Mar 22 2011
Some Education News
The debate over teaching creationism continues – in the UK. That’s right, creationism is not just an American issue, nor just a Christian issue. There are fundamentalists in every major faith, and they generally don’t want their children taught in school ideas contrary to their faith.
In the US we have an overall higher percentage of biblical literalists who reject evolution, but we also have the Constitution. The first amendment wisely prohibits the government from passing any law that establishes a religion. There is now a couple hundred years of legal precedent on how to interpret this amendment, which follows the “separation of church and state” model. Essentially, there are no religious second-class citizens in the US. The government cannot promote or hinder any specific religious beliefs.
This means that religious faith, like creationism, cannot be taught in public schools. Creationists have constantly morphed their strategy over the last century, from banning the teaching of evolution, to requiring equal time for “creation science”, then for the rebranding of creation science as “intelligent design”, and now to “teach the controversy” or at the very least teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution or give teachers the academic freedom to do so. It’s all a giant game, but their motives are transparent – do anything possible to water down the teaching of evolution or insert creationist propaganda into the public schools.
Their strategy has largely failed from a legal perspective – they have lost every major legal challenge to their agenda. But they have been very successful from a cultural perspective – less than half of the population accepts the scientific theory of evolution without qualification, and 60% of public school science teachers shy away from teaching evolution because they either do not feel comfortable with the material or simply want to avoid controversy. In essence, what creationists have not been able to accomplish through evidence or the force of argument, or through the legal system, they have accomplished through intellectual thuggery.
In the UK there appears to be a growing creationist movement, or perhaps it is just coming into the light more. And they do not have any constitutional prohibition against teaching religion in public schools, so that layer of protection is gone. For now there are no plans to teach creationism in public schools, but the UK has private and so-called “free” schools. (There are private schools in the US as well, and they are free to teach creationism as part of the curriculum.) This is the latest battle ground for science education in the UK.
Recently, it is reported that:
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has confirmed that creationism will not be taught in free schools because it is “at odds with scientific fact”.
That’s nice, but what does that mean in terms of policy?
Mr Gove said at a free school conference in January that he would consider applications from creationist groups on a case-by-case basis.
That sounds like a bit of a political dodge. We will just have to wait and see how this get’s applied.
I acknowledge there is a real dilemma here, between freedom and quality control. For public schools I don’t think there is much of an issue – if the government is providing a free education, then that education should be secular and not impose any religious faith on the students. The question is, what rights do private groups have to forgo public education and set up their own private educational system, and how do these rights relate to the societal requirement that parents provide an education for their children? We recognize both the right of freedom, and the obligation of education – striking a reasonable balance is the dilemma. It makes sense that there has to be some minimum standard in order for teaching to be considered an education.
We can also recognize that in a free society people have the right to make what others might consider dumb decisions. But how much of a right do parents have to make such decisions on behalf of their children. This same conflict comes up with regard to health care – is the parent’s obligation to provide basic health care for their children met by simply praying over a sick and dying child? Likewise, is the obligation to provide an education met if the parents simply teach their cultural and religious beliefs as knowledge?
I think a good compromise, in general terms, is to let parents and private schools teach whatever they want (they are going to anyway) but to have requirements for what must be taught in order to be accredited. This is essentially the system we have now, but I would definitely include a working knowledge of evolution as part of the minimum requirements. I think it is fair to say to private schools – to qualify, you have to teach evolution. You don’t have to believe it, but you have to understand it.
In any case – the struggle to improve science education continues.
In an unrelated news item, Bill Gates has turned his attention to reforming education. This has been one of the major initiatives of the Bil and Melinda Gates Foundation, and previously he has donated money to failing high schools. Now he has announced a new initiative to reform teachers through incentives. He feels that a proper incentive structure and improved support for teachers will mean better quality teachers.
This may be the way to go. The quality of individual teachers seems to have more of an impact on the quality of education than any other single element, including textbooks, curriculum, and even money spent on education. Only the home environment has more of an impact of academic achievement.
Gates is committing $290 million dollars to a few test programs, but he hopes they will serve as a model to reform teachers everywhere.
32 Responses to “Some Education News”
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For some clarification on the lingo, ‘Public’ schools in the UK are fee-paying private schools. They’re called ‘public’ because the very earliest schools were dedicated to teaching the clergy, only someone entering holy orders could go to one of these schools. The first ‘public’ schools were schools that would allow anyone to enter (assuming you could pay the fees).
Non-fee paying schools are funded by the state and are normally called State Schools to distinguish them from private fee-paying ‘public’ schools. (Try to keep up.)
The so-called Free Schools initiative allows like-minded parents to band together to set up their own schools. These will be state supported and should conform to educational standards set up by the government. I regard the concept as unnecessary and open to abuse. It’s grotesque.
Do they have a well oiled propaganda machine like the discovery institute over in the UK?
On a different note, you have to at least be impressed with their PR. It’s brilliant to fight for teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolution because on the surface that sounds totally reasonable and it would be if there actually were reasonable weaknesses. As far as I know, there are no general weaknesses that challenge the concept of evolution, only some minor discrepancies about some mechanisms that wouldn’t be appropriate for teaching at the highschool level anyway.
We recently fought this battle in Oklahoma. It looks like we dodged the bullet though:
http://ncse.com/news/2011/03/antievolution-bill-apparently-dies-oklahoma-senate-006521
James Edward Gray II
Not to try a continuum fallacy, or slippery slope argument. At what point does forcing education imping upon a free society’s right to raise a child within a belief system. There is no right to force taxpayers to pay for nonsense. If a parent wants to send a child to Nazi Camp for high school do we have the societal need, or right to stop it. Clearly the illness example is more extreme because life is at stake and most moral structures can agree murder is bad.
However education is a difficult spectrum. Once government says a minimum of science only education is appropriate for private pay schools, I think our arguments are treading very lightly. Can you only teach consensus science or is fringe science OK. Who decides, Governments, councils, courts. Door kind of swings both ways. What is a minimum knowledge of evolution, biology or physics? I know enough about the english system to know it structure and rules have significant differences maybe UK readers could elaborate further. Possibly this is an extreme minority. Should we strive for more science education yes, would I picket public schools in the US yes. Would I try to stop a 7th day adventist school from teaching creationism only, I cannot say I would. how about if it was the Amish?
just saying
In England Darwin is on our money and recognised as “one of OUR scientists”. That and the rather weak religiosity that continues to weaken has nicely countered things in most cases.
It will get no proper traction here and frankly i’m much more bothered about the loss of education standards/funding and dumbing down, rather than one outcome of this effect.
The comments on the article are as usual amusing, more people typing on their computers about the failures of science. So they can make up their own facts.
Bill Gates gets a lot wrong:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/fact-challenged-education-poli.html
The UK education structure is even more complicated than it 1st appears.
Michael Goves remit only covers England.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have separate Devolved institutions which take this remit.
EVEN THEN, it is local councils which operate the majority of actual state schools. These councils are elected.
The “Free Schools” policy is an attempt to remove state schools from the control of local councils. This mostly politically motivated.
There is a really danger that many state funded schools could lose democratic accountability and a few motivated groups or individuals may hijack them.
State funded faith schools are already widespread in the UK. I attended an state funded catholic school in Scotland.
Ian Plimer once tried to take on the Australia Creation Science Institute under the Trades Practices Act because they were selling bogus factually incorrect videos and other literature to the public and failed, and lost $500,000 in the effort.
I could have predicted the result. The CSI were selling to adults, who should have known better, and novelists for centuries have made a very nice business selling fiction to the public, including Dan Brown who reckons his novel ‘The da Vinci Code’ was based on fact.
I personally would have wanted a copy of a list of their customers, because I have got a bridge for sale, just one owner, only used it to cross to church on Sundays …
I wonder whether Ian Plimer wrote his dreadful ‘Heaven and Earth’ to get his money back from the creationists? …
Could the schools be sued under some form of a trade practices act if they miseducate innocent students? After all, being science illiterate isn’t going to exactly widen their career choices when they leave school.
“… if the government is providing a free education, then that education should be secular and not impose any religious faith on the students. ….”
I heartily agree but the state funded system in the UK is dominated by Christians. Every child has to have an act of worship of a Christian nature every day unless their parent opts them out. State funded schools are allowed in UK law to discriminate on basis of religion in recruitment of certain staff, and the admission of pupils (and many do). Indeed I pulled up my local council (Devon) for not following their own anti-discrimination policy in terms of school recruitment and they shrugged their shoulders and carried on as before.
if you are not a Christian you are a second class citizen in the Primary education field, your employment prospects are worse, the unions hate it.
It is pretty poor situation in the UK as regards discrimination, although UK law almost is certainly in breech of European anti-discrimination law no one has yet successfully challenged it.
When one state school tried to opt out of compulsory worship and become a secular school they were turned down.
Most Christians are creationists. Sure young earth creationism is rarer over here, and it is far more acceptable to stare bewildered at someone who claims the world is 6000 years old and make circular movement with your hand by your head or roll one’s eyes.
That said I have several friends who are “young earth creationist”, and a former colleague was – although he was somewhat surprised that one of my other acquaintance had counted tree rings back further than his “faith” told him the earth was old – I think he understood tree rings better than carbon 14 dating or archaeology, or geology. Yes I’ve fraternise with dendrochronologists – it makes both the YEC and the GWD hate you, they are the new “unclean” science.
I’m not a teacher, but if I were I’m sure I’d find the notion of non-teachers trying to “reform” me quite insulting.
Simon,
Why would a YEC be worried about dendrochronology giving an age greater than the age of the Earth given in their bible. The oldest tree known is around 4,000 years old. To go past 6,000 years you’d need to have overlapping trees, living and dead, from the same area, and to line up matching rings to go past 6,000 years. All the YEC has to say is that the trees weren’t really from the same area and were growing under different conditions so the match is purely fortuitous.
Personally, I find C14 dating much easier to accept than dendrochronology. A gum tree near where I live fell over (that’s the problem with eucalyptus trees, they don’t drop leaves, instead they drop major branches and themselves at the drop of a hat) and workers from the local city council came and sawed it into segments. I went to have a look, and I can’t even make out the rings in the cross sections.
A few possible current controversies regarding evolution-
1) There is no tree of life that is constructed from the evidence. In fact such a tree apparently cannot be constructed. (Too much horizontal gene transfer). Should children be taught there is one? If there isn’t a tree of life, then should children be taught that there is a common ancestor for all living things?.
2) There isn’t a universal genetic code. (Question about common ancestor applies here as well).
3) Junk DNA. The ‘random mutation’ hypothesis led to the notion that there would be a lot of junk DNA. Turns out there isn’t. (An October 2004 article in Scientific American described the Junk DNA hypothesis as “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.”) ((The really awkward thing here is that the ‘design’ hypothesis was the one that said there wouldn’t be so much junk…OOPs))
The first two points come from Craig Venter.
Seems one could include all sorts of controversy into the subject (I could make the list much longer). Often this makes subjects more interesting to students.
Sonic,
Answers:
1. Yes, children should be taught that there is a tree of life. Horizontal gene transfer doesn’t affect the overall truth of it. There is still a last common ancestor, even if its identity is lost.
2. Yes, children should be taught that there is a universal genetic code, with minor differences in for example mitochondria which have a few codons coding for something else.
3. Junk DNA still exists, even if some of the non-coding DNA is shown to have some function. Actually, biologists initially assumed that the human genome was intelligently evolved, like that of bacteria, and were shocked to find how little of it appeared to have a function.
In light of SimonW’s comment on schools, that is not the experience I had even 15 years ago. Our comprehensive school did get a slap on the wrist from some dumb inspector that there was no “spiritual” time put aside for students and a few other crappy religious things but that was about it. Recommendations were made, so to speak.
Lipservice was paid to the whole thing by my primary school but it was christian-lite to the extreme. I came away knowing only something called the “lord’s prayer” for….some god or other, and all the lyrics to Josephs technicolour dreamcoat.
You can force a man to church, but you can’t make him pray.
Frankly. If the unions don’t like the way their members are being treated then they should do their job and get it sorted. Thats what they are there for…
“Ian Plimer once tried to take on the Australia Creation Science Institute under the Trades Practices Act because they were selling bogus factually incorrect videos and other literature to the public and failed, and lost $500,000 in the effort.”
It didn’t help that he was lying.
Just as he is now lying about climate change.
I have no sympathy for that excuse for a sceptic.
I thin the US separates church from State, not because of the first amendment, but because it is a republic.
The UK cannot have a separation of church and State because it persists with the constitutional setup that caused non-conformists to leave the UK and found the US. (As an Australian, my understanding of US history is sketchy, so forgive me, and feel free to correct me, if this oversimplifies things). But in the UK the titular head of state (the Queen) is the titular head of the Church of England. That is, notionally, (and no doubt in some cases literally) they still believe in the doctrine that the Queen is the head of state by divine right; and that this justifies, and is consistent with, the Queen being head of the established church.
Moreover, it is not the absence of a written constitution that makes the difference. Australia, also a titular Monarchy, with the same Queen (who we officially call the Queen of Australia), has a written constituion with words to the effect that there shall be no established religion taken virtually holus bolus from the US constitution.
But in Australia’s written constitution this is not interpreted to mean there must be a separation of church and State. How can there be when the Queen of Australia is the head of the Church of England? At its very heart there is no separation of church and State.
How the very similar words in the Australian Constitution are interpreted is as a guarantee that there is no one ‘favourite’ (or established) religion. That is, for practical purposes, Anglicanism (equivalent to US episcopalianism) and Roman Catholicism have to be treated fairly with respect to each other. The Australian Government can and does fund church owned schools very handsomely; it also funds chaplains in government schools.
Strangely perhaps, given this, there does not appear to be a major thrust towards teaching creationism or intellgient design in Australian mainstream schools. I think this is because the attitude is that if parents want those beliefs they can attend evangelical schools, and they will receive governmetn assistance to do so. But consequently there is no fear in teaching evolution, to the best of my knowledge. (Sorry if this is too long).
That should be “I think”.
Billyjoe7′
I don’t think Ian Plimer was lying when he took on the CSI. I think he was wrong in ‘Heaven and Earth’, and if there were an afterlife, deserves to be broiling in hell when dead for the pain his badly written book caused me. Whether he was deliberately lying, I’m not certain. The book was so bad I was actually suspecting that it was a ‘Poe’.
No way.
The president of the italian CNR (National Research Council), said that the Japanese earthquake has been sent by God as a way to purify the original sin. The CNR is a public scientific society, maybe the most prestigious and important in Italy. From this man, disasters are the right punishment of God
bachfriend-
1) You seem to be advocating that students be taught things that aren’t true in the name of ‘overall truth’. I doubt that is what you mean. Please explain.
2) Actually GenBank currently lists 17 variations on the genetic code-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/taxonomyhome.html/index.cgi?chapter=cgencodes
Perhaps this is indicative of 17 different starting points for evolution. Maybe more. I don’t know. Am I supposed to know? Why?
3) We would be correct to say that not all DNA has known use or value. To say we know it has no value (junk) is the error that was made starting in 1972. I would suggest this is an open question.
Good piece.
I’m wondering if creationism is on the rise or is it declining (or staying the same). If it is on the rise, why? It seems to me that we will always have a small percentage of literalists, but they are increasingly vocal in recent years and this could have something to do with the fact that atheists are increasingly vocal.
bachfiend,
“I don’t think Ian Plimer was lying when he took on the CSI.”
Here is an informative though dated account of Ian Plimer’s dishonesty. It is titled “How Not To Argue With Creationists” (ie by misrepresentation and outright lying)
http://www.discord.org/~lippard/hnta.html
Sonic,
We still teach students Newton’s theory of gravity, even though we know that it’s incorrect. Teaching Einstein’s general theory of relativity would be very much counterproductive.
17 small variations in the genetic code is nothing compared to the tens of millions of living species and probably billions of species that have gone extinct (I might be exaggerating here), but it certainly doesn’t mean that there were 17 different lines. Now if there were 17 different lines with completely different meanings for each and every possible triplet codon then that would be significant.
Actually, astrobiologists (since they haven’t had much success finding life elsewhere) are looking for life with a different genetic code here on Earth, on the assumption that if life has arisen twice on Earth then it’s easy and likely to have arisen elsewhere too.
I stand by my statement that most DNA is junk. Finding a small amount of non-coding DNA with a function doesn’t worry me. The size of the genome varies vastly between species, despite similar complexity. The marbled lungfish for example has a genome 30 times larger than humans.
BillyJoe7,
I agree that Ian Plimer is a … Well actually I’d better not say what I think he is in case I get sued for slander. I first came across him with his virtually unreadable book ‘Heaven and Earth’. In 2009 I met Eugenie Scott in the Grand Canyon and she said that the only time she’d been to Australia was at the invitation of Ian Plimer to testify in his case. When I noted that he was a AGW denier, she expressed surprise saying that she thought he was more sensible.
That said, YEC is bunkum. AGW is probably true. I’m a AGW skeptic. I’ve looked at the evidence for it and the objections against it and have come to the provisional judgement that AGW is true and serious, subject to further evidence appearing. The evidence is sufficient to take action now.
bachfiend-
Students can be taught about general relativity and quantum mechanics and they can be taught Newton’s approximations. No problem, no need to lie. In fact I believe this is done successfully today. (My nephew knew about the situation at age 10, I’m not sure it’s a big problem).
I’m still not sure why it is important to tell students that there is a tree of life if there isn’t.
Universal means without exception. If 17 exceptions don’t matter, how many would? I need a number.
Why would there being junk or no junk in DNA worry you? You seem to have a vested interest in the amount of DNA that is junk- I’m wondering why.
Sonic,
There is still a tree of life, it’s just got a tangled root system. The 17 variations don’t matter because they’re minor. If there was a life form on Earth with a completely different genetic code, I still wouldn’t worry because I’d accept it as indicating that life arises more easily than we think.
I make a point of junk DNA because you brought it up. The human genome is very messy with about 95% having no known function. It could have evolved to be like that or it could equally be designed that way. ID proponents reckon it’s designed because all of it is functional. I argue that if it was designed it certainly doesn’t appear to have been intelligently designed. Even in functioning genes, introns, which have to be spliced out, make up to 95% of the gene. If there’s a reason for having introns to yield different gene products, an intelligent designer would have used shorter introns.
I can understand Newton’s law of gravity ma equals GMm/r squared, and I have a vague idea about what Einstein’s theories of relativity mean, but I don’t have the slightest idea what the equations mean. Newton is perfectly adequate for everyday life.
bachfiend-
Thank-you for that.
It seems we might disagree on these points.
Yet I don’t think you are an idiot or misinformed or destined to be a bad scientist or a bad citizen. (Of course I know I’m hopelessly lost, so that’s a given).
I’m certain that some world class scientists would agree with you and some with me on these points.
That’s why I think it would be OK to teach students about these things.
“Yet I don’t think you are an idiot or misinformed or destined to be a bad scientist or a bad citizen.”
That’s a bit of an understatement.
“That’s why I think it would be OK to teach students about these things.”
The first thing to get right is the consensus view and how is was arrived at. When this is fully understood, then we can entertain them with the fringe science.
I learnt my science in Australia in the ’60s matriculating in physics and chemistry. I can’t remember any of the science I studied at high school. I then went to university studying medicine, with the introductory units being human biology and zoology (first exposure to a biology based science). Australopithecus afarensis hadn’t been discovered then.
Virtually everything I know in science, such as evolution, plate tectonics, big bang cosmology, climatology etc I’ve learned since then.
Learning science should be a lifelong habit for everyone, so one is familiar with the hazards coming.
That said, teaching time in schools is limited. It would be great to have the time to teach horizontal gene transfer but it’s more important to get the basics understood to be built on later.
That creationist teacher Waterhouse partially got into trouble for teaching his class the periodic table of elements, and getting them to memorize it, when it was going to be treated in later years. The next teachers had to unlearn the students to teach it correctly.
Also it is a trap to think that science teaching should only be a matter of learning and regurgitating facts. Learning the order of the planets isn’t of much use. High science science proficiency involves For example understanding how we know that Venus orbits the Sun closer than the Earth (I know that) or how we know that the Earth orbits the Sun instead of vice versatile (? Something to do with the lunar tides lagging the Moon or was that Galileo’s argument which is wrong?)
bachfiend,
It seems we agree on the teaching of science.
The fringe groups, however, have other ideas.
They want their unsupported views taught as well.
micwat:
Actually it is because of the first amendment, and the 14th amendment that extended it reach beyond the central. It seems that the legal system has defined religious influence in schools more than any kind of republic legislation. Which is kind of explained in the Wiki on school prayer.
Public education in the USA (even before the Revolution) had a very Protestant influence, which prompted the founding of several Catholic schools:To serve their growing communities, American Catholics first tried to reform American public schools to rid them of blatantly fundamentalist Protestant overtones. Failing, they began opening their own schools, ……. But such successes sparked a bigoted backlash, fomented by such groups as the Know-Nothing Society, committed to wiping out “foreign influence, Popery, Jesuitism, and Catholicism.”
Ironically, evolution is taught in Catholic schools. (Though it was from his experience spending a year or so in a parochial school that my husband became non-religious!)
Aaargh. Failed to close the link html. At least it goes to the page.
We can has preview?