“The acceptance of evolution”
Aug 15th 2006Wallabynerd alert
It is disturbing to think that (according to the New York Times) only around 50% of Americans have embraced the truth of evolution. That’s right — we’re only just ahead of Turkey on the number of people who have made the decision to let evolution into their heads. Of course, it’s a little hard to put a whole lot of confidence in this study when it shows 70% of the British being confident of evolution’s truth — up from 48% just 7 months ago.
At least there’s hope for Kansas, where an election turned out the school board that called for mass burning of biology texts “teaching the controversy”. And so, as Jack Hassard put it, “Kansas now appears to be back in the good graces of the science education community”.
Of course, the real problem is not that 50% of Americans have not “let evolution into their heads”. Nor is the problem that 50% of Americans *have* “let evolution into their heads”.
The first problem is that this is seen as a problem in the first place. In the most benevolent case, I’m sure that a good number of the teachers, scientists, etc. “viewing this with alarm” are simply concerned that students (and adults) may hold incorrect convictions about the way the natural world works. Well, perhaps they do. I’m quite that sure that most of the drivers I’ve seen on the highway have incorrect convictions about the way that friction and momentum work, and the way that neurology works. I’m somewhat concerned about that, and the possible impact (literally) on me.
Belief that humans evolved from simpler animals, however, doesn’t seem to have as much in the way of real-world consequence. And yet the concern is for the teaching of evolutionary biology, rather than basic physics. Apparently there’s a distressing number of recent top-tier university grads who can’t correctly explain the relative motion of the sun, the moon and the Earth — but the outcry for astronomy education has been muted, at best.
“Well, it’s because there are people actively trying to politically require schools to teach the wrong stuff!” That’s certainly the conclusion in Science: “The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States.”
Let’s see.
*The Cobb County (GA) school board required stickers on textbooks urging students to carefully consider the evidence for evolution. Yes, that’s very incriminating.
*The controversial science standards that got Kansas in such trouble did not require the teaching of any particular alternative to evolution; nor did they prohibit the teaching of evolution. They simply left it up to the individual school districts to decide. Yes, I begin to see the problem.
*The Dover (PA) school board voted to allow the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution. That’s about as close as we seem to have gotten, at least recently, to “politically requiring” the “wrong stuff” to be taught. I didn’t follow the Dover case all that closely since it was pretty clear from the start that it wasn’t “is ID true?” as much as “is ID religion?” — so perhaps there’s aspects to the board’s policy that I’m leaving out.
In any case, the pattern that shows up pretty clearly is this — The scientific community is not alarmed by people walking around believing scientific falsehoods. Bad physics? fine, fine. Bad chemistry? no problem. The scientific community is terrified, though, of people being given a chance to think for themselves, and to decide for themselves what it is that makes sense.
Why’s that? More later…
One Response to ““The acceptance of evolution””
just follow the method, don’t question it or try to test it! shh! be good little children and think exactly what we tell you!