Teaching evolution: A note from The Cranky Professor

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

(Note: If you are looking for Mark Steyn's testimony on the Ontario Human Rights Commission, go here.)

Philosophy prof Mark Mercer, aka The Cranky Professor, tells me that he published a piece in The Journal, the student newspaper at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax (Vol. 74, Issue 17, February 4, 2009), in which he notes,

What we want from biology class is that pupils gain a sound understanding of evolution by natural and sexual selection. We want them to understand how selective pressures cause traits to spread or fail to spread throughout a population of organisms and how these pressures can give rise to new species. That is, we want that they acquire the ability to encounter the natural world in the ways a contemporary biologist does.

What we ought not to want is that pupils believe that in fact species do evolve by means of natural and sexual selection. We ought to be completely indifferent as to whether they accept the theory as true. All we want, that is, is that they understand the theory and can apply it correctly to biological phenomena.

He compares it to a course in world religions

It is no part of such a class that pupils come to believe the core doctrines of the religions they study, or that they come to hold any religious beliefs at all. The class does what it should when pupils come to understand the various religions they study, and to understand the various psychological, sociological, or anthropological theories of them their teacher presents. To ask them to believe anything is to try to indoctrinate them into, or out of, religion. Likewise, to ask pupils in a biology class to believe anything they are taught is to indoctrinate them into science.

It's an interesting comparison, but I am not sure I buy it. For one thing, science is supposed to be matters of fact, not opinion.

And time and time again, when Darwinian theories are tested, they flunk. As I wrote recently,

The history of life has not been the long, slow "survival of the fittest" transition that classical evolution theory requires. Life got started on Earth the planet cooled. All the basic divisions of animal life took shape rather suddenly in the Cambrian seas, about 550 million years ago. Later, there was, for example, the "Big Bang" of flowers and the Big Bang of birds, where many life forms appear quite suddenly.

Darwinism is not overwhelmingly demonstrated. It is underwhelmingly demonstrated but overwhelmingly believed.

It is overwhelmingly believed (and taught), not because of evidence - the evidence is against it, and that fact has been known for a very long time. Steve Gould called it the "trade secret of paleontology". But Darwinism is the only doctrine of evolution that supports materialist atheism, which is the actual religion of the Western elite today. Most of what is in textbooks now - like the examples above - is indoctrination.

One reason for the intelligent design controversy is that teachers are forbidden to supplement the indoctrination with any evidence against the dogma propounded.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy

Florida ponders teaching evolution - some thoughts from Ontario

Apparently, a drive to teach evolution is taking root in Florida.

Assuming that one is not going to teach evolution simply as a form of indoctrination in materialism, there is an interesting question about when and how to teach it. I remember trying to unpack that question for a bemused Toronto Star reporter a while back (the one who incorrectly identified me as a fundamentalist).

Briefly, you can teach sciences by starting with physics and then going through chemistry to biology and finishing with ecology. Or you can do it the other way around. Of course, you could put them all over the map too, for theconvenience of scheduling. I don't like that third method, but then I never liked crazy quilts. Either of the first two methods will work well for comprehension in general, but a key consequence follows:

If you start with physics, you will be teaching physics in Grade Nine and biology/ecology in Grade Twelve. If you start with ecology/biology, you will be teaching them in Grade Nine and physics in Grade Twelve. The main problem is - obviously - a practical one.

How deeply can you go into a topic with Niners? When I was in high school in Ontario forty-five years ago, we started with biology. We studied evolution, but it was very simple. For example, we were asked to note the rudimentary hind legs of a snake. The idea that the snake once had legs but lost them through disuse was introduced as the explanation. We were shown a tree of life diagram (a picturesque idea now largely exploded). We certainly didn't learn anything very complex because we couldn't have.

Today in Ontario, we do a more indepth biology course in Grade Twelve. Some have criticized this arrangement because many students drop out of sciences by Grade Twelve and don't learn about evolution. That's true, but it is also true that the ones who do study biology in Grade Twelve learn a lot more about evolution than they could likely have handled in Grade Nine. The Grade Twelve biology textbook (McGraw-Hill Ryerson) on my shelf has nearly 100 pages on evolution, discussing things the Niners couldn't handle.

So there you are: If you want a topic studied in depth by those who are likely to go on in sciences, your best bet is to take it up in Grade Twelve. If you want to make sure that everyone knows a little of it, your best bet is to take it up in Grade Nine. I suppose there are various options in between.

Alternatively, if the Florida authorities want to introduce evolution as propaganda for materialism, in and out of season and at all times and places, ... they are creating an audience for intelligent design. People who had never thought about intelligent design before will start thinking about it.

Addition re Ontario curriculum:

A friend writes with up-to-the minute Ontario Curriculum information:

For the academic (university-bound) students, the arrangement is as follows:

In Grade 9 and 10, the students do a general science curriculum which divides the year between four different scientific subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and earth and space science. My impression is that the first three subjects get more attention than the fourth, but that may vary from school to school. The biology unit in Grade 9 covers primarily the biology of the cell, whereas in Grade 10 the biology unit is entirely on ecology.

In Grade 11, physics, chemistry and biology are all offered as independent subjects, the prerequisite for each being Grade 10 science.

In Grade 12, physics, chemistry and biology are all offered again as independent subjects, the prerequisite for each being the corresponding Grade 11 course.

In Grade 12 there is also an Earth and Space Science course, the prerequisite being Grade 10 Science.

A student who intends to major in biology at university will presumably take biology in Grade 11 and 12, which means that this student will have studied biology for four years in high school, albeit for only about a third of a year in each of Grade 9 and Grade 10. This four-year sequence provides the first-year university student with a reasonably sophisticated knowledge base in biology, and, since admission to Year 1 Science programmes at virtually any Canadian university requires Grade 12 Chemistry and Grade 12 Physics, a good solid grounding (again, four years) in each of those subjects as well.

I haven't looked in detail into the "evolution" component of the Ontario biology courses, but I note that "evolution" isn't mentioned on any of the course outlines until Grade 12, and I know from my own careful examination that the ecology textbook for Grade 10 has virtually no discussion of evolution at all, yet provides a very thorough grounding in the basic principles of ecology: food chains, water cycle, carbon cycle, etc. This goes to show that you can educate science students very soundly in how living nature works without forcing them to side with any particular view regarding how living nature originated.

The basic structure and contents of the Ontario secondary curriculum are laid out in a Ministry of Education document to be found here.

This looks quite good really, and much better than I could have hoped for, because the student tackles each subject with an ascending degree of complexity. It explains why the course can go into considerable detail about evolution in Grade 12.

Eccentric social history: When dull conformists think they are cool

This editorial from the Akron Beacon-Journal - against allowing any student to know that Darwinism could be questioned on factual grounds - is an interesting bit of social history because it is complete boilerplate, beginning to end.

You can deduce a large proportion of the pieties of middle-class Americans (courts are right, professional bodies are right, organizations of "concerned scientists" are to be trusted ... well, even when they are not right or trustworthy, they are actually right and trustworthy because it is NEVER right to allow oneself to be disturbed by thinking that they might be wrong or untrustworthy .... )

An intriguing fact about the times we live in is that, in my experience, the people who write sludge of this type often think of themselves as persons of daring, novel, intriguing, dangerous, or important ideas ...

Did you know that there was a time - and I am old enough to remember the tail end of it - when people who had no novel ideas prided themselves on being good conformists - which was a fair assumption. That is to say, they prided themselves on a quality they really had.

Today, such people pride themselves on being good non-conformists for gurgling and regurgitating the treacle administered to them by an establishment.

The resulting language deficit hampers people who actually do have genuinely new or different ideas. Because everyone who thinks the establishment is right, also thinks he is innovative, the people who really do innovate don't know what language to use to explain that they think the establishment could actually be wrong.

I was corresponding with a person who genuinely has interesting, new ideas in the history of life area, but he admitted to me that he had difficulty writing in the present climate.

The trouble is, everything old is new again, and everything new is old again. Only new ideas that are already old can be accepted.

I replied,

That is the real effect of political correctness and prescribed views. Sometimes they tell you to bark along with the pack, but other times they merely surround you with the din created by the barking pack.

Such an environment withers independent thinking. Barking along with the pack comes to seem so natural - until you stop and realize that you are in fact barking, not speaking.

Well, he’ll manage. Oh, he’d better. Otherwise, you will all be hearing that dull sludge link, clink, and clank for decades.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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Kansas: Why "ask your family" about Darwinism or ID won't work

I gather that the state of Kansas is about to switch back to standards that would not permit the questioning of Darwinism. In particular, when a student is wondering about whether fine tuning of the universe or March of the Penguins or some whatever suggest design, "The teacher should explain why the question is outside the domain of natural sciences and encourage the student to discuss the question further with his or her family and other appropriate sources."

A while back, a friend and I wrote a skit about what will likely happen:

STUDENT: Miss! Miss! I got a question. Last night Mom took my extreme games back to the store and made me watch some talking heads on a demo TV while she reamed out the manager for stocking those games. On the show, a guy said that the laws of physics and chemistry don’t really explain how life forms came to exist. But you say they do. So who’s right? Then this astronomer guy comes on and says the universe is so finely tuned that if you changed just one constant by one smidgen, we wouldn’t be here. Wow. What do you think about that?

TEACHER: I can’t answer your question. We are not allowed to talk about design. It is outside the domain of science.

STUDENT: These guys were scientists.

TEACHER: Well, they just don’t know what science is.

STUDENT So how come they have jobs then? Like, that one guy, he heads up some ...

TEACHER: Science is the activity of seeking only natural explanations of what we see. These persons are inferring design from the evidence. Scientists aren’t allowed to do that. You are not allowed to discuss intelligent design.

STUDENT: Isn’t that censorship, Miss?

TEACHER: It is certainly not censorship! I am told that you have to go to “your family or other appropriate source.”

STUDENT: Are you kidding? Mom got lousy marks in science. She dumped it before they got round to dissecting frogs. I wanna talk to someone who knows.

TEACHER: Ask your pastor then!

STUDENT: He doesn’t know this stuff. He mostly counsels people like Mom.

TEACHER: Well, ... perhaps a philosopher, then ...

STUDENT: Miss, in my neighborhood, I’d have better luck finding a space alien. Look, if you don’t know the answer, just admit ...

TEACHER: It’s NOT that I don’t know the answer! I’m not allowed to talk about ...

STUDENT: And you claim that’s not censorship? Give me a break!

TEACHER: If you say one more word, I will send you to the office and they’ll send you home!

STUDENT: You know what? That’s okay with me. I’m goin’. Even my mom isn’t as illogical as you! I bet I can find lots of stuff on the Internet.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.