RE: paleonet Questions to Ask Your Biology Professor

["Styzen, Michael MJ SIEP-EPT-SCHS" <michael.styzen@xxxxxxxxx>]

We now have the ten canned questions.  Why don't we put out ten good canned answers? I'm sure biology teachers would appreciate it.

-----Original Message-----
From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk]On
Behalf Of Nikolaus Malchus
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 5:53 AM
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet Questions to Ask Your Biology Professor


Hi,

In the line of Tom deVrie, I think we have to adopt new and complementary
teaching strategies.

This is the short message. Now, I also think that creationist or any
antievolutionary concept has become a fashion in US (especially). One of the
causes, I guess, is that opposition is an innate and strong emotion during
youth (didn't we oppose?). Creationism and alike is a beautiful
(non-violent) way to question established "dogmata", here of evolution. And
how they succeed. We are embarrassed. How (for heaven's sake, ;-)) could
anybody possibly reject all the evidence of evolution we have gathered over
the past centuries? We are not used to that anybody questions our authority
on evolution issues and less so if it is done in such a provocative way.

I think we do better taking this as a challenge rather than an affront and
try to find answers to their "unscientific" questions.  
Perhaps we should teach logic before letting students make their hands-on
experiments and then discuss the results. Of course, for young pupils one
would need experiments they can understand without a theoretical background.
Parents of young children are challenged every day. There are ways to
satisfy their curiousity in school. 

Cheers,

Niko


> I'd like to respond to Dr. Chaisson's comments regarding the teaching of 
> evolution in public (and private) schools. My background: a Ph.D. in
> paleontology, 
> a continuing history of research and publication, and teaching in a public
> high school, 1992 to the present.
> 
> 1. Simplest explanations are, despite the attractiveness of Occam's Razor,
> not always best when applied to human behavior.
> 
> a. 'Admit' is an inflammatory word, implying deception. I don't think the 
> 'educational community' is engaged in a conspiracy to deceive the
> scientific 
> community or public about the teaching of evolution.
> 
> b. Are teachers guilty of poor teaching when it comes to evolution, in 
> content or pedagogy, or are they guilty of devoting too little time to the
> concept? 
> Very different questions, with different causes and solutions.
> 
> c. Before Dr. Chaisson too readily dismisses the corps of US biology
> teachers 
> as advocates for evolution, he should remember that under the best of 
> circumstances, the typical biology teacher will have no more background in
> evolution 
> than what is taught in a standard undergraduate biology curriculum. How
> well 
> is evolution covered in college Introductory Biology? How many
> undergraduate 
> biology majors are required to take a course in Evolutionary Biology? How
> many 
> undergraduate biology majors have hands-on experience conducting their own
> scientific research? How many understand the distinction between
> experimental and 
> historical science? How many biology majors are required to take a course
> in 
> historical geology or paleontology?
> 
> d. High school science teachers look for opportunities to advance their 
> understanding through summer workshops. For oceanography, molecular
> biology, 
> chemistry, and physics, well-funded workshops or internships are easy to
> find. How 
> many summer institutes in paleontology and evolutionary biology exist? Do
> they 
> offer stipends to teachers, whose beginning annual salaries of $28K-$35K
> are 
> substantially less than those enjoyed by college professors?
> 
> 2. Dr. Chaisson's incredulous response regarding classroom confrontation 
> reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about the difference between
> instructing 
> 14- and 15-year olds (typically, those who take high school biology) and
> 18- and 
> 19-year olds (typically, those who take college biology). Most young 
> teenagers are not ready for intellectual confrontation; the process needs
> to be 
> taught, gently. The fruits of confrontation in a 9th- or 10th-grade
> classroom are 
> not likely to be a spirited engagement, or even active resistance, but
> rather, 
> retreat and intellectual withdrawal. The students, after all, are
> children, 
> only two or three years out of the sandbox. Spirited dialog is a luxury of
> the 
> college classroom; it presupposes some degree of intellectual and
> informational 
> equality. That doesn't exist with young teenagers.
> 
> 3. In cases of racial prejudice, bullying, or other unacceptable behavior
> in 
> the classroom, teachers respond as they have been trained, with the full 
> support of the school's administration and board of education. In extreme
> cases, 
> the power of law enforcement can be brought into play. The incentive to
> correct 
> such behavior is both moral and a practical matter of classroom
> management.
> 
> a. Are college biology majors, particularly those bound for teaching jobs,
> formally taught how to deal with the clash between Christian
> fundamentalism and 
> the tenets of Darwinian evolution? Are they presented with strategies for 
> coping with ill-informed challenges from children? From parents? From
> school 
> administrators? From school boards? From communities? From state boards of
> education? If these topics are not addressed in a college curriculum, you
> can hardly 
> expect more than hit-and-miss success when teachers take on these
> challenges 
> without training.
> ********************
> 
> Rather than dumping the blame for inadequate instruction in evolution on
> the 
> backs of high school teachers, I suggest that the professional 'evolution'
> community - biology professors, paleontology professors, and any others
> who fit 
> the bill - take some concrete steps to place your expertise in the K-12 
> classroom.
> 
> 1. If you have an education program in your university, make it a priority
> to 
> offer a curricular unit on evolution, ID,   and strategies for addressing 
> controversy for students across a wide range of ages. What works for
> 10-year-olds 
> won't work for 15-year olds.
> 
> 2. Put together some summer institutes for teachers, with stipends. Put
> the 
> teachers in the field. Pay them to dig for dinosaurs in Montana or whales
> in 
> Peru. Follow up during the following school year. Offer additional
> services.
> 
> 3. Put some professional scientists on the road. Have some 1-3 day 
> conferences for teachers in Wichita, Omaha, Knoxville, Atlanta, San
> Francisco, Seattle, 
> and Boston. Choose a nice hotel conference room. Feed them lunch. Teach,
> and 
> listen.
> 
> 4. Mass mail biology teachers with offers of curricular materials, web 
> resources, and speakers. Much of the mail will be tossed, but some will be
> kept.
> 
> 5. Use your influence and the influence of your educational institutions, 
> especially state flagship universities and their presidents, to affect the
> thinking of state-level and federal-level government officials. Persuade
> these 
> officials to take fundamentalist Christian religion out of the business of
> biology 
> instruction. That seems a task commensurate with teaching posts in higher 
> education. You can hardly expect most biology teachers to fight it out in
> the 
> trenches when the education generals and civilian leaders have abandoned
> the 
> field.
> 
> Tom DeVries
> Science Teacher
> Vashon Island High School
> Vashon, WA
> 
> Thomas J. DeVries, Ph.D., M.A.T.
> Adjunct Research Associate
> Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
> University of Washington
> Seattle, WA
> 

-- 
__________________________________

Nikolaus Malchus

PhD (Geology)
Ramón y Cajal researcher (RyC 1)

Dept. de Geologia/Unitat Paleontologia
Universitat Auṭnoma de Barcelona
Campus, Edifici Cs
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès)
Catalonia, SPAIN

   Tel 34-93-581-1464
   Fax 34-93-581-1263
   Regular Fax to my e-mail box:
   x49-(0)89-1488-192-992

   nikolaus.malchus@uab.es (< 2 MB)
   n.malchus@gmx.net (> 2 MB)
____________________________________