What's Being Taught In Biology Class
by JoyIn the comments to Mike's blog Sober and ID: Part II, NCSE propaganda director Nick Matzke refers to a 1999 essay by Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center, in which he argues that the evolution vs. creationism debates need "a new script."
Commenter Analyysi offered further observations on the meat of that essay, per how Haynes decries the teaching of scientism in public schools as if it were science. I post below a blog written last year about how evolutionary biology is being taught in my 'economically challenged' redneck corner of the country, to demonstrate that things HAVE changed. For the better.
Last year my grandson took his requisite semester's worth of introductory biology and evolution, so I carefully vetted the new textbook, comparing it to a truly awful anti-religious polemic disguised as a freshman anthropology textbook my son had to purchase for a course he took in college back in the early 1990s.
I listed the details of my examination in a blog that for some reason never got published, so I offer it now to illustrate that Hayne's positive suggestions back in 1999 have been incorporated into new materials for teaching high school biology, and it's apparently not generating much controversy. The change has happened despite the desperate tactics of NCSE and other such organizations devoted to preserving exclusive indoctrination in Neodarwinism as the prescribed 'cure' for religious beliefs.
I have not seen any official NCSE objections to the new way of introducing students to evolution, so must conclude that Eugenie and Nick have no problems with the new, more open and critical presentation. I have no problems with it, so it may be that the 'war' is over. Now all that needs to happen is to tell the combatants they can all go home.
The blog, written in January of 2006:
My grandson's new textbook is entitled Biology, the Dynamics of Life. It is a Glencoe Science/McGraw-Hill textbook with National Geographic features, and includes the NC-specific materials to be found at the Glenco/McGraw-Hill website. It has seven authors and an edition copyright of 2005. While genetics is introduced in unit 4 right after a unit on cells, evolution isn't introduced until unit 5 (starting on page 366 and comprising 100 pages).
Unit 5, chapter 14 - "Change Through Time" - begins with an early geological and geophysical history of the earth and moves right into fossils. Section 14.2 - "The Origin of Life" - presents both ancient and modern ideas about where life came from (including spontaneous generation and abiogenesis). None of the current hypotheses presented for abiogenesis is given particular credence, and none are presented as fact. Just prior to the chapter 14 assessment there's a page labeled "Biology and Society" where the 4 hypotheses are given a paragraph each before finishing up with a two-sentence statement about "Forming Your Opinion."
The 4 origin hypotheses (in order of presentation): 1. Divine origins. 2. Meteorites. 3. Primordial Soup. 4. RNA world. the Divine origins blurb is the only one with two paragraphs. These read -
"Common to human cultures throughout history is the belief that life on Earth did not arise spontaneously. Many of the world's major religions teach that life was created on Earth by a supreme being. The followers of these religions believe that life could only have arisen through the direct action of a divine force."
"A variation of this belief is that organisms are too complex to have developed only by evolution. Instead, some people believe that the complex structures and processes of life could not have formed without some guiding intelligence."
That's it. No anti-theological argumentation, no historical lies, no position taken. Just short paragraphs describing the Creationist and ID positions, without even using the terms "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design." Whoa!!!!
After the blurbs for the rest of the hypotheses, "Forming Your Opinion" states quite simply:
"Review, analyze, and critique the different ideas about the origin of life presented here. Consider strengths and weaknesses during your review."
How refreshing! I am so glad to see that what my grandson is going to be learning this semester isn't propaganda, isn't lies, isn't biased anti-religious garbage… it's just facts and science, along with a lovely encouragement toward critical thinking! I won't have to waste any time at all trying to counter bigoted horsehockey coming from the erstwhile authority of the local school system, and he'll still learn the most valuable science he needs to learn to pursue his dream of being a paleontologist!
I'll add that in section 15 Darwin and natural selection are introduced, but I have no problems with the way these and other topics of the subject are treated either. I wish every high schooler in the country could be introduced to evolution this way. It's very encouraging to me that science (or at least the textbook writers, editors and publishers) are now paying attention to fact-based material and losing the ugly bias. I'm sure some parents around here may object to the subject on general principles, but far fewer will have such objections to this material than would have if the text were something as nasty as the one my son had to buy.
I wonder what the die-hard ID-critics of the Great Internet Wars would say about the exercise of thinking critically about the origin of life hypotheses, and open discussion in the classroom, which is not just suggested but required as "lab" in this textbook. Isn't the exercise of critical thinking in their view supposed to be aimed exclusively at theological notions?
Such a change in the way students are introduced to evolution didn't come about because Neodarwinists and religion-haters such as Dawkins and Myers [et. al.] have won or are winning the debates. Rather, it looks to me like evolutionary biology just might be about ripe for new ways of approaching open questions. As I have long predicted would happen as soon as science proper determined to deal with the metaphysical corruption in its midst.
