Nic Tamzek

Michael Ruse has a really good essay on professional vs. popular evolution in a recent Science issue. Perhaps someone could post it (I don't have access to it at the moment).

Hugo Holbling

Nice try, but your reductio ad absurdum doesn't counter what i said. Any curriculum is forced by practical considerations to exclude information; the point is to provide students with points-of-view contra evolution in order that they understand it better, just as Mill pointed out long ago. Concerned scientists could insist that the "least-bad" alternative be tried. Alternatively, it would be easy enough to test empirically whether or not students achieved better marks following Mill.

By way of examples: firstly, i myself was taught some evolution at school (badly) and forgot most of it. Later i discovered creationist ideas and ended up at Talk Origins trying to learn if there was anything to them. As a result, my understanding is deeper (for a layman) that it would ever have been had i not been exposed to creationism.

Secondly, this very discussion demonstrates my point. If my case proves unconvincing to you and others, you've nevertheless chosen to address it and hence helped all the lurkers appreciate the arguments surrounding this question better than if i'd merely agreed with you.

In my attempts to keep this relevant to Dawkins, it was he who said that "any reasonable person" would be convinced; the idea is to teach students that there are other ideas out there which may or may not be nonsense, and we have ways to decide which of them is preferable. Any theory, no matter how sound it appears, can only benefit from this process in order to prevent it becoming a dead dogma.

Hugo Holbling

That's funny, because i was just asked to provide a perfect solution.

Is there no possibility of compromise here to take account of my point? At the present time a similar situation prevails in science teaching in the UK: alot of ideas are taught badly and in little depth. Would it not be more useful to students to reduce the number of topics and increase their scope and extent? This would help teachers without a scientific background too, of course.

Doubting Didymus

Hugo, there's barely any time in school curricula for any evolution at all as it is. There just isn't time to include the 'least bad' alternative theory for each scientific one (which, to be fair, should not apply only to evolution, but to each and every major unifying theory, right?). It might be a nice idea, but there just isn't the time in schools to waste on nuts, however wholesome you think the nuts would be.

Nic Tamzek

Thing is, the "least bad" alternative is a very, very long ways from creationism.

I'm really not sure what you're arguing here. There are some perfectly good arguments for bringing up various pseudoscientific beliefs in science class, in order to teach real science, teach critical thinking, etc. That this should necessarily be creationism, and that it should be "taught", though, are much more ambitious arguments thus far unsupported.

Now, this is much better stuff. An excellent argument for freedom of speech and for public informational resources like educational websites. Getting from here to a curriculum recommendation is still a long ways, however.

Yes, I agree that continual testing of ideas against each other is how we keep them from becoming dogma. But what about the possibility that high school is not the appropriate place for continual scientific theory death-match to be carried out? Perhaps the point of high school is to give students a base level of knowledge (or if the term is too strong, a base level of received wisdom) so that they have some idea of what current theory is, or even what science is, before they start debating it, advancing it, or ignoring it later in life?

Just a thought...

Wounded King

As I am sure we are all aware progress up the echelons of education almost always equates, in the sciences at least, with a continual erosion of certainty. The more one is taught about a subject the more one realises that what you were taught the year before as a simple truth is in fact horrendously complicated and full of caveats and exceptions. I have no objection to people examining creationist and ID theories as case studies in the nature of scientific theory, but the classroom of a high school hardly seems the place. The arguments and counterarguments are so numerous that it would take an unreasonable amount of time even to go through a few main ones in sufficient detail for it to be worthwhile. A couple of periods devoted to it

High school students arent taught sufficient evolutionary biology at a sufficient level to be able to see many of the flaws inherent in the proposals of ID or creationism, if they were we might hope to see the numbers of creationists drastically reduced.

Im wondering if some people read the title of this thread as 'Attack Dawkins!!'. I'm not Dawkins biggest fan myself but I think some of the criticism levelled at him is a bit harsh. He may be on the extreme side of the evolutionary camp, but the extreme side of the right camp is better than being in the wrong camp all together.

Oolon Colluphid

No. You cannot compromise the truth. If you do, it ceases to be the truth.
You clearly know absolutely nothing about school curricula. Here is the UK National Curriculum. Have a browse. Which topics should be dropped then? Which areas of these subjects are less relevant? Though I no longer work in my local LEA, I still have contacts in the teacher-advisory service. I’ll pass on any comments you have.

Let’s get one thing straight: creationism is not a ‘least-bad alternative’. It is plain wrong. Completely, utterly wrong. So just what is the point of including it in anything except mythology classes? Granted an unending supply of time, teaching creation to highlight bad science might be a good thing. But that is neither practical -- there’s too much truth to take in to fanny around confusing children with other stuff -- nor what creationists try to do. They promote it -- if you hadn’t noticed -- as a genuine competitor to evolution. It is not. It is pure bunk. Crap. Rubbish. A waste of time.

Okay. Let’s teach erroneous knowledge too, to highlight the good stuff. Here’s some other things we should bring in to lessons:

Physics: Caloric; phlogiston.

Chemistry: Alchemy.

Geology: Continents cannot move.

Astronomy: Planets are stars that move; the Earth is at the centre of the universe.

Medicine: Diseases caused by personal wrong-doing, and/or demons.

History: The Holocaust did not happen.

Meteorology: Rain is Zeus pissing in a sieve (Aristophanes, The Clouds).

Wanna produce a lesson plan for any of those subjects, including these things too? Why should we drop anything in the NC to make way for these?

TTFN, Oolon

Harpy

What is all this bollocks about not wanting to offend theists and allowing them to keep their cosy fantasies in tact so that they may be kind enough to let a particle of reason into their religion addled minds.

We need more people like Dawkins to expose the superstitious twaddle that is religion. The deference that is shown by society to religion is what enables this crap to thrive. Shout it out loud! God is dead killed by science.

As far as I am concerned Science is the complete antithesis of religion. Anybody who can say they accept the tenets of science and critical thinking and yet still hold beliefs in the supernatural are lying to themselves and everybody else.

Science or Religion, Evolution or Creation, you can't have both.

emotional

That attitude, EXACTLY, is why creationism is rampant.

Peter Soderqvist

Endnote in the link!