Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Okay, now that I've had a nap and I'm reasonably refreshed and alert, I can talk some more about the rest of the conference. On Friday (the day I thought was Saturday), we had one guy come by the table who was a student at Cornerstone University and he was a young earther. He's not a teacher, but he's getting his degree in education and hopes to teach science someday. We can only hope that he doesn't.
Greg engaged him in conversation for a bit and asked him, just out of curiosity, what he had been taught at Cornerstone about the geological evidence for a 4.55 billion year Earth. His answer, predictably, was that carbon dating was inaccurate because we couldn't know that the levels of atmospheric carbon had remained constant. I asked him why that would effect, say, K/Ar dating and was greeted with a blank stare.
While Dan was there, we got a visit from one of the other exhibitors, who told us - totally out of the blue, and literally the moment he walked up to the table - about an alien race of "lizard people" who mated with aliens to produce the human race. In the city of Atlantis. Dan and I kind of nodded and smiled. While I considered recommending 500mg of thorazine every 8 hours, I resisted the urge.
More than anything else, though, I had a lot of conversations with teachers who related stories about the dificulty of teaching evolution these days. Many teachers told us that every semester when they get to the evolution unit, they would inevitably get phone calls from parents either demanding that their child be given an alternate assignment or condemning them for teaching a "myth" and demanding that it be "balanced" with the teaching of some form of creationism.
When asked how they handled such calls, responses varied. Some were more animated in their responses than others. One or two said that they just don't bother to teach it anymore, they just teach about the basic facts and don't really discuss evolution as a unifying explanation for those facts. One man told us that he actually does present both sides, that he shows a video called Evolution: Fact or Belief?, a young earth creationist video, to his class along with evolution. Another said that he lets his students present their views to the class in a presentation.
But most said that they just explained to the parents that they had no choice but to teach the approved curriculum, which includes evolution, and that they would have to take it up with the parents. I was a little discouraged by the responses. I think we need to work with teachers to help them respond in a more positive way. Almost every high school biology teacher has to deal with some sort of negative reaction every time they teach it, so we need to help them respond to such reactions without rancor or condescension but also without giving in to the demands.
All in all, despite the weirdness of the weekend, I think we got an interesting education ourselves in what our science teachers have to deal with on this issue. We got to meet a lot of teachers, counsel some of them on how they could handle things a little better, and offer them some additional resources. Next year's MSTA convention is going to focus almost exclusively on evolution and Greg mentioned that he would like to have all of our board members doing presentations there on different aspects of the issue. Hopefully I'll able to make it through that convention without being arrested.
Comments
I've actually heard of the lizard people before. There's a belief out there (and I can't believe that it's still held by even a tiny minority in 2006) that there is a dominant race of lizard men currently living in the center of the earth, and that every so often, they come up to the surface and kidnap humans. They influence governments and are one hell of a bug-a-boo.
I assume that the last mention of "parents" is supposed to read "school board?"
Posted by: FishyFred
| March 4, 2006 9:30 PM
Oh man, that's a David Icke disciple. I remember reading about him when he when he came to Canada; a member of a local Jewish Anti-Defamation League was complaining in an interview about his "Reptiloid" references, stating them as clear anti-jewish allegory.
He was pretty shocked when the interviewer noted that it wasn't meant to be allegory, but literal truth. It's kind of like discovering that the person calling you a fruitcake actually believes you were created in a bakery from a mixture of dried apricots, flour and rum.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox
| March 5, 2006 1:59 AM
No it's all true! All science teachers should make Buckaroo Banzai required watching. All hail our lizard lords!
Posted by: Inoculated Mind
| March 5, 2006 6:00 AM
The Young Earther is correct in saying that variation in atmospheric carbon-14 affects the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. But as with measuring almost anything, sometimes calibration of the yardstick is called for.
Currently, C-14 dating is calibrated to about 11,000 years using tree rings. Varved sediments extend the calibration somewhat further. Beck and others report in Science 292(5526):2453-2458 (2001) on a long (11,000 years BP to 45,000 years BP) record of atmospheric carbon-14 (thereby allowing further calibration). This work made use of high-precision uranium-thorium age determinations of a stalagmite coupled with C-14 measurements. The U-Th dates were verified using Pa-231 dating. It is likely that before long radiocarbon dating will be well-calibrated to about 45,000 years.
Posted by: mark
| March 5, 2006 9:35 AM
leftwingfox, it's reptoid or reptilian humanoid. Hilarious stuff. I listen to late night conspiracy radio occasionally and have heard those types on. I think even moon hoaxers and bigfoot fanatics consider those people to be nuts.
Posted by: Matthew
| March 5, 2006 10:56 AM
mark wrote:
Yes, he's right about that but it has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the earth. We use radiocarbon dating on organic objects of relatively recent origin; we don't date rock formations with it. For that, we turn to other types of radiometric dating, none of which rely on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. His argument is a bit like saying that the scale that says he weighs 300 pounds must be off because we can't know that a ruler is really 12 inches long - he's criticizing a tool used for something entirely different.
Posted by: Ed Brayton
| March 5, 2006 12:06 PM
The only bearing of radiocarbon calibration on the age of the Earth is that calibrated radiocarbon dates go beyond the 6,000 years many YECs consider to be the age of the Earth, and even beyond the upper limit some of them have of 10,000 years. Obviously, the short half-life of C-14 renders this method useless for dating things older than about 50,000 years.
I've never heard it explained how all radiometric dating can be faulty, or the insurmountable problems with other dating techniques (such as thermoluminescence, dendrochronology, or varve-counting).
Posted by: mark
| March 5, 2006 12:41 PM
Teachers aren't supported in their teaching of evolution, by principals, district curriculum coordinators, PTAs, other teachers, school boards, or state education agencies. When parents go after a teacher on such an issue, the teacher is really out there alone.
The National Association of Biology Teachers probably would provide some support -- but they have about 10,000 members. There are 15,000 school districts in the nation -- there is not even 1 NABT member per district, let alone school.
So who can provide support for the teachers -- not just legal aid when it comes to trial, but the everyday "attaboys" required to make teachers comfortable in doing the right stuff?
If you find an answer, I know of about 10,000 health teachers in Texas who'd like support teaching kids how to avoid sexually-transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. They'd then support biology teachers in a similar, less difficult fight for evolution in biology classes.
Posted by: Ed
| March 5, 2006 11:34 PM