Teaching evolution in an evangelized America...

I'm from a family of teachers and as you know, teachers like this guy DO make a difference. The problem is there aren't enough of them. That's not to say that 95% of the teachers aren't hardworking and concerned for their kids but there's a small fraction that takes the teaching of the subject to a new level.

My grade 11 English teacher was like that. She managed to get us all absolutely mad crazy for Shakespeare and made us realise that once we got past the language, he was speaking directly to us.

 

I bet we agree more than we disagree.

 

Some people have an innate ability to relate information to students, and it is very difficult to teach.

It's like seeing the ice 2-3 passes ahead. This teacher works 2-3 questions ahead.

The "expect you to understand" is perfect.

 

I get this point of view, and I don't. It seems pouty, and, actually, moralistic. Of course parents are limiting their children - they're parents! They're human! They usually do.

And you speak of intellectual curiousity… if you think the current "debate" - that it even exists - lies solely with creationists and kook theorists…you're wrong. It lies, too, with a scientific community asleep at the American wheel, at a academic environment that encourages research over teaching because of the grant money.

If science really wanted to "take back" American schools, it could do so…but it'd mean dragging the best people out of the lab and into the classroom. It'd mean some people quit working for Dow, Pfizer, Merck, Mobil, and tobacco companies to become teachers. If intellectual curiousity meant so much.

But it doesn't. Like poetry and short literature has turned into a fetid pool of academic crap where professors publish each other's minor, eye-straining work to guarantee tenure while they bemoan the decline of American letters, so it goes with science.

Unlike the teacher in the story, establishment science doesn't really want you to understand. It just wants you to agree. Grasp is optional.

In that way, it's rather like organized religion.

 

I blame TV.

 

I love that you, a reporter, would be offended by somebody asking "why."

People - especially kids, for goodness sakes - have the right to ask. Scientists can and should be troubled to answer.

 

I am not on the side of creationism. Never have been.

I am on the side of good science teachers. And I definitely feel science invited this debate through its negligence and general arrogance.

 

Except science actually asks questions and organized religion relies on outdated answers.

 

For somebody who isn't for creationism, you sure go a long way to try to draw it back into the discussion.

 

I do? Hmmm....can't recall the last time I posted about it. Maybe it was recent.

The story of this teacher struck me, as did the accompanying questions.

But I'll remember that, for your sake, this particular discussion is closed.

 

This "debate" should never have been allowed in the first place. The local boards of education should have put their foot down at the onset of this silliness and said, "No, this is not a science discussion" But they caved in to the troglodytes and anti-intellectuals.

How science is taught is another issue altogether. I agree with Alma on that.

And Alma, you've just fallen into the trap. The questions were penned by the Discovery Institute, a +
pseudo scientific outfit that's a front for creationists.

 

When you have parents hammering away at home that they should never listen to evolution because they say it isn’t true, they are definitely stunting their child’s growth.

What you deride the scientific community for (believe me, I’m a scientist) you choose to ignore when it comes to parents(because I said so, I’m your mother/father).

Sorry, but the scientists at least have, you know, scientific evidence backing up their story. Go back a few decades and some of these parents were the same ones that refused to use a condom because God would send them to hell.

I disagree with you heavily on this. While there are certainly individuals that are just leaching off of grant money like dead beats grabbing welfare money, that is not even close to the dominant set.

Ahh, the great theory that “the scientific community” is one giant collective that can pick and choose members to leave and enter. The ones that leave for teaching have their income subsidized by the collective. However, since the collective is just collecting their grant money, they are uninterested in sharing it with those looking to teach and are just prohibiting it from happening.

Yes, I see this statement silly enough to warrant that type of response.

Sorry, but you haven’t read much of Environmental Engineering recently, have you?

I just don’t buy into the idea of “establishment science” as any form of existence. The scientific community is comprised of a wide ranging variety of individuals. It isn’t just some collective that decides something and then says, “Well that is settled.”