I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with the Canadian funding agency that rejected Brian Alters proposal to study the effects of intelligent design on the teaching of evolution. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already, but I will point you to EvolDir which has posted the summary of the grant proposal. In case you were wondering, here is the purpose of the study from the horse's mouth:
The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which the recent large-scale popularization of Intelligent Design is detrimentally affecting Canadians' teaching and learning of biological evolution at high school, university, and educational administration. If, as suspected, this proposed study results in measurements data that indicate a significant disadvantageous interaction, we would then develop a proposal to other funding programs with the aim of researching, designing, and implementing pedagogical techniques to counteract the detrimental effects of Intelligent Design.
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I wouldn't mind someone doing a study of the detrimental effects of ID on not only Canadian but also Yankee schools. Such effects have suddenly become of immediate concern to me. A couple of days ago my daughter, who is in the 10th grade, asked, "Mom, where did we come from?" Since my daughter had recently stayed over at the house of a Baptist classmate and had gone with her to church the next morning, I assumed that this question was prompted by something she had heard in the sermon. An English professor and not a scientist, I still gave her the best layman's explanation I could of the process by which an initial organism could slowly speciate until at long last one twig on one branch of the bush of life would give rise to homo sapiens. Of course, I stressed the immensely long time frame involved in such speciation and tried to convey the (to some!) 'unimaginable' age of the earth. (In the case of evolution and natural selection, time really is 'of the essence', isn't it?). Now today another question came like the proverbial bolt out of the blue. Was it true, my daughter asked, that it was not possible to go from to the simple to the complex but only from the complex to the simple? She gave as an example the decay of an oak tree. Ah, I pointed out sagely, it's true that an oak tree decays, but it had to grow up from acorn in the first place. My daughter became excited and happy because she had made the selfsame observation to her biology teacher, who had been, it turns out, the one to make the statement about the impossibility of moving from the simple to the complex. Suspecting that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was lurking in the vicinity and wondering about the context, I asked my daughter how the reacher had responded to her observation. My daughter felt that he had brushed her off. "But maybe he didn't understand what I was trying to ask," she generously added. My daughter then cheerfully told me that they were studying evolution. She expected me to be pleased because I had worried aloud on several occasions that the subject wouldn't be addressed, living as we do in southwestern Virginia. I allowed myself to be delighted and exclaimed that I was glad that the subject was going to be covered in depth. "Oh, we're not going to cover it in depth," my daughter replied, "because some people disagree." My happiness meter plummeted. So there you have it. Perhaps to avoid provoking some of the parents in this conservative region, my daughter's academic exposure to a fundamental scientific theory will be (a) superficial and (b) contaminated and diluted by the infusion of unscientific assertions, no doubt under the guise of 'balance'. I could try raising the issue with the teacher, the superintendent, or the board, but, having experienced religiously motivated torment myself, I couldn't bear to see my daughter subjected to the outrage and vilification that would result if word got out that there was an 'evilutionist' trying to undermine the faith of their children. (Apparently trying to undermine the rational faculties of mine is, however, perfectly acceptable).
I'm in Canada, in Québec. I talked with to graduate student from Mcgill, where the prof. is coming ! They told me that on campus there is more blablala about the Playboy pictures of a girl that prof. Alter. In Quebec, the religion have been complety kicked out of the province. Then, I not a big deal over there, we don't trust anything from god. So spending money on this subject from with taxpayer money from federal can seems just stupid for some people in Quebec. But in conservative province like Alberta, ID is maybe a danger that we should control. Moreover, of course I found the reason why they denied to give it stupid, we don't have to prove a theory that have been already proved.
I think that Candian agency has already proved the hypothesis, and WITHOUT EXPENSE! Pretty smart, our northern cousins. Too bad the disease has been exported.
VJB,
That was the conclusion drawn by the head of science education at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (from the Nature news item linked to on Pharyngula).
Isn't that like funding a study that proves children get hurt when they fall off their tricycles?
Could it be generalized to the lack of science teaching in separate (Catholic) schools, which have long been established as part of the deal for Confederation between Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). [Incidentally, the adjectives refer to the upper and lower reaches of the St. Lawrence River, not to any value judgement!] We should have a lot of years of data already.