In looking through a fairly recent issue of the journal Science, I came across a brief blurb describing how Michael Reiss, the Education Director for Britain’s Royal Society, was forced out after giving a talk titled, “Should creationism be a part of the science curriculum?”
Note that I’ve blogged about related issues before as part of Blog Against Theocracy. I hope I had something new today.
It looks to me that Reiss was very unreasonably pushed out. The people who did the pushing, I’m guessing, didn’t actually read the text of the talk.
Here’s an excerpt:
Many scientists, and some science educators, fear that consideration of creationism or intelligent design in a science classroom legitimises them. For example, the excellent book Science, Evolution, and Creationism published by the US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine asserts “The ideas offered by intelligent design creationists are not the products of scientific reasoning. Discussing these ideas in science classes would not be appropriate given their lack of scientific support”.
I agree with the first sentence but disagree with the second. Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson. When I was taught physics at school, and taught it extremely well in my view, what I remember finding so exciting was that we could discuss almost anything providing we were prepared to defend our thinking in a way that admitted objective evidence and logical argument.
In an interesting exception that proves the rule, I recall one of our advanced level chemistry teachers scoffing at a fellow student who sat with a spoon in front of her while Uri Geller maintained he could bend viewers’ spoons. I was all for this approach. After all, I reasoned, surely the first thing was to establish if the spoon bent (it didn’t for her) and if it did, then start working out how.
So when teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have (hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching) and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion. The word ‘genuine’ doesn’t mean that creationism or intelligent design deserve equal time. However, in certain classes, depending on the comfort of the teacher in dealing with such issues and the make up of the student body, it can be appropriate to deal with the issue. If questions or issues about creationism and intelligent design arise during science lessons they can be used to illustrate a number of aspects of how science works such as ‘how interpretation of data, using creative thought, provides evidence to test ideas and develop theories’; ‘that there are some questions that science cannot currently answer, and some that science cannot address’; ‘how uncertainties in scientific knowledge and scientific ideas change over time and about the role of the scientific community in validating these changes’.
Having said that, I don’t believe that such teaching is easy. Some students get very heated; others remain silent even if they disagree profoundly with what is said. The DCSF Guidance suggests: “Some students do hold creationist beliefs or believe in the arguments of the intelligent design movement and/or have parents/carers who accept such views. If either is brought up in a science lesson it should be handled in a way that is respectful of students’ views, religious and otherwise, whilst clearly giving the message that the theory of evolution and the notion of an old Earth / universe are supported by a mass of evidence and fully accepted by the scientific community”.
I too can pull interesting exceptions from both my own schooling and my own teaching. My high school physics teacher was the very highly regarded Dick Sentman. We sometimes watched Wile E. Coyote breaking the laws of physics. I think it helped me understand school science content about as well as anything I did in school. He didn’t make claims, of course, that we could pause while falling.
Obviously, this is a different ball of wax — there aren’t many people out there who think that the physics of Warner Brothers is the physics of the real world. There are a lot of people who believe that the creation story of the Bible is how the world was created. And we, as teachers, don’t want to make light of that.
It is different.
But we also know that the research on how people learn is clear. If we want durable understanding to develop, we must engage existing conceptions related to the scientific conception. The National Research Council’s Committee on How People Learn put it this way:
1. Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.
Pretty clear, if you ask me. (There are links to research on how people learn on the Learning Links Page of the blog).
How can we forbid talking about these key conceptions about the origin of life on Earth and expect kids to understand evolution?
It’s essential to remember what we’ve been doing for a very long time has failed miserably. Close to half of Americans think the world is several thousand years old (as opposed to about 4.5 billion years old). The reject evolution. That suggests to me the new to do things fundamentally differently.
Ironically, Reiss also notes:
One very rarely changes one’s worldview as a result of a 50 minute lesson, however well taught.
I guess the same can be said of the Royal Society’s worldview.
