Tag Archives: Science Education

What to do with Bible thumping students (a repost)

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…. Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it’s early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about “carbon dating.” This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you’ve gotten to the “evolution module”…

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Jeanne d’Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I understand she gave her Life Science teachers a very hard time. This is the only contemporary depiction of Joan of Arc. Some say the banner reads “IHS” but I’m pretty sure it says “AIG.”

The student is talking about C14 dating and how it “has problems.” But you are a life science teacher and can’t think of a single point in your class that you really touch on C14. Dating in the evolution section does not involve C14. This is for later time periods, more in the area of archaeology, and you know nothing about it. So you brush off the question but are left with an uneasy feeling.

Next class, probably just after class, the same student, again at a moment that gives you zero warning and usually no time to think of how to respond, mentions something about the Laws of Thermodynamics. This question you find more interesting and possibly even useful as the starting point of a “teachable moment…” The nature of life itself includes the fact that life works upstream against entropy. That one utterly mind-blowing aspect of life is really all you need to define life itself. If that was the only thing you used to define life, you would have very few non-life entities or events accidentally included. If you can truly understand … I mean really, really truly at a detailed level understand …. how the heck life works against the gradient of entropy, then you will understand a LOT (like, at the MA level, at least) of what is going on. To get a believable and reasonable level of understanding of this, you must get more than just basic cell function … it is not good enough to just say “The mitochondria are the tiny little powerhouses of the cell” because you have not explained how that works. You need to know about ATP and stuff. Really, you even need to know why cells use ATP as energy but none of the other obvious forms of energy that they could use … the phylogenetic effect at a very
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What is Wrong with the American System of Education?

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Roughly half of the people in the United States reject one or more fundamental tenets of science (most commonly evolution), while a larger percent, perhaps more than 80 percent depending on how we measure, would fail a basic science test. A strong majority of those American citizens who would claim to have strong feelings about one or more science policy issues such as climate change, stem cell research, or nuclear power either know very little about the relevant science or are so badly informed regarding the science that their knowledge is not merely insufficient, but is actually opposite what is generally accepted by experts in the area. Most Americans would prefer to make science related decisions on the basis of political affiliations (while at the same time often claiming to not be affiliated with a particular party, and to be ‘independent’ ‘thinkers’) than on the basis of scientifically demonstrable realities. This is true even to the extent that it is possible to predict a person’s likely stance on a scientific issue on the basis of their politics than on the basis of their own economic self-interest or concern about personal or family health and safety. Hmmmm.
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Science and Islam: A model for framing vs. popular science

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17th century Arabic anatomy drawing, from the Advances of Islamic Sciences web site. In some Islamic sects, drawing living things is not allowed. As a very practical matter, this excludes students from taking part in certain activities in science classrooms.

During the Bell Museum Slapdown panel last week, Myers brought up differences between countries in public attitudes towards education. Mooney and Nisbet brought up the difficulty of making fundamental changes via “Popular Science” approaches, which I take to include public, popular culture as well as standard education (which is, after all, the main mechanism for cultural transmission of scientific viewpoints).

We did not develop the potential for the comparative argument as much as we could have during that discussion. As Nisbet suggested: We should be scientific about our understanding of how we present science. I agree. The comparative approach is a very useful one in science. We can ask questions like, how can other predominantly christian countries (like Italy, France, Britain and Spain) have such a better attitude (publicly and culturally) towards science (especially evolution) compared to the US? What’s the difference? Let’s get us some of that difference!

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Saudi Cleric: Drop Evolution from the Curriculum

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The Medieval Religious State of Saudi Arabia has a school called King Abdullah’s University of Science and Technology, which is co-ed (that is an extraordinarily progressive idea for Teh Kingdom) and very science oriented. The idea, obviously, is for Saudi Arabia to maintain it’s old patriarchal relgious-oligarchic ways but at the same time not get mushed by the modern world by including some rational thinking and stuff. But a senior Saudi cleric has called for a vetting of the university’s curriculum in order to remove “alien ideologies.”

Evolution is an alien ideology, apparently.
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A former animal researcher speaks out

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Dario Ringach used animals in his research in neuroscience. When extremist animal rights activists tried to blow up his house in 2006, and accidentally almost blew up the wrong person’s house (in characteristic fashion, they got the address wrong, and the bomb did not function) Ringach got spooked and quit using the animals. Recently, Ringach has been speaking out regarding this issue, and the current Nature News has a write up.
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Poll: Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?

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WPTV.COM has a poll asking “Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools?” and the possible answers are “yes” and “no.” Which I guess means they are not really asking an “either/or” question although it is worded that way. Anyway, this relates to THIS STORY about people who work for a school system who are currently in trouble for contempt of court. Contempt of court is a jail-able offense, and it is NOT “offering prayer in public schools.”

Of course, it is true that these individuals were originally in trouble for violating the First Amendment Rights of the children and others in the school system they work for, and for mixing church/state business. They were ordered by a judge to stop doing that, they defied the order, and that is what got them in trouble.

Anyway this is a poll you might want to visit, but don’t just vote; Comment also. Let the poll-maker know that they are not really asking the right question.

The Poll is Here. It is currently at 10.6 percent yest, 89.4 percent no.

Why are most Americans creationists?

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We know there is a link between education, church going behavior, and the inability or unwillingness to accept that evolution is real and that humans evolved. But what exactly is the relationship? I think the following diagram includes the correct answer, but I’m not sure which one it is:

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The Blogginheads.tv Controversy

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Since the bloggingheads “diavlog” with David Dobbs and me was the first science-oriented installment to come out (more or less) since the repudiation of Bloggingheads.tv by Carl Zimmer and Sean Carrol, and now Phil Plait and PZ Myers, I think I should say something about why I did it and what I think about the whole thing.
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