Students are being turned off to science

[ABlairican Pie]

Turned off science
Students may be the real victims of the evolution wars

Ted Horowitz / Corbis




A student studies a model skeleton.
By Sandra Lilley
News planning editor
NBC News
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET June 3, 2005

Sandra Lilley
News planning editor

The battle over teaching evolution is raging in communities across the country, but the headlines rarely focus on the “quiet” impact of this controversy.

Science is becoming a political “hot potato” for some students — transforming what should be a dynamic, fascinating topic into a total turn-off. And some students are choosing silence over losing a prom date.

“Children are very much worried about their place in the world. Some students only ask me about evolution privately, after class,” said Wes McCoy, PhD, who teaches Genetics, Biology and Astronomy at North Cobb High School in Kennessaw, Ga.


McCoy, who has won the Georgia “Outstanding Biology Teacher” award, is active in his Presbyterian church and also serves on the National Executive Board of the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology and the Christian faith, is saddened by what he has seen in his classroom.

“Students face consequences if they choose to accept evolution in a family or a church or a community that patently rejects evolution ... It might affect whether you get a date to the prom, or whether you get that summer job or not,” McCoy said. “You may even anger close family members. Conversations about evolution can make family reunions very tense.”

And at a time when the National Science Foundation projects that the number of scientists and engineers reaching retirement age is expected to triple in the next 10 years, McCoy and others argue that the “evolution wars” are taking time away from their life’s work — making these children excited and prepared — to become the next Jonas Salk or Bill Gates.

Science politicized

The town of Kennessaw, where McCoy teaches, is part of Cobb County, Ga. It was in Cobb County that a U.S. district judge recently ruled against the “evolution is just a theory” disclaimer sticker, which had been placed on science textbooks by the local school board.

So is this a “victory” for the educators, who argued against the stickers in federal court?

“The decision to place stickers on the books already reflects an unfortunate politicization of science,” said Brown University professor Kenneth Miller, the co-author of"Biology," the textbook that had the stickers removed.

“Clearly the right thing to do was to remove those stickers and treat evolution as any other subject. But in a sense it has already done damage to science teaching by implying that evolution is especially weak and especially shaky, when it reality it is neither,” Miller said.

Clare McKinney teaches biology and zoology at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Indiana. She is also a Christian who has been on national news defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom.


McKinney explained why the debate over evolution versus creationism is appealing — and important — to children in her classes.

“For kids this age, fairness is a real issue. Many children, who are not even familiar with the sound evidence surrounding evolution, signed petitions to 'include' intelligent design because it seemed 'fair,'” said McKinney. That said, she also understands the pressure these children feel to “reconcile” their beliefs with science — she went through it herself.

According to McKinney, interested students have waited until they are outside the classroom to discuss what they perceive as “conflicting” views. “I have flat out told students that the more I know about science, the more glorious God seems,” said McKinney.

She stresses in her classroom that “science is not out to prove the presence or absence of God - whatever you believe, it’s OK," adding, “You can almost see the anxiety level diminish when I say that.”

A unified theory

But what concerns educators like Miller is whether this politicization of basic science dissuades children from going into the field.

Miller, an enthusiastic Catholic who wrote the book "Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution,” finds this troubling.

“Science is the one thing that is universal across cultures…and yet [after the evolution debates] some children in this country are seeing science as a potential minefield,” explained Miller.

“We are at a disadvantage if we don’t teach kids evolution, because it’s the one unified theory that can explain everything from antibiotic resistance to pesticide resistance over time,” Miller said. “If a child becomes a pharmacist and someone develops a resistance to a drug, that is evolution. We have to be able to teach it well.”

© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

[ABlairican Pie]

The evolution of a fight to the end

In Kansas, God and science are going toe to toe again



Empty chairs sat reserved for members of the Science Standards Writing Committee at the first day of hearings in Topeka. Mainstream scientific groups boycotted the hearings.
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC

Updated: 7:43 p.m. ET May 12, 2005

Hoping to avoid a bitter public showdown, defenders of evolutionary theory boycotted four days of hearings over the science curriculum in Kansas, where members of the state Board of Education critical of the standard theory are considering changes to give more weight to creationist ideas.

Advocates of a philosophy called “intelligent design” and critics of evolution joined flocks of reporters and cameras in Topeka, where the hearings ended Thursday.

But mainstream science organizations spurned invitations to participate, dismissing the hearings as an effort “to attack and undermine science,” in the view of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science. As a result, the only witnesses were advocates of intelligent design or critics of evolution.

Spreading across the nation

The hearings resembled a trial, as three school board members heard arguments from champions of both sides. The panelists — all three of them conservative Republicans who have questioned evolution — will report to the full school board, which is expected to approve new science standards next month.

Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka lawyer representing what he called mainstream science, was the only pro-Darwin voice during the hearings. At its close Thursday, he criticized the board members for abdicating their “responsibility to the children and the future of this state.”

Defenders of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection acknowledged that their boycott left opponents of evolution otherwise unchallenged, but they said they hoped to defuse the publicity that a media-saturated argument over science and the Bible could stir up.

Nonetheless, a showdown is inevitable. Efforts to compel schools to teach or, at least, give equal time to the purported errors of evolution are under way in nearly two dozen states, led by two groups of activists united by their belief in a supreme being who set history in motion.

One group is made up of religious conservatives who espouse the traditional biblical account in which God created the world in six days. The Supreme Court, however, barred the teaching of creationism in a 1987 decision striking down a Louisiana law that said evolution could be taught only if “creation science” was also taught. So today, the movement has shifted to the campaign by intellectual thinkers, some of them scientists, who argue that life on the planet is too complex to have come about without some sort of guiding intelligence.

That supposition is called “intelligent design.” Its leaders say that as a matter of science their principles are not religious. But mainstream scientists have labeled them "creationism lite," and Christian activists have latched onto them as an alternative stick with which to whack Darwin.

Kansans wary

As a media horde turned national — even world — attention on their state, Kansans were watching the trial of evolutionary theory with mixed feelings.

Connie Morris, a member of the state school board, welcomed the hearings, agreeing with witnesses who said theories of evolution did not fully explain the origins of life and called for a more critical view.


The Kansas debate comes as many states are gearing up to accept bids on new science textbooks:
— 2005: Alabama, Florida, Illinois*, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia
— 2006: Arkansas, California, Illinois*, Nevada, Utah*
— 2007: Georgia, Illinois*, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah*
(* Illinois and Utah review texts in most or all subjects annually.)

Source: Association of American Publishers

Students need access to all kinds of thought, Morris told NBC affiliate KSNT-TV of Topeka. “The crux of the debate for me is quality education. The last time I checked, it's about good education. We need to give students all information in scientific arena.”

But opponents said the idea was bad science that threatened to make Kansas a laughingstock.

“They want a theocracy,” Harry McDonald, a former science teacher who is president of the group Kansas Citizens for Science, told the Kansas City Star. “Evolution doesn’t mean that there isn’t a god. But they make it out that if you believe in evolution, you’re an atheist. They’ve made it a cultural war.”

Joanne Olson, a professor who studies science education at Iowa State University, told the newspaper: “The sad thing is, the more this hits the press around the world, the worse Kansas and, by association, the U.S. looks. I was at a conference not long ago. They were laughing about Kansas.”

Publishers call the tune

For mainstream scientists, the Kansas debate is just a skirmish. The real battles will come in the next few years as schools adopt new textbooks.

Intelligent design campaigns are being pursued in California and Texas. Their school boards have long dictated the content of many of the nation’s textbooks because of the clout they have with publishers owing to their enormous student populations. Publishers routinely tailor their textbooks to the tastes of review boards in those states to avoid the devastating prospect that a multimillion-dollar new edition could be rejected.

EVOLUTION DEBATE
Day-by-day coverage of the evolution hearings in Kansas:
• The evolution of a fight to the end
• Day 4: Evolution hearings end on bitter note
• Day 3: Critics say creationism is true agenda
• Day 2: Groans and grumblings at evolution hearing
• Day 1: Evolution education criticized
• Live survey: What should be taught?

“They call the tune, and the publishers dance,” Diane Ravitch, an assistant education secretary in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, testified before Congress two years ago.

The result, Ravitch complained, was the creation of “a convenient bottleneck where pressure groups from across the political spectrum” — including opponents of evolution, she said — “can intimidate publishers and get them to revise their books.”

Ravitch’s testimony came as Texas was going through a wrenching review of its biology texts; those books were introduced into Texas classrooms this year. Mainstream scientists fought off major concessions on evolution this time, but the battle is being continued in the Legislature, where a bill is under consideration that would give the state Board of Education — which is dominated by Republican social conservatives — even more control over the content of texts.

In California, meanwhile, a case awaits in U.S. District Court filed by parents who claim that they were denied their civil rights when a school district near Sacramento rejected their proposal that schools should be required to teach the purported flaws of evolution.

While California’s textbook battles have usually been fought by groups pushing more traditionally liberal causes, such as gender equality and multicultural history, the lawsuit signals that the evolution dispute is likely to become a hot-button issue there, as well — just in time to begin picking up steam ahead of next year’s acceptance of bids for new science textbooks.

NBC affiliate KNST of Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.

[*MIBabe03*]

Eh I've never liked science, so that is nothing new for me.