Re: paleonet Questions to Ask Your Biology Professor

[Bill Chaisson/Deirdre Cunningham <chaisson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: paleonet Questions to Ask Your Biology Professor

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.

I think they have their heads in the sand.

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.

I suspect too many teachers (at all levels) are guilty of 1. poor teaching, 2. too little time, and 3. poor teaching and too little time.  Whether or not it is their "fault", it is definitely their responsibility as adults and professionals to do something about it.

I should say that I am aware of many of the extra-curricular (social, economic, political) problems associated with public school education.  I did student teaching in a North Country (New York) middle school as part of an undergraduate education course, have been in urban city classrooms as part of a nature writing course offered by a local non-profit, have offered a similar course to suburban students, and have talked quite a bit with my sister, a grade-school teacher.

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?

Dr. deVries makes an excellent point: the standards that qualify someone to teach science are not high.  I took graduate level courses along side students in education programs and found them to be very well-intentioned, but focused primarily on presentation of material and not geared toward analysis.

Dr. deVries list of questions amounts to a rather stinging indictment of the typical undergraduate biology curriculum, which, where I attended college, was primarily tailored to the pre-med demographic.

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?

A good question.

A search using the keywords "summer programs paleontology teachers" yields:

http://www.projectexploration.org/about.htm

http://www.thegracemuseum.org/teachers/newsletters/advocacy-sept2003.html

http://www.civilsoc.org/ann-exch.htm

http://www.ncsta.org/reflector/summer04/pd.html

Those are from the first page of results.

.

 Do they offer stipends to teachers, whose beginning annual salaries of $28K-$35K are substantially less than those enjoyed by college professors?

Many (and this is an increasing number) of the introductory college biology and geology courses are taught by adjuncts (hi there), lecturers and grad students, whose salaries are, um, unimpressive.

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.

I have taught nature writing courses for a local non-profit to students ranging in age from 9 to 16.  In the course of doing this I learned from my collaborating colleague (a certified grade school teacher) that one can engage in very spirited discussions with young people as long as one does not begin an exchange with "No, you're wrong.  This is the right answer."  You tell them that you understand where they are coming from and you try to build a bridge from where they are to where you think they ought to be going.

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.

That is not my experience.  Many college students have jumped through so many hoops that by the time you meet them "spirited dialog" is not exactly in their catalog of classroom behavior.  By discouraging debate in secondary school, we are hardly preparing students for engaging in debate in college.

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.

One of the bones of contention in the evolution debate is that Christian fundamentalists insist that there is a moral dimension to the topic and the science community insists that there is not.  Christian fundamentalists claim that there are consequences in the community when students accept the theory of evolution.  They claim that it amounts to acceptance of amorality or immorality.  Given the historical reality of Herbert Spencer and other fools, it would seem to be difficult to dismiss this claim out of hand.  This is not to say that it should be accepted as true. Rather it should be treated as a gross distortion and exaggeration.

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.
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As with Dr. deVries earlier list of criticisms, I entirely agree.  The curriculum of biology majors and science education majors is quite inadequate.

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.

I have urged the self-same thing several times on this list.

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.

In order for this to work you need biology/geology professors who are broad minded enough to sit down with education professors. The educational slant of science graduate programs does not, in my experience, encourage or even allow for this kind of perspective.

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.

The problem is, as Dr. deVries points out, more of a financial one, than a paucity of programs.

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.

These would have to be professional scientists who 1. have tenure, 2. have either stopped or very much curtailed their research programs, 3. are at least somewhat liberally educated.

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.

The materials should probably be sent via email because it is cheaper and people spend increasingly more time on line as opposed to going through piles of what long ago became known as junk mail.

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.

Hear, hear.

Sincerely,

Bill

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William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY  14627
607-387-3892