, far from it. Knowledge that has been applied in very awesome and useful ways (physics, chemistry, biology) is readily accepted and taught in classrooms. This knowledge is hundreds of years old, widely and usefully applied, universally accepted, and predates and/or is orthogonal to existing political modes. Knowledge whose primary application is motivation for economy-shifting industry regulations with a far-left slant, which is tremendously young, and which is fraught with funding conflicts of interest is going to receive incredible scrutiny and skepticism. When I was still a Ph.D student I remember my advisor had never mentioned climate change one minute, then he won a huge NSF grant about green energy, and it was his thing. New York politicians push this funding to liberal professors, who generate results, which is then published in state-funded conferences, etc... Astro-turfing can be accomplished with public money _and_ industry money.
These are all very good reasons to not teach climate change in the class room, it is _not_ settled science, it is obviously politically charged, and it oozing with astro-turfing money and feel-good campaigning. Now for a kid to be expected to challenge his _teacher_, in a classroom where all the other kids just want this annoying arguing kid to shut up and sit down, is _not_ how the opposing view point should be expressed. Its not fair to the viewpoint, or the kid, or the rest of the classroom. There was a name for kids that stood up and bitched with the teacher: (annoying) dorks. The teacher shouldn't be indoctrinating students in questionable and controversial knowledge and relying on students to challenge him. Most students aren't equipped to debate the teacher, nor brave enough, nor inclined enough to do the necessary research. This is why the teacher should stick to old, widely accepted knowledge and not cutting-edge highly politically charged astro-turfed climate change.
Funny thing is, the article this all came from made its viewpoint obvious when it compared evolution (circa mid-1800s) to climate change in legitimacy. You guys are Fox Newsing yourselves and you don't even realize it.
--"You are your own God"--
There are also two sides to the discussion of whether (obligatory Godwin) Hitler was right, or pi is three, or the moon landing was faked.
Ooh boy, that's a lot of controversy to teach.
Math is not science. At least not in commonly accepted Popper's model and not according to definitions that resulted from the discussions in the Scopes Trial.
In math it makes sense to say 'prove that this statement is true in all possible cases'. In science this is meaningless because it does not build upon a complete set of axioms.
A teacher should always be prepared to explain kids what kind of experiments were made so far to try to disprove a theory and why they failed.
Reading your post reminded me of all the people who also think that technology and science are the same.
Good science relies mostly on a preponderance of empirical observation, not on theories containing airtight logic the way mathematics does. And to become useful to society at large the evidence has to be convincing enough to create a consensus within its scientific field (i.e. among scientists). That's part of what makes science a kind of social phenomenon; There's no way for someone to 'prove' a scientific theory because the closest you can get is to let other people make observations that match or corroborate the theory.
There is no defence for religious preaching in classrooms outside of scripture
Oh, and as for experiments and consensus - while modern science can be complicated, historical science is usually quite trivial. I'll grant you that "real" science experiments tend to be more difficult to dream up, but hardly impossible. Say we want to explore the nature of gravity, forget the book-learn'in, lets see what we can figure out ourselves, we can read the book later and see if it agrees. To make things interesting what say we plan for a grand finale where we drop some stuff off the tallest building/cliff/whatever we can get to (have to include at least one water balloon, obviously), and see if we can predict beforehand how long it will all take to reach the ground. Maybe relate it to airplanes dropping bombs/emergency supplies/etc. and having to time things just right to hit their target, just to give it that real-world tie-in.
Okay, well, what do we know about gravity? It pulls stuff to the ground. Okay, so how *exactly* does it behave? Does everything fall at the same speed? Does it matter how big/heavy something is, or how far it falls? Well, drop a bunch of stuff from different heights and see if there's any obvious pattern. Hmm, heavy things like rocks fall faster than light things like feathers, why might that be? If someone brings up air resistance bring out the vacuum tube and discover that without air they fall at the same speed, otherwise start building a theory where different things fall at different speeds. How about distance? Do things always take the same amount of time to fall or does falling farther take longer? Is it a linear relationship? Hmm, gonna need more detailed info there, lots of different ways to check, a stopwatch could help, or maybe a video camera where you can watch things happen frame-by-frame or as a single a time-lapsed multiple exposure image. All right, it's going to be pretty obvious that sticks, rocks, etc keep speeding up, while paper, feathers, etc quickly reach a fairly constant speed, different for each (another chance for someone to "discover" air resistance, or at least that there's two "kinds" of gravity for dense versus "floaty" things)
So they've done a good chunk of work there, let 'em take a break, relax, play, talk things over, etc. Fallow time is important. Come back and start working on on prediction - floaty stuff obviously all hits different speeds, but once it does it stays pretty constant (well except for paper, that swoops and flutters all over the place, can't really predict it at all) Makes prediction fairly easy, even if you do have to work out the details for every single different thing you want to drop (hopefully they've all learned algebra and the basic equations of motion before this experiment) The dense stuff is trickier though... hopefully someones thought of acceleration, or at least of a plotting distance-versus-time as measured on that time-lapsed photo (plotting things to look for patterns being another one of those basic skills that shows up in almost every experiment). A parabolic curve will be pretty obvious on the plot and hopefully be recognized as having something to do with the t^2 term in the equation of motion. They can try to extract the acceleration from the plot, might work - of course they'll want to test it's predictive power from various heights, after all they have to predict fall times within 20% (or whatever) to earn the pizza party. If it's not accurate enough (almost certainly won't be) they'll need to dream up other experiments, or maybe repeat the same experiment several times to get more statistically accurate results.
At any rate everyone has to eventually reach an agreement on a prediction - it'll probably be a heated discussion because they want that party, but failing to reach an agreement means they default to the exam so eventually they'll work something out. Lots of politics, arguing, maybe some more experiments, just like in real life - which is kind of the point. The big day comes, they drop their water balloon (several rather... so they can filter out the worst of
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"...those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion."
Science isn't some kind of philosophical discussion. And it's not about your feelings (unless you're studying psychology).
It's about supporting evidence and data! We don't discuss wether water is h2o. Why because unless
we made a ton of mistakes in the last 150 years we're pretty certain that we're right. Evolution and global warming
are the same. Once there is enough evidence in their support your pretty much unreasonable or insane to disagree.
Of course science is proven to be off base sometimes. But this isn't particle physics we aren't going
to find really strange $hit going on.
Let people who don't believe in evolution be forbidden from accessing those medical treatments which are completely, 100% dependent on researchers understanding the ultra-fine details of the evolutionary process and, in fact, dependent on evolution being true for their advancement.
That pretty much covers everything from the proper use of antibiotics and the avoidance of MRSA, to gene therapy, to the attenuation process that creates vaccines and the defense they give against diseases like polio, rubella and smallpox. Let's see then there's pathogen tracking, so no CDC information for them oh and molecular epidemiology also.
Oh and here's one just for deniers, the molecules being developed which are capable of binding to bioterrorists agents like anthrax spores and ricin molecules are of course entirely dependent on the artificial, directed evolutionary processes utilized by the biotechnology industry.
Yes deniers, let's create a generation of students who don't believe in evolution but who do believe you can pray away the gay. What a fucking shining city on a hill we'll become under that regime.
Again!
Indeed - the US National Academy of Science was asked by Congress to investigate the "hockey stick" and found that it was valid back in 2006.
Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong:
Details of the claims and counterclaims involve lengthy and arcane statistical arguments, so let's skip straight to the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science (pdf). The academy was asked by Congress to assess the validity of temperature reconstructions, including the hockey stick.
The report states: "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world".
Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been improved in a number of ways, it was not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading up to the 20th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of the 20th century.
It is true that there are big uncertainties about the accuracy of all past temperature reconstructions, and that these uncertainties have sometimes been ignored or glossed over by those who have presented the hockey stick as evidence for global warming.
Climate scientists, however, are only too aware of the problems (see Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period), and the uncertainties were both highlighted by Mann's original paper and by others at the time it was published.
Update: as suggested by the academy in its 2006 report, Michael Mann and his colleagues have reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study and updated measurements from the recent past.
The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study. Like other temperature reconstructions done since 2001 (see graph), it shows greater variability than the original hockey stick. Yet again, though, the key conclusion is the same: it's hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.
In fact, independent evidence, from ice cores and sea sediments for instance, suggest the last time the planet approached this degree of warmth was during the interglacial period preceding the last ice age over 100,000 years ago. It might even be hotter now than it has been for at least a million years.
Further back in the past, though, it certainly has been hotter - and the world has been a very different place. The crucial point is that our modern civilisation has been built on the basis of the prevailing climate and sea levels. As these change, it will cause major problems.
When I was a high schooler I was a young earth creationist (my views have since changed, but that was my perspective at the time). I took a science in society course which covered evolution and the big bang, among other things. I flat out refused to answer any question that said "the earth was X billion years old". etc. However I was perfectly fine with answering the question as "the theory of evolution states that...", or "according to the big bang theory...". The first was against my beliefs, the second was just a true fact, regardless of what I believe.
Why can't we simply do the same everywhere? The kid at age 12 may not be able to take facts and come to their own conclusions about the truth, but he can learn the facts. The kid will get older and eventually he will be able to bring all the facts he learned throughout his entire life and eventually come to his own conclusions.
We should never demand blind faith to anything, even science. We can just teach the facts. Otherwise it is all just teaching ones own faith (in science, or religion, or whatever combination of the two fits to the individual teacher), and teaching our own bias... No one wins in that situation.
I'm fine with creationism being tought in science class. Just let science be taught in theology class.
Reading the comments here it seems to me that a certain degree of debate is warranted.
Fundies aside, there is no "consensus" at all on evolution. Oh, sure, evolution is an observation of fact, it can only be denied by the willfully blind and they can have their cosy little padded cells. But how does evolution work? Which theory is correct? Is it punctuated equilibrium? Darwin's gradual descent by means of natural selection? How does speciation occur? If high school science is not teaching the debate (and evidently, it does not) then it's not teaching science. Consensus my big red babboon behind.
Teaching climate change as science? I have never heard of any high school teaching a fundamental understanding of post-hoc 'science', and my kids are in or have been through high school. The post-hoc 'sciences' like economics, climate science, political science, criminology, and so forth are not the same as the so-called 'hard' sciences like physics and chemistry. It is important nay, fundamental, to teach how they differ and how we can never have any great degree of confidence in or reliability on the predictive power of post-hoc 'sciences'. A consensus among soothsayers does not have more predictive power than reading chicken entrails, no matter how many win valuable Scandanavian prizes.
If posters here, or political activists everywhere, believe otherwise, there is your evidence of the failure of the school system.
While evolution is a big deal, the flip side is that even non-religious people have trouble accepting that we're all different. Teaching class differences, gender differences, or differential evolution to different racial, ethnic and geographic groups is still so taboo that it will get you fired right away.
Futurist Traditionalism
First, Global Warming pushers tried did a Godwin on us by referring to skeptics as "deniers" (a term formerly used almost exclusively for Holocaust deniers). Now they're trying to equate Global Warming skeptics with Evolution skeptics.
Frankly I don't know enough about the science to decide for myself, and I'm humble enough to realize that I never will know enough about it. So I'm left having to decide only partially on the plausibility of the science. I also have to decide which side I have more confidence in.
The current practice of global warming folks of trying to avoid debate by making name calling and false equivalence doesn't give me much confidence in their side.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
How can a school teach religion? I've never understood this. Isn't the purpose of school to teach fact and progress the logical and physical abilies of kids?. When you teach religion you basically saying, "We have this book that someone wrote and lets just agree because we can".
I'm NOT anti religion, people can worship and pray to who ever they want, that could be God, Muhammad, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Harry Potter or even a toilet seat. There in lies the issue, to teach religion you rightfully have to teach about every religion and uphold every religion's beliefs and you can't do that.
The point of school is to prepare children for the real words and religion doesn't do that, it fills there head with the answer that if you can't answer the question jesus did it. It laughs in the fact of evolutionary FACT! It completely disregards proven universal time lines and it just doesn't fit in to what we know to be true. If you want to force your kid to go to sunday school and pray before dinner then go ahead, I think thats great. However lets leave the fact for the classroom and not the poorly performed magic show.
Religion has NO place in school. If your going to teach religion then your saying logic means nothing, you saying proven scientific discovery's are false and you just laughing at actually having to engage you brain and think.
Because he/she/it doesn't want to find evidence that contradicts their belief. IMHO, most climate change deniers are motivated by the desire to avoid having to change their behavior, even in the smallest way. They latch onto any evidence, no matter how speciously gathered or irrational, that supports their laziness. For example, let's take the suggestion that people switch to compact fluorescent lamps instead of incandescent bulbs, because the CFLs use less energy. They say that they don't want to spend $4 on a CFL when they can spend 50 cents on an incandescent; the fact that the CFL will last multiple times longer than the incandescent, as well as saving the individual enough money over the course of the life of the bulb to pay for the price difference is not relevant to them. They scream and rant and rave about the mercury content of the CFL, while ignoring the facts that 1) said mercury will never enter the environment if the lamp is recycled at the end of its life if they're willing to take the bulb to a location that collects them, such as several places they have to go in the course of their lives anyway, and 2) even if the lamp is dumped in a landfill, its use will result in a net lowering of mercury entering the environment. (Most electricity, at least in the USA, is generated through the consumption of fossil fuels, in significant part, coal. Burning coal releases mercury into the environment. If you use less electricity, less coal is needed to do the same work, eg lighting your home. The amount of mercury prevented from entering the environment from using less coal is larger than the mercury content of the CFL.) They'll also latch onto the notion that breaking a CFL results in a hazmat situation; the recommended cleanup procedure for a broken CFL is to use a dustpan and broom.
There is a significant portion of the population that reacts to the concept of shared solutions to shared problems in a knee-jerk way; the instant someone suggests that they may have to change their behavior in order to help solve the problem, they dig in their heels and fight. I can't conclusively put my finger on why they react this way. Perhaps it's just laziness, eg "This problem doesn't affect me personally in a way that I perceive as negative, so out of laziness I will resist doing anything that would help solve the problem" or "I'm too lazy/stupid/ignorant to critically think about the problem, and change frightens me, so I'll make much more effort to maintain the status quo than would be required to actually change my behavior in the first place". Maybe it's a misplaced rebellion to authority. In some cases, maybe they resent the fact that they were treated like gods because they excelled in athletics while they were in school, while the smart kids got their faces flushed down toilets, but now those same smart kids are achieving in ways they can't even comprehend, while they're stuck in a menial, go-nowhere job with no prospects for advancement. Maybe it's the anti-intellectual movement that is encouraged by some in power seeking to manipulate the masses. Maybe they fear what they don't understand, and out of that fear comes the mistrust of anyone attempting to educate them. Maybe, for some reason, they don't understand that what is good for the group is in general good for the individual. Maybe they're just selfish, lazy, short-sighted assholes.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
My son is now 15. He's had several teachers over the years that had great teaching skills but were really weak in the subject they were teaching -- to the point where I would catch serious errors in what was being taught (geometry, science). It's really interesting to be in the position of correcting the teacher without harming the teacher's ability to reach the kid.
This happened more often in grade school than it has in middle school where some of the teachers are specialists. I'm hoping the trend of increasing subject knowledge continues in high school.
That said, a good teacher knows that one answer to a question is "I'm not sure, how about we investigate and try to figure it out together."
Belief systems have no place in the class room except as comparative religions. Schools are for science, churches are for religions.
There cannot be a 'correct' without the possibility of 'incorrect'.
I support religion being taught in schools, but in an appropriate setting -- such as a religion or mythology class, not a science class.
Everybody will then be happy.
Want to learn religious stuff, go to your place of worship
Want to learn scientific stuff, go to your place of learning
Once the kids get to 18, let them make their own choices.
Although credited to Cathy Ladman, I swear I heard George Carlin or Robin Williams or somebody describe religion as "Guilt with different holidays". Given that Global Warming has at least one holiday, even if you don't actually get the day off, and it is basically a way for humans to feel guilty about existing, I think it qualifies.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Public schools and non-religion based private schools teach evolution. There can be questions and doubt, hopefully eased one way or the other with encouraged outside study, but like in all subjects no push-back is allowed. And like with all subjects the answers the test are what you have been told are the answers to the test, not necessarily what you believe to be the truth, and you will be graded based on your ability to remember what you have been told.
Religion-based schools teach creationism when that is what the particular religion believes. Homeschoolers can teach whichever they prefer. Parents can then choose which schooling is best for their family. If they don't agree with the curricula of a particular school, they can move their child to another school or another from of schooling.
Too bad we can't just load the ones complaining about religious persecution (because of science) into a number of ships and send them somewhere else...Antarctica I guess.