Urging teachers to conflate Darwinism with
other controversies is just one of their most popular tactics
by Rob Boston
Evolution is the linchpin of modern biology. Young people who don’t
understand it are missing out on an entire range of educational and
career opportunities. Certain professional fields can be closed off to
them.
Despite this, some public schools in America do all they can
to avoid teaching evolution. Thanks to constant pressure from the
religious right, many public schools are battlegrounds in a culture war
that does great damage to our nation’s scientific credibility as
creationists work overtime to slip their ideas into the curriculum.
Federal
courts have been clear: creationism is theology grounded in a literal
reading of the bible, not science. It has no place in public school
science classes, and inserting it into the schools is unconstitutional.
But
despite a string of courtroom defeats, the creationists will not be
stopped. They keep repackaging their ideas and trying again. Ironically,
their strategies seem to evolve.
Here is a roundup of the latest ploys creationists are using to replace sound science with biblical fundamentalism.
1. Pretending to teach kids “critical thinking” skills: A
spate of bills appeared in states this year that purported to help
guide public school teachers in helping students apply “critical
thinking” to select “controversies.” Not surprisingly, the controversies
singled out always included evolution.
Legislation in Colorado
would have directed teachers to “create an environment that encourages
students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions
and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical
evolution, global warming, and human cloning.”
An Indiana bill
would have compelled teachers to “help students understand, analyze,
critique, and review in an objective manner the strengths and weaknesses
of conclusions and theories being presented in a course being taught by
the teacher.”
In Montana, a bill mandated that schools to
encourage “critical thinking regarding controversial scientific
theories” such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life,
random mutation, natural selection, DNA, and fossil discoveries.”
Oklahoma
legislation would have required Sooner State teachers to “help students
understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the
scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific
theories pertinent to the course being taught.” Covered topics included
“biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and
human cloning.”
The similar language of these bills (which all
failed, thankfully) is strong evidence that they come from a central
source. The National Center for Science Education, a California-based
group that supports good science instruction in public schools, has
traced them to the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that
promotes “intelligent design.”
Critical thinking is great. We’re
all for it. But that’s not what these bills are about. They are about
warping the concept of critical thinking and using it as vehicle to
introduce religious concepts into the classroom.
2. Lumping it in with other controversies: Arizona
lawmakers this year deliberated a bill that identified a series of
“controversial” subjects and signaled them out for special classroom
treatment. These included “biological evolution, the chemical origins of
life, global warming, and human cloning.”
Louisiana already has a
law on the books permitting public school teachers to use
“supplemental” material when discussing certain controversial issues,
evolution among them. No one knows for sure what these supplemental
materials are, but given that state’s constant efforts to undermine
evolution, it’s safe bet
On the Origin of Species is not on the list.
A
school board in Springboro, Ohio, is considering a similar ruse, only
its list is even longer. Once again, the idea here is to attempt to
seize some type of moral high ground as proponents claim they are only
trying to teach “both sides.”
Unfortunately for the board, that only works when there are two sides of equal validity.
The
“teach the controversy” movement gives the far right an additional
bonus: They can use it as a vehicle to undermine climate change, which
they also reject.
3. Calling it academic freedom: Academic
freedom is an important concept at colleges and universities. It has
not been extended to public secondary schools because those institutions
teach impressionable youngsters. Thus, school officials and
democratically elected boards have the power to rein in teachers who
start acting like preachers or who stray too far from the accepted
curriculum.
A common creationist ruse is to assert that teachers
have the right, under academic freedom, to introduce material that
undercuts evolution. They do not. Over the years, several public school
teachers have made this argument in court. All have failed.
Imagine
if this argument were taken to its logical extent. What’s to stop a
teacher from espousing 9/11 conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial,
claims that we never landed on the moon, etc.?
4. Urging teachers to “go rogue”: Even
though there is no academic freedom right to teach creationism, some
public school teachers behave as if there is. They simply don’t teach
evolution or teach it in such a way as to instill doubts in students’
minds.
A recent survey of public school high school science
teachers in Pennsylvania found 19 percent backing some variant of
creationism. One biology teacher in Altoona said he believes Earth is
10,000 years old and that the methods used to date it at 5 billion years
are faulty.
“Sometimes students honestly look me in the eye and
ask what do I think?” wrote this teacher in response to a newspaper
survey. “I tell them that I personally hold the Bible as the source of
truth. I tell them that I don’t think [radiocarbon dating] is as valid
as the textbook says it is, noting other scientific problems with the
dating method. Kids ask all kinds of personal questions and that’s one I
don’t shy away from. It doesn’t in any way disrupt the educational
process. I’m entitled to my beliefs as much as the evolutionist is.”
An
anonymous teacher in Indiana County, Pa., reported, “Most parents and
officials do not want evolution ‘crammed’ into their children. They have
serious philosophical/religious issues with public schools dictating to
their students how to interpret the origin of life.”
Courts can
strike down creationism repeatedly. That won’t matter if teachers refuse
to offer proper instruction about evolution or are afraid to do so due
to pressure from their superiors or the community.
5. Calling creationism something else. Back
in the 1980s, “creation science” was all the rage among
fundamentalists. They seemed to believe that all you had to do was tack
the word “science” onto something and presto, it was science. (“Flat
Earth Science,” anyone?)
That stunt failed when the Supreme Court
struck down a Louisiana law mandating “balanced treatment” between
evolution and creation science in 1987. The term “creationism” became
more popular, even though it was the same old thing. When courts failed
to fall for it, some advocates began using the term “the theory of
abrupt appearance.”
Still others glommed on to “evidence against
evolution.” Again, these name changes failed to fool anyone. It was the
same old creationism in a new dress.
Most recently, “intelligent
design” has become all the rage. Sometimes known by the acronym ID,
intelligent design tries to cover up some of the more outlandish claims
of standard creationism (6,000-year-old Earth, dinosaurs and humans
living at the same time, Noah’s Ark was real, etc.) and instead posits
that humans and other life forms are so complex that they must have been
designed by some intelligent force. If this force just happens to be
the Christian god, then so be it.
But at the end of the day, ID
proponents are left to fall back on religious explanations. Just exactly
who is this designer? Other than space aliens – and they aren’t really
serious about that – ID backers have no candidates other than the god of
their choice.
***
Evolution is no longer considered
controversial by the scientific community. To biologists, it is as well
established as the theory of gravity or the germ theory of disease. When religo-wingnut agitators succeed in removing it from the classroom or
watering down the instruction to the point of uselessness, they don’t
just violate the separation of cult and state, they undermine our
nation’s leadership in science.
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