You Got It
Me: Evolution is defined in biology as a change in the allele frequency over time.
Student: That’s it?
Me: That’s it. That’s all evolution is.
Student: But doesn’t that happen all the time?
Me: Yep.
Student: So evolution is happening all around us, all the time? It’s ongoing?
Me: It certainly is.
Why do proponents want to pull down the fence and let school districts wander into the minefield? I suppose I can only guess. It certainly is not out of a deep and abiding concern for open scientific inquiry. Get away from matters touching on religious orthodoxy, and these proponents could not care less about the state of scientific debate. I can’t imagine it’s out of a real desire to promote spirituality. From my perspective, it looks like abuse to the Bible, contorting Genesis into a parody of science. It acknowledges, in word if not deed, fealty to the primacy of science while awkwardly attempting to stuff Biblical creation stories into the architecture of science which was not designed to hold such cargo.
SB 89 and Creation Science: Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding
I have fallen in love with Masson’s blog. Any of you Indiana readers should add it to your RSS.
(via girlwithalessonplan)
(via girlwithalessonplan)
Source: masson.us
While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject. Not only does evolution not need to be guided in any way, but any conscious, sentient guide would have to be a monster of the most sadistic type: for evolution is not pretty, is not gentle, is not kind, is not compassionate, is not loving. Evolution is blind, and brutal, and callous. It is not an aspiration or a blueprint to live up to (we have to create those for ourselves): it is simply what happens, the blind, inexorable forces of nature at work. An omnipotent deity who chose evolution by natural selection as the means by which to bring about the array of living creatures that populate the Earth today would be many things – but loving would not be one of them. Nor perfect. Nor compassionate. Nor merciful. Evolution produces some wondrously beautiful results; but it happens at the cost of unimaginable suffering on the part of countless billions of individuals and, indeed, whole species, 99 percent of which have so far become extinct. It is irreconcilable with a god of love.
GOP presidential contender Jon Huntsman, spelling out his stance on evolution and global warming.
The office reaction: “Oh, we’ll call you crazy. Crazy for staying in the Republican party!”
A respectable Tweet.
Source: officialssay
Miss USA contestants respond to the question, “Should evolution be taught in schools?”
Evolution and Religion in the Classroom
Long-ish opinion post about evolution/religion in the classroom. Click through if you are interested.
“They’re doing their job but they’re under tremendous pressure. The 60 percent who are cautious—those are the people who are really up against it. They want to keep their job, and they love teaching science, and their children are really excited about it, and yet they’ve got some people insisting they can’t teach the most fundamental idea in all of biology. There’s the phrase “just a theory.” Which shows you that I have failed. I’m a failure. When we have a theory in science, it’s the greatest thing you can have. Relativity is a theory, and people test it every which way. They test it and test it and test it. Gravity is a theory. People have landed spacecraft on the moon within a few feet of accuracy because we understand gravity so well. People make flu vaccinations that stop people from getting sick. Farmers raise crops with science; they hybridize them and make them better with every generation. That’s all evolution. Evolution is a theory, and it’s a theory that you can test. We’ve tested evolution in many ways. You can’t present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.”
(via Evolution in Science Education – Bill Nye on Evolution in Science Education - Popular Mechanics)
(via teachinglearning)
Source: popularmechanics.com
Wired Science: Evolution Still Struggling in Public Schools
I agree whole-heartedly with requiring a course on evolution, even though my own undergraduate course in evolution was disappointing. At Pitt, you can complete a biology degree without taking an evolution course. Of course, all of my biology professors structured their courses around the theme of evolution—some more explicitly than others, but it was always there.
Given that in many states you do not even need a biology degree to teach biology (“biology education” or “science ed” is typically sufficient, or chem majors who add on a bio cert, or what-have-you), and that even when you actually complete a bio degree you don’t necessarily need a whole class in evolution, requiring the course for high school biology teachers seems like an excellent idea. My mentor teacher falls into the category of, “You don’t have to believe any of this but just know it for the test,” while my dep’t head takes a much more hard-nosed scientific approach—she teaches it matter-of-factly and reminds students that in science class, they’re to think like scientists and interpret evidence scientifically.
I was lucky to have a staunch evolutionist as a high school bio teacher; he taught macro-evolution explicitly in a rural Christian town and no one would have ever dared cross him about it. I hope to channel his teaching persona when I have my own classroom.
Teacher, scientist, avid reader, observer
