I've been an upper elementary teacher for eight years (my wife's been for 12). I have come to learn that homework benefits very few kids in the classroom each year. The upper kids, who don't need the extra work, do it splendidly, and have parents who check it over and help them with it. The lower kids rarely finish it, or do it sloppily, and more times than not have parents that are too busy or too unconcerned about their kid's homework. The middle kids, well, some DO benefit from doing it, but it takes an effort from the family for it to be successful in the long run. Many times, however, the kids who need the extra work would be MUCH better off in my classroom getting the help from me. It puts the learning in context of the lesson that introduced it instead of having a parent help who hasn't been in fifth grade in thirty years.
We've come to expect that our kids do tons of homework each and every night, and I have many colleagues who parrot that idea. When I press them as to why, they basically tell me that they need to practice doing homework. Rarely is the question answered that the lesson needs to be reinforced or whatnot.
We're in the day and age of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the current incarnation of educational reform that has been around since the sixties. I live in an average-to-slightly-upper middle class neighborhood, and the vast difference among my students academically is astounding. 1/3 of my kids in the classroom have IEPs (Individual Educational Plans, which have goals tailored to the individual, and you must follow them, even if it was written in another district before the student moved to yours), and gathering homework on a regular basis from everybody is time consuming due to the amount of kids not doing it to the different expectations NCLB has forced.
The reality is that very few parents are willing or able to help at home. Kids are overextended with activities (kids are doing extra-curriculars at an all-time high), or they're latchkey, or they're in daycare for extended time. I usually get done in FIVE minutes one-on-one what could be done in half an hour at home, and of course I take that route when I can. I've moved on to pushing some work back to the next day instead of giving it for homework (yes, I still give homework, just not nearly as much as when I started, and now it's mostly reading), due to the fact that while they are learning skills they should have an opportunity to learn it from a person that is getting paid for teaching it, and it highly qualified to do it (yes, there are teachers who are not highly qualified, or highly motivated, but that's for another thread I think).
Kids who don't finish something in a reasonable timeframe in the classroom will have more homework than those who do. It's easy to tell, once you get to know the kids, whether they don't understand or are malingering. I do, however, like to give reading homework for many reasons. For one, it helps them become better readers, and they actually DO IT, especially if they self-select the reading. Another reason is that, in my grade, I encourage the kids to read with parents or siblings. I get a lot of feedback about how that has been good for the family as a whole over time.
I can't speak to the upper grades, but I know many teachers who see the same thing (the kids who can do it already, the kids who can't at home, and the middle ground) in middle school and high school. There's no easy answer, but looking back at the history of education, there was an extended period (covering DECADES) where there was virtually no homework for the kids. I wouldn't say a blanket "no homework at all" for the upper levels, but I'd certainly be in favor of limiting it to an hour or less. Just food for thought.
Yeah, probably switched topics too much, but I have no time to re-read this because I have essays to grade...
Maybe I don't, but it doesn't matter. In the application we're commenting on, we're not talking infinity time, though, for evolution to be true. We're talking the age of the earth. The watch/plane analogy is a good one. The odds are too much against. Sorry.
actually, to be fair, the pocket watch is sooooooooo much simpler than the human body. Compare it to a fleet of disassembled airplanes being put together by a cyclone (or any such shaking and stirring, like the box of watch parts). Even given infinity time, I just don't see how you would put them together again in working order (and, yes, don't get hung up on the computer programs that would need to be installed - just the mechanical parts). But, we're not really dealing with infinity time. We're dealing with the time frame of the life of the earth, if evolution is true.
Yeah, that's a wonderful thing to think about, and very confusing. No matter your mindset, you have to wonder how it all started. That goes beyond the creation/evolution debate altogether, because either way you'd think there had to be a starting point for everything: time, space, etc. Fun to ponder but incomprehensible to all.
Good questions, good post though.
I have one: How many surrealist artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two: One to paint the giraffe orange and one to fill the bathtub full of rusty tractor parts.
Say what you want about my argument, but the title "what falsifiable predictions does it make?" means that if you can create life from nonlife naturally, then it would falsify intelligent design.
The number of possible ways that life could arise from nonlife are unknown, obviously, so I do see your point, to a point. But, it doesn't make my whole argument invalid, unless it's invalid just to you, which is fine.
Scientists may not say these exact words, necessarily, but any non-ID evolutionists (I'm excluding those who think a higher power created simple life but then evolution took hold from there) must think that life came from nonlife, and don't have any evidence whatsoever of how that happened. There have been guesses, like the whole primordial soup thing, but those are completely unsubstantiated and, as a matter of fact, the evidence contradicts that kind of early environment on Earth. So, they're left with a question like "where did life originate?", with no leads, and therefore it opens it up to those infinite number of possibilities.
It is far from a straw man argument. Scientists DO make claims like that, for sure. Life from nonlife is an critical area in evolution, and since many have tried backing up the "primordial soup" concept, but found there isn't one piece of evidence that would support it (like nitrogen-rich sedimentary deposits, for example), a life-from-nonlife supporter would indeed insist that SOME unintelligent process created life.
You're assuming that if there was life from non-life, ID proponents would explain it away? That's more flame than fact, for sure, especially since there hasn't been any life-from-nonlife examples that would possibly validate that argument.
And that's a broad brush you're painting with, explaining all supporters of ID away like that. Couldn't you say the exact same thing about evolutionists? "Here's life, so here is how we must have gotten here..."
1. Evolution has stood up to rigorous testing? Really? Life from non-life, and one species becoming another species, have never been obvserved. Interesting.
2. Don't know where to start with this one, except to say if it's never been observed or duplicated, then it couldn't possibly be a law.
3. No way, you are flat out wrong, about saying that "there is no controversy among biologists about whether evolution happens". As a matter of fact, there is waaaaay more controversy among scientific circles than the general evolution-believing public. Evolutionary biologists are more attuned to the problems of the evolutionary theory, and many, many are perplexed over (to them) seemingly insurmountable problems with it. I live in Wisconsin, and at UW-Whitewater the biology/biochemistry staff is bitterly divided over this issue. No just one or two "whackos", but a large staff with scientifically trained, well-educated people. The Holocaust and flat earth comments are just trolling.
Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator gives names and references to numerous articles/books/papers from biology/chemistry professionals stating their disbelief of evolution from scientific grounds, not just their belief system.
4. In that line of reasoning, you wouldn't every get to anything substantial due to the sheer amount of material you'd have to cover. We're not talking about creation myths, we're talking about natualistic evolution vs. designed life. Don't mention any religious "affiliations", then.
5. There shouldn't be a conflict between religious belief and the scientific method. Although people have mentioned it as an argument, the "scientists hating God" doesn't seem to be on the most common list.
Here's a falsifiable claim by ID. This has been duped from another post of mine, but since this topic is vast and already has a plethora of responses, maybe you wouldn't come across it:
I have often seen people use the provable/unprovable argument against ID. ID states that life arose from an intelligent designer instead of from natural, random (unintelligent) processes. Here is an intelligent design claim:
There is NO natural/random unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism. Now, here's a Darwinist claim:
SOME unintelligent natural/random process created a living organism.
To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes.
I have often seen people use the provable/unprovable argument against ID. ID states that life arose from an intelligent designer instead of from natural (unintelligent) processes. Here is an intelligent design claim:
There is NO natural unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism.
Now, here's a Darwinist claim:
SOME unintelligent natural process created a living organism.
To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes.
Now, which one sounds falsifiable?
I want to memorize them. It's easy. You'd just have to remember that saying you learned in 5th grade science class, which goes something like "My Very Education Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas..." (the first letters of each word standing for the first letter of the planets, in order) and then elongate the sentence to include any new planets. We just need to avoid planet names like Xerxes, with beginning letters that are hard to match words with. It might be difficult to incorporate the pizza-serving mother getting an X-ray or xylophone or being a xenophobe, or whatnot.
I, for one, had always wondered what the mother did after serving the pizzas, or what the occasion was. What a wonderful opportunity to find out!
The day that they are so bereft of nostalgia remakes that Timer: The Movie comes out. Yeah, you remember him, the yellow guy from the commercial that shows you how to make a Wagon Wheel, with crackers and cheese, all the while singing the "Hankerin' for a hunk of cheese" song.
With Johnny Depp as Timer, of course.
Yeah, go ahead and mod me offtopic. It's not like you'll hurt my feelings.
Life from non-life would have been a random thing, definitely, for evolution. Scientists have no idea what the primitive earth was like. There's no evidence of "prebiotic soup" (I'm only saying this part because it has been assumed, sans any evidence, that this "soup" existed in the first place, like it was a given). Proteins are formed out of amino acids, and even the simplest ones need many of those (and linked correctly, too). Simple cells need 300+ proteins. The odds against those happening are staggering, to say the least. It's a great leap of faith (which the original poster railed against) to assume that that happened at any time in history.
Yes, I agree, you could prove that by showing an unintelligent process creating a living organism.
It's interesting that the above post was modded as Insightful. The sweeping generalities ("God did it! now go pray"), very ironic blind faith ("I am sure that given enough time, scientists can plug the holes in the theory of evolution..."), intelligent design bashing (calling it a "rant"), and not-sure-where-you're-going-with-this sayings (the whole ipod thing, although I think I know what you're trying to say, you seem to have picked a rather absurd example) all make for a one-sided bash instead of sharing any real insight.
I have often seen people use the provable/unprovable argument against ID. ID states that life arose from an intelligent designer instead of from natural, random (unintelligent) processes. Here is an intelligent design claim:
There is NO natural/random unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism. Now, here's a Darwinist claim:
SOME unintelligent natural/random process created a living organism.
To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes.
Now, which one sounds falsifiable?
I, too, love science and the new and exciting discoveries that come about with regularity. That's not in contradiction with believing in intelligent design.
In 1998, I went back to the period 1985-1988, when I attended my 10-year high school reunion. For those envisioning being able to stop Hitler or curing Polio or investing in eBay in your travels to the past, you'll be sorely disappointed. The past is filled with reminders of why you eventually cut your hair, cheerleaders who had their most productive and useful time on the earth during those brief years of high school, and pictures of you wearing a Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Relax" t-shirt. Really, skip traveling into the past (which then lets you altogether avoid any space-time paradox issues that may arise) and instead go have a nice dinner at the nearest Chili's.
My time travel DID alter the future, though. I had planned on attending each and every one of these reunion functions for my lifetime, but my trip changed that opinion entirely...
You're confusing the origin of the footage of starving children. Starving children are from Africa. The World's Longest Fingernails are from India.
Also, I hope the pace of development comment was meant to be funny. If not, well, c'mon, we would have gone into space in 1826, but we were all too busy churning butter.
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We've come to expect that our kids do tons of homework each and every night, and I have many colleagues who parrot that idea. When I press them as to why, they basically tell me that they need to practice doing homework. Rarely is the question answered that the lesson needs to be reinforced or whatnot.
We're in the day and age of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the current incarnation of educational reform that has been around since the sixties. I live in an average-to-slightly-upper middle class neighborhood, and the vast difference among my students academically is astounding. 1/3 of my kids in the classroom have IEPs (Individual Educational Plans, which have goals tailored to the individual, and you must follow them, even if it was written in another district before the student moved to yours), and gathering homework on a regular basis from everybody is time consuming due to the amount of kids not doing it to the different expectations NCLB has forced.
The reality is that very few parents are willing or able to help at home. Kids are overextended with activities (kids are doing extra-curriculars at an all-time high), or they're latchkey, or they're in daycare for extended time. I usually get done in FIVE minutes one-on-one what could be done in half an hour at home, and of course I take that route when I can. I've moved on to pushing some work back to the next day instead of giving it for homework (yes, I still give homework, just not nearly as much as when I started, and now it's mostly reading), due to the fact that while they are learning skills they should have an opportunity to learn it from a person that is getting paid for teaching it, and it highly qualified to do it (yes, there are teachers who are not highly qualified, or highly motivated, but that's for another thread I think).
Kids who don't finish something in a reasonable timeframe in the classroom will have more homework than those who do. It's easy to tell, once you get to know the kids, whether they don't understand or are malingering. I do, however, like to give reading homework for many reasons. For one, it helps them become better readers, and they actually DO IT, especially if they self-select the reading. Another reason is that, in my grade, I encourage the kids to read with parents or siblings. I get a lot of feedback about how that has been good for the family as a whole over time.
I can't speak to the upper grades, but I know many teachers who see the same thing (the kids who can do it already, the kids who can't at home, and the middle ground) in middle school and high school. There's no easy answer, but looking back at the history of education, there was an extended period (covering DECADES) where there was virtually no homework for the kids. I wouldn't say a blanket "no homework at all" for the upper levels, but I'd certainly be in favor of limiting it to an hour or less. Just food for thought.
Yeah, probably switched topics too much, but I have no time to re-read this because I have essays to grade...
Gary Gnu would be sad at that.
A) If you could travel from it to the system's star in less than a centar, traveling at no more than 100 hectars per centon, and;
B) It is at least 10 to the 10th power laxons in mass, and;
C) Free from intergalactic casinos run by Ovions
What kind of dessert would you suggest for a potluck dinner? I'm torn between a jello salad and cookies.
Maybe I don't, but it doesn't matter. In the application we're commenting on, we're not talking infinity time, though, for evolution to be true. We're talking the age of the earth. The watch/plane analogy is a good one. The odds are too much against. Sorry.
actually, to be fair, the pocket watch is sooooooooo much simpler than the human body. Compare it to a fleet of disassembled airplanes being put together by a cyclone (or any such shaking and stirring, like the box of watch parts). Even given infinity time, I just don't see how you would put them together again in working order (and, yes, don't get hung up on the computer programs that would need to be installed - just the mechanical parts). But, we're not really dealing with infinity time. We're dealing with the time frame of the life of the earth, if evolution is true.
Good questions, good post though.
I have one: How many surrealist artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two: One to paint the giraffe orange and one to fill the bathtub full of rusty tractor parts.
The number of possible ways that life could arise from nonlife are unknown, obviously, so I do see your point, to a point. But, it doesn't make my whole argument invalid, unless it's invalid just to you, which is fine.
Scientists may not say these exact words, necessarily, but any non-ID evolutionists (I'm excluding those who think a higher power created simple life but then evolution took hold from there) must think that life came from nonlife, and don't have any evidence whatsoever of how that happened. There have been guesses, like the whole primordial soup thing, but those are completely unsubstantiated and, as a matter of fact, the evidence contradicts that kind of early environment on Earth. So, they're left with a question like "where did life originate?", with no leads, and therefore it opens it up to those infinite number of possibilities.
You're assuming that if there was life from non-life, ID proponents would explain it away? That's more flame than fact, for sure, especially since there hasn't been any life-from-nonlife examples that would possibly validate that argument.
And that's a broad brush you're painting with, explaining all supporters of ID away like that. Couldn't you say the exact same thing about evolutionists? "Here's life, so here is how we must have gotten here..."
2. Don't know where to start with this one, except to say if it's never been observed or duplicated, then it couldn't possibly be a law.
3. No way, you are flat out wrong, about saying that "there is no controversy among biologists about whether evolution happens". As a matter of fact, there is waaaaay more controversy among scientific circles than the general evolution-believing public. Evolutionary biologists are more attuned to the problems of the evolutionary theory, and many, many are perplexed over (to them) seemingly insurmountable problems with it. I live in Wisconsin, and at UW-Whitewater the biology/biochemistry staff is bitterly divided over this issue. No just one or two "whackos", but a large staff with scientifically trained, well-educated people. The Holocaust and flat earth comments are just trolling.
Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator gives names and references to numerous articles/books/papers from biology/chemistry professionals stating their disbelief of evolution from scientific grounds, not just their belief system.
4. In that line of reasoning, you wouldn't every get to anything substantial due to the sheer amount of material you'd have to cover. We're not talking about creation myths, we're talking about natualistic evolution vs. designed life. Don't mention any religious "affiliations", then.
5. There shouldn't be a conflict between religious belief and the scientific method. Although people have mentioned it as an argument, the "scientists hating God" doesn't seem to be on the most common list.
Here's a falsifiable claim by ID. This has been duped from another post of mine, but since this topic is vast and already has a plethora of responses, maybe you wouldn't come across it:
I have often seen people use the provable/unprovable argument against ID. ID states that life arose from an intelligent designer instead of from natural, random (unintelligent) processes. Here is an intelligent design claim:
There is NO natural/random unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism. Now, here's a Darwinist claim:
SOME unintelligent natural/random process created a living organism.
To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes.
Now, which one sounds falsifiable?
Have a pleasant day.
There is NO natural unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism.
Now, here's a Darwinist claim: SOME unintelligent natural process created a living organism. To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes. Now, which one sounds falsifiable?
R1.3m? How much is that in Quatloos?
I, for one, had always wondered what the mother did after serving the pizzas, or what the occasion was. What a wonderful opportunity to find out!
With Johnny Depp as Timer, of course.
Yeah, go ahead and mod me offtopic. It's not like you'll hurt my feelings.
Yes, I agree, you could prove that by showing an unintelligent process creating a living organism.
I have often seen people use the provable/unprovable argument against ID. ID states that life arose from an intelligent designer instead of from natural, random (unintelligent) processes. Here is an intelligent design claim:
There is NO natural/random unintelligent process that could produce a living organism (because, for non-ID evolution to be true, you would have to have life from nonlife).
To falsify that, you would have to come up with just ONE unintelligent process that created a living organism. Now, here's a Darwinist claim:
SOME unintelligent natural/random process created a living organism.
To falsify THAT, you would have to rule out an infinite number of natural/random processes.
Now, which one sounds falsifiable?
I, too, love science and the new and exciting discoveries that come about with regularity. That's not in contradiction with believing in intelligent design.
My time travel DID alter the future, though. I had planned on attending each and every one of these reunion functions for my lifetime, but my trip changed that opinion entirely...
Also, I hope the pace of development comment was meant to be funny. If not, well, c'mon, we would have gone into space in 1826, but we were all too busy churning butter.