Back To School Special!
gregladen | September 20, 2010Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics, by Jennifer Ouellette, is an exploration of popular culture, including literature, movies, TV shows, and so on. Ouellette demonstrates a well studied knowledge of these areas of human endeavor, and she is an excellent writer. This means that when you have explored these aspects of day to day life, you will at the end have a reasonably good understanding...
... of quantum physics.
~ A repost for Back to School Special ~
Well, not really, though this is how Black Bodies is often described. In reality, Jennifer, in these re-…
gregladen | September 20, 2010Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ... many things have been going on and I have more to report than time to report it. But I will get to all of it, I assure you. Tonight, I just want to cover part of today's Education Symposium (moderated by your's truly) ... not all of it at once, thought, as it is kind of complex.
If you happen to work for the University of Minnesota or know anyone who does, best to not read this or let anyone know about it. This is a little to heavy to be spoken of openly. (Since there are only 11 of you who read my blog, I think we'll…
gregladen | September 17, 2010This is why we love Genie Scott:
The NCSE now has a channel on You Tube, and at this time you can see most, probably all, of Genie's testimony in Texas. It is very instructive.
GENIE SCOTT IS A MACHINE!!!
gregladen | September 17, 2010Amy Binder and John H. Evans, associate professors of Sociology at the University of California at San Diego, have written a piece on efforts to force religion in the guise of Intelligent Design and Creationism down the throats of children in Texas.
a repost
A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in the state's science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class. The proposal is a new round…
gregladen | September 16, 2010The following is an abstract from an article by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education called “WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE "TEACH THE CONTROVERSY" SLOGAN?” available here.
a repost
a repost
Teachers are often exhorted by creationists to "teach the controversy." Although such encouragement sounds on the surface like a proposal for critical thinking instruction, the history of the creationist movement in North America belies this claim. Rather than teach students to analyze and evaluate actual scientific controversies, the intent of "teach the controversy" exhortations is to…
gregladen | September 16, 2010This is from a few months back, but is very relevant to Back to School Month!
The podcast for today's radio discussion with Fellman, Scott and Laden is available.
A bit about the history of the NCSE; cultural relativism in the science education movement; Greg disses bench scientists again; The appeasement question; A phone call from a famous Pharyngulistum; Science standards; Local control. The Minnesota Science Standards. An intelligently designed buffet and the question of "alternative curriculum."
Go listen, and come back and comment.
gregladen | September 16, 2010First, there was plain and simple creationism, a Christian idea that, in an ideal Christian world, would be taught as part of any science dealing with the past, including biology (evolution), geology, and presumably history.
But the constitution stood in the way of implementing basic Christian teachings in public schools in the United States, though that battle took decades. Just as creationists were being driven off he landscape, a sort of Battle of the Bulge occurred, in the form of Intelligent Design.
a repost
Intelligent Design is a scientific-looking theory which is really just more…
gregladen | September 15, 2010I just received a mass emailing from Julia's high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote:
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
What does this quote mean to you? If you don't know its context, you may be in for a surprise.
A repost
You see this quote all the time on K-12 educational material as a header, footer, slogan, logo, inspirational message, and so on. It obviously means something good about teachers. Maybe something good about education. The quote is by Henry Adams and comes from…
gregladen | September 14, 2010Stones & Bones is a new book for children on the topic we all know and love: Evolution.
The book comes with a CD and there is a very useful accompanying web site, according to the publishers. The NCSE recommends it.
One of only eleven books selected by the editors of BioScience, the flagship magazine of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, for its Fall 2008 Focus on books on evolution and adaptation for young scientists, Stones & Bones sketches the story of evolution in seventeen verses. Through words and illustrations readers will find answers to questions such as, when…
gregladen | September 14, 2010The blogosphere is structured like a bus of tourists heading into ever new territory being spoken to by a thousand guides with microphones in the front of the vehicle. Woe be it to any guide who points out something that the bus passed several blocks back. But sometimes it is appropriate to re-mention certain things else they fall into obscurity. Well, it's great if certain things fall into obscurity, but not everything.
While doing a search for something else, I accidentally hit links to this particular issue, which played out quite some time ago. It is a wonderful story. Back in the…
gregladen | September 14, 2010I just want to remind returning teachers of this podcast:
How are today's teachers sharing the wonders of science and critical thinking with the next generation of students?
With cognitive psychologist and university lecturer Barbara Drescher, and Mike McRae, former science teacher and current science writer for the education division of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Click here to listen!
gregladen | September 14, 2010A life science teacher should not have to know about creationism to teach evolution, other than to the extent that you may cover the history of evolutionary biology, and begin in the days before science took center stage and natural philosophy was dragged off with one of those big vaudeville hooks. But, unfortunately, you do have to know something about it, about how to recognize it, how to argue with it, and about the legal and professional context of managing creationism among your students, your peers, and your bosses. One of the most important resources a life science teacher or an…
gregladen | September 13, 2010When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time is a book by Michael Benton on the Permian Extinction now out in paperback. From the press release:
Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact sixty-five million years ago, which killed half of all species then living.
Far less well-known is a much bigger catastrophe - the greatest mass extinction of all time - which occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. In this cataclysm, at least ninety per cent of life was destroyed, both on land, including sabre-toothed…
gregladen | September 13, 2010My wife, a biology teacher, gets crazy in the biology classroom. She is famous for her interpretive dance renditions of numerous cellular processes. The students in the first class of the day reportedly stare in disbelief and roll their eyes, but the students in the other classes throughout the day seem to love it. Several of her students have taken to filming her pedagogical paroxysms, and you know that some day, Amanda will be a YouTube Star.
~ a repost ~
But this brings up the interesting and difficult mixture of students, personal technology in the classrooms, teachers, schools,…
gregladen | September 10, 2010..that even when you try diligently to separate the politics of religion vs. creationism and to say again and again that religion can go along its merry way as long as it stays out of the science classroom, people like Casey Luskin will still find the words in your rhetoric to accuse you of attacking religion.
A while back, Genie Scott appeared with me and Lynn Fellman on Atheist Talk Radio, where we discussed science education. Genie is the director of the National Center for Science Education.
Subsequently, in a posting on the Discovery Institute web site, Casey Luskin makes the contrast…
gregladen | September 10, 2010That depends ... on what X and Y are!
And if that does not come naturally to you, perhaps you should read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pre-Algebra by Amy Szczepanski and Andrew Kositsky.
The CIG to PA is built just like the other books in the Idiot's series, using familiar conventions to keep the flow of the book smooth while providing additional ancillary information, and in the case of this text, practice problems (answers provided in the back). This book reminds me of a tired old reference I've got on my shelf called Technical Mathematics. Sometimes you just need a place to look up…
gregladen | September 9, 2010You have to tell your child's life science teacher (or, any science teacher for that matter) that your family does not support creationism, does not want to see anyone "teaching the controversy" and that you know that "Intelligent Design" is a form of creationism. I promise you, the creationist parents of your child's peers, and some of the creationist kids in the classroom, are not keeping their mouths shut. Why should you?
So, pursuant to this, I have composed a template for you to use as an email or letter to send to your child or ward's life science teacher:
Dear [Fill In the Blank],…
gregladen | September 9, 2010Have a look at this video, done by Brian Rooney of ABC News Nightline, in which he follows around Billy Jack and Rusty Carter, two young earth creationists who are leading a school group through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science:
A revise repost.
Young earth creationists, or 'YEC's' believe the earth and all forms of life that exist today were created over a six day period 4004 B.C.
In this piece, the YEC's are showing exhibits to the young students, asking them questions, teaching them, and so on. Rooney also interviews the two YEC's in the absence of the children, as well as Kirk…