Science Community: Who Are You?

The letter you discuss was written in response to an op-ed from a UNC chemist named Holden Thorp. I only point this out because UNC is my graduate alma mater, Thorp is a good guy and the article is worth reading.

While your point that biology IS evolution is understood, high school science classes are all taught somewhat episodically. Putting the different topics into their own boxes is not ideal but remember, high school teachers are working with 14 to 17 year old minds that prefer smaller, more easily digested bits. If you want to criticize biology teachers for not connecting everything to evolution, then chemistry teachers should be criticized for not tying everything to thermodynamics and kinetics. This is not to say that connections can't or shouldn't be made. They can and they should. But such connections are part of the essential tension that all teachers face: depth vs. breadth.

thanks for linking that letter, todd. it was very interesting.

that said, i disagree with you; topics in biology, however "boxed up" their packaging, are never independent of evolutionary theory. to use your example, when i took chemistry at the high school level, thermodynamics in particular, was an essential part of understanding how to correctly answer particular questions. so in those instances, even when thermodynamics and kinetics were not mentioned, it was clear they were the underlying theme because, after all, any student who did not consider them as an integral part of the equation were just plain wrong.

maybe it is the "just plain wrong" aspect of this paradigm that bothers people? perhaps parents think their kids' creativity or motivation suffer when they are told they are wrong? i know i have run across this in college teaching, but i don't know if this is specific to my location and to the schools that i am stuck teaching for rather than reflecting a general philosophy.

Most high school science is not taught the way that scientists think of science. It is no wonder that students come out of high school not knowing how science works. They don't understand terms used by scientists such as "theory" or "model." For example, they think that "theory" simply means "idea" like it does in common usage of language. This leads to some of the problems. Also, they somehow believe that scientific truth can somehow be voted on by the uneducated public. Hence, non-biologists can declare that they don't believe in evolution, non-astronomers can declare that the Big Bang didn't happen, all because they don't want to accept these ideas, and they don't want to put the years of study into becoming an expert in the field either.

This makes me so grateful for my AP Biology teacher in high school. Despite the constraints placed on him by the school system and standardized testing, he did manage to teach enough of the principles of science that I fell in love with it. He made biology political in a way no other topic I took in high school was.

It doesn't take becoming an expert to get one's head around evolution or the Big Bang. But it does take getting past feelings of being stupid (which a lot of people have about science because of the way it's taught in school) and getting past feelings that science is inaccessible to them (which again, due to the way they were educated, it often is inaccessible).

I think Todd has a point, and the individual experiences of those reading, or writing, a blog such as this may be out of synch with the normative high school science student and his or her experience in high school.

The curriculums are indeed kept simple overall for the average student, and even for the accelerated student you may find that accelerated in a given district doesn't mean you're getting into the meat of what you're learning, in fact the accelerated kids are using the same textbooks as the "regular" kids, with some supplementation from outside sources being done by the teacher (or not as the case may be), and the accelerated course moves faster, or it's supposed to anyway. Speaking for chemistry specifically none of my first year students will learn much of anything at all about kinetics or thermodynamics as it's not a first year topic, amazingly enough.

I also have little doubt that there are bio courses which are taught without reference to evolution, in fact it's quite easy to do. You can teach biology from a perspective of "This is what you find in a cell ..." and never get into any substantive consideration as to why it's that way or how it got that way. Genetics can also be taught without having to tackle how it's the primary mechanism for evolution. I can also assure you that there are school districts out there that while not specifically forbidding evolution in the biology class (though many would love to go that far), will make it clear to teachers that explicit discussion of evolution issues/topics are not to be encouraged either for philosophical reasons, i.e. they're in the creationist camp, or because they don't want to deal with the headaches from the parents.

What is taught in high school is often widely divergent from what would be desired in the post-secondary arena, as I discussed in an earlier blog post:

http://ruminatingdude.blogspot.com/2005/07/what-should-we-be-teaching-i…

Trust me, if you haven't been in a secondary school, and you can be certain that no two districts even within the same state are going to be the same, you'd likely be surprised at what is or is not going on with the science classroom.

I think that part of the problem with science teaching in high schools stems not from the books, not from the teachers, but from a shift in the status of teachers in the community.

Watching from the outside, which admittedly is not the best vantage point, I get the impression that parents no longer support the teachers by default. Also, the school administration cannot be relied upon to back up the teachers. The educational system seems to be designed to minimize complaints, not maximize results.

I was perusing old blogs on a different issue of interest to me of late (the Christian Right), and came upon a post where you can find a college course, offered at Patrick Henry College (note: the only post-secondary institution with as many interns in the White House as Patrick Henry is Georgetown University), that doesn't integrate evolution into its curriculum, in fact actively avoids it:

http://www.phc.edu/distancelearning/Biology/

Sort of cheating here, really: PHC teaches creationism.

Joseph is right, though, there's more often an interest in not making waves, accommodating everyone, and let's not overly concern ourselves with the fact that substantive education and learning may not be occurring - they'll make up for it somewhere else down the road. Everyone's trying to survive high school, but sometimes I think it's less of a survival issue for the students as it may be for everyone else and that's definitely skewed from what it once was and, in my opinion, how it still should be.

Joseph, you're exactly right. Dwindling resources, lack of respect for teachers, and stressed parents that are increasingly looking for somewhere to blame for their lack of connection with their kids and their kids' struggles in school... all of this is a large part of why students end up hating certain topics like science in school, why it's not taught the right way, etc. A science teacher who loves evolution is going to avoid it in order to not get hate mail or phone calls from parents. With more and more students all going to college, perhaps they think "oh, the college profs will pick up where we were lacking, since they've got so much money and resources and academic freedom!"

If only it were true...

I think more rigorous education about the theories of life should be started early in school. It's like language. Earlier the education begins, quicker the pick up. I agree with previous commenters that the present education system is based on perceptions of the mediocrity of the student's cognitive abilities. So, a rehaul needs to happen bottom up. The creationists definitely have a start on preying on those who don't know better. They don't have to prove anything for their theories to hold, because it is not based on experiments or science. I feel sad when I see people blindly believing in intelligent design and using simple philosophical arguments to "prove" their point..