If I were king of the teachers…
We’ve all been through some kind of science class in our life. I am assuming most readers of this blog have traversed some part of the great education divide and within that journey there was at least a little bit of biology, chemistry, physics, and math. At one point in my life I was so singularly obsessed with the blend of science and education I wanted to be a teacher myself. Now I just settle for ranting about it on a blog. The problem is that we’re all — most of us are — through that “stage” in our lives. We’ve passed science. We’ve move beyond it, and into the “real” world. Yes, some of us have found professions that continue to delve into science-related activities — research, writing, engineering — but I often wonder if this has more to do with the influence of things that were not related to science education. And, more importantly, I wonder if there is something wrong with the way we look at science education in general.
Now, this is where I dive into pure opinion and conjecture, so feel free to comment as I describe the five peeves I have with how I was taught science…
1. Science has too much “nerd” stigma. And yes, society, I blame all of you. You! You and your television shows with evil nerds who want to take over the world. You and your movies full of awkward teens fumbling social conventions but excelling in calculus. Science doesn’t need to be anything more than it deserves, but it deserves so much more. But it’s not about making science “cool” nor about pulling it into some sort of unflattering limelight. Rather, it’s about stepping back and accepting that we live in a world that would not function — period, dead-stop — without the science that we have created and nurtured to this maturity. It’s helping people understand that making use of math and science principals in their everyday lives isn’t for “brainiacs” but instead is as vital a part of living in the modern world as knowing how to drive a car, cook a meal, or use a keyboard. That knowing how to apply science and it’s principles is an asset, not a social curse.
2. We’re always trying “make it fun.” This is something of an offshoot of my previous peeve, stemming as a direct result of those who are bothered by the same thing and try and counter that in some foolish way. Science doesn’t need to be fun. Science needs to inspire. Science needs to broaden the mind, unleash the creative spirit, and make clear the critical mind. Does it need to be a game? No. Because when we make it “fun” we usually just make it more of what I complained about it point one.
3. Better science doesn’t equal more facts. But that said, facts are the bridge to a critically thinking mind. We need to stop worrying about the trees and focus on the forest — so to speak. Facts are facts are facts. And today’s facts are tomorrows reference data, yes. But brains are not for storing facts. Brains are for sorting information, and while ultimately both need to be used, my own experience was too much on memorizing facts and data, and not enough on parsing and calculating it’s significance. Facts, after all, can be found in a book.
4. And those facts are often too optional. You know where this is going. Evolution versus creationism, and if you’ve seen the darwin-fish stuck to the back of my car you’ll have a pretty good idea where I stand on the topic. If you want to refute the value of facts over beliefs — or vice-versa — then find another blog to flash your ID badges. Why, a hundred and fifty years later, we’re still even having this conversation, this debate about equal teaching time, is for no other reason than this: fear. So many people are perfectly willing to break the speed limits on our highways, pirate music from the internet, or break from the norms of basic human decency in countless other ways. But question someone’s two-thousand year old belief system? No, we can’t do that. If you want to talk about it at church, go nuts. But it shouldn’t be part of a science curriculum.
5. And finally, science and art are not mutually exclusive. It was funny how easily I bought into this mentality in University. For some reason there was a line in the sand: you were either a science major or an arts major. And it just seemed so natural. Now, granted there are different skill sets at work there, but the insignificant handful of arts credits I was required to take as a science major was laughable, particularly considering my ultimate use for that science degree I was busy earning. Perhaps this is just my own abstract, idealist position on the topic, but science could really benefit from art — and art could really benefit from a little bit of science. And not just in that they should work together, but in that they should blend and see what colour emerges.
Science and Faith are not mutually exclusive, either.
Actually, by definition they are completely, totally, utterly, and unequivocally mutually exclusive and that’s my point. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence, and science is belief based entirely on evidence. They can be compatible (if that’s something you strive for in your own life) but people are too easily self-convinced that they need to blend and mix, rather than remain distinct and separate. I like both chocolate and vanilla ice cream, and some people like swirl cones, too. But if you just got silly and mixed it all into one big gray sludge, it would end up as neither chocolate nor vanilla, either ruining both flavors or leaving the stronger and masking the weaker. I don’t care what your preference is, but keep the chocolate scoop out of the vanilla.
Science is only the evidence we have found, looked for, and have the knowledge with which to look. Not that I don’t believe there is and has been and always will be evolutionary process, but always puzzled by the suggestion from some that we evolved from apes. If so… one could ask why are there still apes?
And don’t say you don’t have “faith in science”.
First, I don’t have faith in science — and beside, in that same light one could argue a reductionist-type philosophy in which one has faith in absolutely nothing because everything we know is merely a perception and subsequent interpretation produced in and by our flawed brains. “There is no spoon.” We all draw metaphorical lines in the sand from whence we require adequate evidence to incorporate any given new data and/or concept into our world-view. I have faith not in science, but in the knowledge that my understanding of how my brain interprets the universe that I currently inhabit seems to me to be best explained by the rationale and evidence-based processes described within the context of the scientific method. Not everyone agrees with that — some require more proof than I, some less. And I’m fine with that.
Second, there are still apes because we didn’t evolve from *one* ape, we evolved from a massive and divergent population of apes, all of which took varied paths along an evolutionary pathway best suited to the environment which they inhabited. Some evolved a lot, some very little. The same reason there are still wolves, but modern domesticated dogs can trace ancestry back to the same species.
People use this evolution term too loosely. I don’t think you’ll find much opposition to teaching micro-evolution, referring to a minor change within an individual species that occurs over a short period of time (i.e. a clam can develop larger ridges on its shell, or a bird a bigger beak). You will, however, find that a lot more people will disagree with your 150 year old belief system and want to present their kids and others’ both sides.
If creationism is not to be taught in the classroom, neither should macro-evolution (‘we evolved from apes’) or abiogenesis (‘the origin of life from inanimate matter’ – protocells).
Developing a new species, or macro-evolution, has never been observed or replicated and is only supported by circumstantial evidence. Saying that a new species was formed through a series of micro-evolutionary changes has less ground to stand on than creationism. How can you explain the gradual evolution of a wing? What is the purpose or function of a partially evolved wing? What is the mechanism for adding a gene? How do single-cellular bacteria with 500 genes evolve into a human with 20,000+ genes? Mutation changes genes, it doesn’t add them. To be fair to Darwin, his theory was made when not much was known about a cell’s structure and complexity. Please answer my above questions, as I didn’t take genetics, as you did.
There is no empirical proof for abiogenesis. No one has yet been able to synthesize a protocell using basic components.
Macro-evolution and abiogenesis is belief in the absence of evidence, which by your definition in the comment above, is faith – just without a God. This leaves it closely related to a secular religion. The theory that life could have originated via blind natural chemical processes relying upon sheer dumb luck across so many species remains unexplained, and therefore should NOT be taught in science class.
Please just be open to the possibility that macro-evolution and abiogenesis is more pseudoscience than something that should be taught in the classroom. Until concrete evidence is brought up on either side of the Creationism vs. Darwinism debate neither OR both should be in a science curriculum. Hopefully this comment helps you understand why people want Creationism in the classroom – present both sides – be skeptical. Where are the Darwin-Fish fossils?
Let’s assume you’re arguing from the position of devil’s advocate — though some would argue that’s the exact opposite of what you’re doing. Most of your arguments are either diversionary or deliberately misleading claims put forward by the organizations that are leading the creationist movement’s viewpoint. All have been rigorously debunked by many people, and you can find explanations all over the web from both sides. For example, the abiogenesis argument is a classic straw man fallacy, trying to connect two unrelated theories as proof of their fallibility, Abiogenesis has as much to do with evolution as engineering has to do with accounting. The macro vs micro debate is another diversion, claiming that “sure, there is evidence for the one, but yadda yadda yadda…” The fact is science is based on evidence and extrapolation — in this case, one is observable in the course of one or two human life-times, the other is only observable across millions of years. Finally, you talk about the the classic “creation of new info” from mutation argument. What you need to consider in this case is that two things are at work: (1) recombination leads to a whole variety of changes to genes, some positive and some negative and compounded over long time scales and with natural selection at play, these changes are definitely possible, and (2) changes in species don’t necessarily come from new and more genes, but (as evidence has been pointing very recently) by changes in how these are mixed and matched, expression order and frequency: genes are more like a programming library, a group of sub-routines and functions, and the species comes from how those functions are called in by a higher-level program.
I guess there are reasons to examine both theories, but a mountain of human-tested evidence versus one self-referencing, often self-contradicting work (no matter your stance on the moral implications of those teachings) is a no-contest debate in my book. Should they both be taught in school? If we’re going for equal representation, then also remember there are lists upon lists of “origin of life” stories to acknowledge from across thousands of cultures — each of them sacred to SOMEBODY — and if we’re going to be stuck presenting “both sides” then I’ll insist we teach them all.