Teaching the controversy - or modelling civilized disagreement?

I don't know if I ever got around to posting American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson's recent comments on intelligent design and schools:

My opinion is that most people believe in intelligent design as a reasonable explanation of the universe, and this belief is entirely compatible with science. So it is unwise for scientists to make a big fight against the idea of intelligent design. The fight should be only for the freedom of teachers to teach science as they see fit, independent of political or religious control. It should be a fight for intellectual freedom, not a fight for science against religion.

Well, I have now.

I entirely agree with Dyson that teachers should be free to teach science as they see fit, providing that they are teaching a relevant curriculum and meet standards of classroom competence. In my view, the primary criterion for evaluating any school should be whether students who want to go on in a given discipline get into schools of their choice, where the selection process is free of obvious ideological or other bias. These days that may be asking for a lot. But, as the taxpayer, I am the primary funding source of the system, so I DO feel free to ask for it.

Looking back on my own education 45 years ago, I am amazed by the freedom our teachers had, compared to what they would have today. My teachers at Tweedsmuir public school in London, Ontario, argued over creation vs. evolution with each other in front of the class! They quoted the Bible and they quoted atheist philosophers. The police never came. Not once. Fortunately, there is no Canadian equivalent of the ACLU, so no professional busybodies showed up either.

The most valuable thing those teachers did, in my view, was this: They enabled their students to see how educated adults conducted a conversation about ideas. Many of their students came from homes where their parents, who had not had the benefit of much education, might have conducted a discussion on entirely different - and less culturally satisfactory - lines.

Thoughts from a teacher on "teaching the controversy"

A science teacher of thirty years’ experience comments on "teaching the controversy" where evolution and ID are concerned:

"Two thoughts about "confrontational mode" from a veteran:

1. It is an important part of learning science to learn about the confrontation of ideas. Think back to 1900 and the Light-is-a-Particle vs Light-is-a-wave controversy. A confrontation of ideas is not the same as an enmity between persons. Honest and clever men and women sat on either side of that fence, and in the end the evidence forced a conclusion that neither side could possibly have imagined.

2. No less a teacher of teachers than the great Elgin Wolfe held that a perfectly acceptable answer in science to a difficult question is, "We don't know." He suggested that if students asked, e.g., where the first cell came from, we could simply say, ‘We don’t know. Maybe it will be your Ph.D. thesis which will enlighten the world on that subject.’ (Now, he also suggested that if students asked questions the answer to which the individual teacher did not know the answer, then the correct response would be, ‘I don't know, but I’ll find out from people who do know. You try to find out as well, and let's see which of us can get the answer first !’)

Good thoughts. My own much more limited experience in adult ed has been that students do not respect teachers who can’t/won’t/are not allowed to address the subjects that the students really know are controversial. The only difference between adults and teens, in this regard, is that the adults are too polite to display their disdain.

It used to be that the main problem areas were sex education and drug-proofing. Some people didn’t want the teachers to talk about what all the students knew about, or soon would. It shows how serious the origins debate has become when the same restrictions are now being applied to discussions of evolution versus intelligent design. If past experience is any indicator, the people who want to ban discussion of ID from the classroom will flop miserably, on principle, and deserve to.