Title: more in the NYTimes
Evolution Takes a Back Seat in
U.S. Classes
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: February 1,
2005
r. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in
Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just
begun work as a biology teacher in a small school district in the
state. Their conversation turned to evolution.
"She confided that she simply ignored
evolution because she knew she'd get in trouble with the principal if
word got about that she was teaching it," he recalled. "She
told me other teachers were doing the same thing."
Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials
propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed
to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with
evolution in biology classes, stories like the one Dr. Frandsen tells
are more common.
In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the
curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers
who follow the issue.
Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but
superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it.
Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from
fundamentalists in their communities.
"The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the
chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually no
discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a
climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an
evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum review
board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers are afraid to
raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to
discuss the issue in public.
Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee on science and public
policy of the Alabama Academy of Science, said in an interview that
this fear made it impossible to say precisely how many teachers avoid
the topic.
"You're not going to hear about it," he said. "And for
political reasons nobody will do a survey among randomly selected
public school children and parents to ask just what is being taught in
science classes."
But he said he believed the practice of avoiding the topic was
widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to
fundamentalist faiths.
"You can imagine how difficult it would be to teach evolution as
the standards prescribe in ever so many little towns, not only in
Alabama but in the rest of the South, the Midwest - all over,"
Dr. Frandsen said.
Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for
Science Education, said she heard "all the time" from
teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much
trouble."
"Or their principals tell them, 'We just don't have time to teach
everything so let's leave out the things that will cause us problems,'
" she said.
Sometimes, Dr. Scott said, parents will ask that their children be
allowed to "opt out" of any discussion of evolution and
principals lean on teachers to agree.
Even where evolution is taught, teachers may be hesitant to give it
full weight. Ron Bier, a biology teacher at Oberlin High School in
Oberlin, Ohio, said that evolution underlies many of the central ideas
of biology and that it is crucial for students to understand it. But
he avoids controversy, he said, by teaching it not as "a unit,"
but by introducing the concept here and there throughout the year.
"I put out my little bits and pieces wherever I can," he
said.
He noted that his high school, in a college town, has many students
whose parents are professors who have no problem with the teaching of
evolution. But many other students come from families that may not
accept the idea, he said, "and that holds me back to some
extent."
"I don't force things," Mr. Bier added. "I don't argue
with students about it."
In this, he is typical of many science
teachers, according to a report by the Fordham Foundation, which
studies educational issues and backs programs like charter schools and
vouchers.
Some teachers avoid the subject altogether,
Dr. Lawrence S. Lerner, a physicist and historian of science, wrote in
the report. Others give it very short shrift or discuss it without
using "the E word," relying instead on what Dr. Lerner
characterized as incorrect or misleading phrases, like "change
over time."
Dr. Gerald Wheeler, a physicist who heads the National Science
Teachers Association, said many members of his organization "fly
under the radar" of fundamentalists by introducing evolution as
controversial, which scientifically it is not, or by noting that many
people do not accept it, caveats not normally offered for other parts
of the science curriculum.
Advertisement
Dr. Wheeler said the science teachers' organization hears
"constantly" from science teachers who want the
organization's backing. "What they are asking for is 'Can you
support me?' " he said, and the help they seek "is more
political; it's not pedagogical."
There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that all living
things evolved from common ancestors, that evolution on earth has been
going on for billions of years and that evolution can be and has been
tested and confirmed by the methods of science. But in a 2001 survey,
the National Science Foundation found that only 53 percent of
Americans agreed with the statement "human beings, as we know
them, developed from earlier species of animals."
And this was good news to the foundation. It was the first time one of
its regular surveys showed a majority of Americans had accepted the
idea. According to the foundation report, polls consistently show that
a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans in their
present form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds believe that
this belief should be taught along with evolution in public
schools.
These findings set the United States apart from all other
industrialized nations, said Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center
for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University, who has
studied public attitudes toward science. Americans, he said, have been
evenly divided for years on the question of evolution, with about 45
percent accepting it, 45 percent rejecting it and the rest
undecided.
In other industrialized countries, Dr. Miller said, 80 percent or more
typically accept evolution, most of the others say they are not sure
and very few people reject the idea outright.
"In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolution," he
said. Even in socially conservative, predominantly Catholic countries
like Poland, perhaps 75 percent of people surveyed accept evolution,
he said. "It has not been a Catholic issue or an Asian issue,"
he said.
Indeed, two popes, Pius XII in 1950 and John Paul II in 1996, have
endorsed the idea that evolution and religion can coexist. "I
have yet to meet a Catholic school teacher who skips evolution,"
Dr. Scott said.
Dr. Gerald D. Skoog, a former dean of the College of Education at
Texas Tech University and a former president of the science teachers'
organization, said that in some classrooms, the teaching of evolution
was hampered by the beliefs of the teachers themselves, who are
creationists or supporters of the teaching of creationism.
"Data from various studies in various states over an extended
period of time indicate that about one-third of biology teachers
support the teaching of creationism or 'intelligent design,' "
Dr. Skoog said.
Advocates for the teaching of evolution provide teachers or school
officials who are challenged on it with information to help them make
the case that evolution is completely accepted as a bedrock idea of
science. Organizations like the science teachers' association, the
National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science provide position papers and other information
on the subject. The National Association of Biology Teachers devoted a
two-day meeting to the subject last summer, Dr. Skoog said.
Other advocates of teaching evolution are making the case that a
person can believe both in God and the scientific method. "People
have been told by some evangelical Christians and by some scientists,
that you have to choose." Dr. Scott said. "That is just
wrong."
While plenty of scientists reject religion - the eminent evolutionary
theorist Richard Dawkins famously likens it to a disease - many others
do not. In fact, when a researcher from the University of Georgia
surveyed scientists' attitudes toward religion several years ago, he
found their positions virtually unchanged from an identical survey in
the early years of the 20th century. About 40 percent of scientists
said not just that they believed in God, but in a God who communicates
with people and to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving
an answer."
Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said
he thought the great variety of religious groups in the United States
led to competition for congregants. This marketplace environment, he
said, contributes to the politicization of issues like evolution among
religious groups.
He said the teaching of evolution was portrayed not as scientific
instruction but as "an assault of the secular elite on the values
of God-fearing people." As a result, he said, politicians don't
want to touch it. "Everybody discovers the wisdom of federalism
here very quickly," he said. "Leave it at the state or the
local level."
But several experts say scientists are feeling increasing pressure to
make their case, in part, Dr. Miller said, because scriptural
literalists are moving beyond evolution to challenge the teaching of
geology and physics on issues like the age of the earth and the origin
of the universe.
"They have now decided the Big Bang has to be wrong," he
said. "There are now a lot of people who are insisting that that
be called only a theory without evidence and so on, and now the
physicists are getting mad about this."
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
607-387-3892