I tend to agree with Chaim B.
I am not so sure that the US is slipping. It has already made it to
near the bottom and has long been there by most measures of the general
public understanding of science. True that school scores have
fallen, but it's the adult population that is important and it remains
static in its understanding of science. So it is in most other
countries too. If we or other "developed" countries
are worried about losing their science predominance, it will not be
because the masses are ignorant--they always have been. It will be
because those relatively few who are interested in science enough to
pursue it fail to materialize and I am not worried about that. I do
worry about our politicians who push ignorance, but we've always had them
around too, and some enlightened ones will return soon.
In the US, the population is measured at 90-95% scientifically
illiterate, which I figure must mean that they don't understand the basic
processes of science and some facts. I think that school kids
are fairly interested in science topics until puberty. Then
they get interested in other things--music, cruising the malls, hanging
with their friends, sports, and watching a lot of TV that requires
absorption only, and all of that seems to focus on the opposite sex,
another big driver in life that all evolutionary biologists
understand. Science does require time for examination,
thought and understanding, something that ID and creationism don't (just
believe what those guys or the bible say). The latter you just
accept, the former requires hard work. Science has always
been regarded as fairly hard because of that kind of concentration, but
we know as paleontologists that it is really fun. These
observations make me wonder if spending billions of dollars in the US on
science education for K-12 is really worth it. In fact, one of the
biggest drivers of the choice of careers is perceived pay, and scientists
don't get much of that, at least in the press. Doctors, actors,
entertainment athletes, etc, do, and so we see kids in our colleges
flocking to those majors but most will fail there too. Those who
can't or won't try those, get ordinary jobs that pay okay. Most of
them do as well as scientists, and they didn't even have to work
hard.
I think more scientific understanding is required, so I'd rather not see
ID, creationism, pseudoscience like UFOs and ETs, astrology,
"alternative medicine", or other fraudulent topics taught in
our schools, but I think the other problems are the ones that really dumb
down America and most other places. ID probably is not going
to make many, other than ID believers and Creationists, any dumber than
they would be normally when it comes to science. I'd bet that
most kids won't pay any more attention to ID than they will to
science. We have greater concerns in the developed world when it
comes to educating for science literacy. Or perhaps literacy
of any sort-- When I talk about science illiteracy to general audiences,
almost every time someone comes up and says something like:
"If you think that's bad, you should see geography, or economics, or
classical music", or you name it. I figure most populations
have more worries than whether or not they need to understand anymore
than is required to put food on the table, watch a little TV, kick a ball
around for a few minutes, and get through life. In many parts
of the world, including a lot of the US, this is a major task, as Chaim
notes. So for the vast majority of people, taught ID or evolution
or both, the end is the same--not much. We do need several
hundred thousand scientists in the US, out of ~200 million adults, and
that's not so many to generate.
I'd even bet that if you taught ID in classes and analyzed it within the
"rules", even fewer would think it was a very big deal that
they wanted to get involved with. Sex works against them too.
Now that is pessimistic and I want to go back to fossils
cemented into the walls of everybody's house or office!
JHL
At 06:56 PM 12/14/2005, you wrote:
While I see this point I have to
question its validity by virtue of the
simple fact that we are slipping badly in the U.S. in science and
math. If
this debate isn't a big deal then what are the alternative explanations
for
this phenomena? It seems to me that clearly something in the psyche
of
Americans makes them not take these subject areas seriously and the
best
explanation would be that these areas are being undermined by
competing
ideas.
-Michael Kishel
----- Original Message -----
From: <chaim@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>
To: <paleonet@nhm.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Re: paleonet Not only in the USA do creationsist/IDs
abound
amongst Christians
> Paleonetters:
> I refuse to cringe in horror over the impending ID doom hovering
over us.
There are worse things.
> In Israel a non-Christian, ID-type of creationism is alive and well
in all
the religious educational systems, including the state supported
ones.
There is no constitution, bill of rights, or separation of 'church'
and
state to hassle them. The religious kids simply don't learn
about
evolution. That's right they skip it, and nothing happens.
> The system could of course be improved, but it produces loads
of
reasonably good biological scientists, chemists, physicists,
doctors,
mathematicians, social scientists, artists, businessmen, academics,
geeks,
etc. and even a few, albeit second rate, politicians. A similar
private
system in the US even produced me, a geologist, paleontologist and
evolutionist.
> On the other hand, in state schools where they do learn something
about
evolution, it doesn't seem to have left much of an impression. For
those of
both groups who get to the university and study geology, I don't see
much
difference.
> The point is that I haven't found ID and creationism in the schools
all
that threatening. I have been invited to talk about fossils and
evolution
in these schools lots of times. My main point, that
knowledgeable
scientists seem to think that evolution explains things rather well,
usually
goes over quite well. We have spirited discussions, although the
students
(and their teachers) tend to remain skeptical. That's probably
quite OK,
because they seem to be skeptical about a lot of stuff they learn.
> How about lightening up a bit?
> --CB
>
>
> Professor Chaim Benjamini
> Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences
> Ben Gurion University of the Negev
> P.O.B. 653 Beer Sheva 84105 ISRAEL
> Tel: +972 8 646 1289 office
> +972 8 646 1369 direct
> Fax: +972 8 647 2997 (day)
> +972 8 647 7655 (after hours)
>
>