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It's time for education to evolve
COMMENTARY
By Lisa Falkenberg
In Pennsylvania last week, it was reported that
a scientist had decoded the DNA of a woolly
mammoth using a hairball found in the Siberian
permafrost. Not surprisingly, the sequence was
99.4 percent equivalent to an elephant's.
Meanwhile, in Austin, the so-called State Board
of Education was still debating the merits of
evolution.
Forget Kansas. If we're not careful on this
issue, people across the nation could soon be
asking, "What's the matter with Texas?"— if
they're not already.
Unlike many questions in science, the answer
would be simple: the politicization of
education. In January, the board is expected to
take a preliminary vote on new science
curriculum standards for the next decade that
will shape the writing of textbooks for the
state's 4.5 million students.
Some conservatives on the State Board of
Education are struggling to keep science
teaching standards that mention "strengths and
weaknesses" of evolution, a theory as basic to
the teaching of science as the U.S.
Constitution is t
"Strengths and weaknesses" is a new buzz phrase
that's replaced "creation science" and
"intelligent design," and other science
curriculum labels that incorporate teachings of
faith, which courts have consistently struck
down.
Some evolution opponents reject the connection,
saying teaching evolution's "weaknesses" or
"limitations," as one current proposal
suggests, is simply about fairness, exposure to
opposing views and academic freedom.
"I'm a big fan of academic freedom," board
member Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, was quoted
saying recently in the Houston Chronicle.
Well, who isn't? But members like Mercer seem
to suggest that, unless they can inject
unfounded doubts about Darwin into the state
curriculum, students will spontaneously lose
their ability to ask questions and exercise
their critical thinking skills.
Students have questions
Robert Dennison, Houston ISD's AP science lead
teacher based at Robert E. Lee High School,
said nothing can stop his students from
questioning him on evolution, especially when
it comes to relationships among human
ancestors.
"They're full of questions," says Dennison.
"They want to know how life works."
Anti-evolution members also claim their
"weaknesses" campaign has nothing to do with
faith: "We're not putting religion in books,"
Mercer has said.
No, just falsehoods. As scientists testified at
the state board hearing last week, evolution is
a scientific theory, not a hypothesis. And
scientific theories don't have weaknesses. If
they did, the board would be justified in
raising challenges to everything from gravity
to relativity to the germ theory of disease.
The so-called weaknesses usually spewed by
evolution opponents are the same, tired
arguments that have been adequately refuted by
scientists for decades.
One of their favorites involves gaps in the
fossil record.
"We're somehow put in the position, almost
literally, of having to provide a minute-by-
minute description of the morphology of
creatures that haven't existed on the earth for
hundreds of millions of years," says Andrew
Ellington, a biochemistry professor at the
University of Texas. "Is it a surprise that we
don't have every fossil in the record, but that
every one we do have fits perfectly with what
you might expect for an evolutionary
progression of creatures?"
Chilling effects
No, we don't have every bone. Evolution hasn't
answered every question. And among those
scientists who have tried, many have made
mistakes. But, as Ellington says, "weakness of
fact" does not equal "a weakness of theory."
Ellington, Dennison and others worry that the
"weaknesses" mention in the curriculum
standards has had a chilling effect on science
teachers, some of whom aren't all that
comfortable teaching the complex subject of
evolution to begin with.
Dennison said some have been effectively
intimidated into skimming the surface of the
topic, or just avoiding it altogether by
pushing the unit to the end of the year, hoping
the class never gets to it.
And this, Ellington says, means that many Texas
students aren't coming to college with a strong
foundation in science, which can affect
everything from the prestige of universities to
the state's economic future.
Ellington says he located both his
biotechnology companies in other states, in
part because venture capitalists perceived the
Lone Star State as having a "lax or backward
educational climate."
Texas may not yet be Kansas, which drew
nationwide ridicule when it adopted science
standards that challenged evolution.
But if the "weakness" language stays, there's a
strong possibility that the board's
conservative members on the partisan, elected
board will try in a couple of years to insert
it into textbooks. And, this time, they might
have the votes to win.
True scientific debate is healthy. So are
questions. But injecting doubt in curriculum
for the sake of ideological agenda will harm
our students and our state.
— Lisa Falkenberg<
Houston Chronicle
2008-11-25
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/6130817.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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