Chapter 6

TEACHING EVOLUTION IN THE K-12 SCIENCE CLASSROOM

Is it possible to teach evolution in a way that is philosophically neutral?

Great care must be taken to insure that K-12 science instruction is kept philosophically neutral. Scientific integrity is always compromised whenever a writer allows his own personal philosophy to bias the way he writes about a scientific subject. In order to insure that sufficient care is taken, a large majority of all Americans believe that the duty of specifying how evolution should be taught in public schools should be shared between parents, scientists, science teachers, and school boards. (However, 41% believe parents should have the primary say; 28% believe scientists and science teachers should have the primary say, and only 21% would give the primary say to school boards, according to the Pew Research Center.)(ref?)

Many students do believe that living organisms have been “intelligently designed”. In any given California public school, 1/4^th to at least 1/2 of the students would be expected to believe in some type of creation, intelligent design, or providential guidance. (www.conservapedia.com, 11/27/08) This should not be surprising, if, according to the Pew Research Center, at least 60% of all Americans believe that God was responsible for the existence of life on earth. Even among Americans who do believe in evolution, 40% believe that evolution was guided by a supreme being. (www.people-press.org/report/254) According to a poll (done in 2000) by People for the American Way, 46% of all Americans believe that both evolution and creationism should be taught and/or discussed in science classes. (www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2095)

Students are not going to give up a religious belief just because their instructor says that “materialistic evolutionary processes” brought life (as we know it) into existence. Great injustice is done whenever philosophical bias is allowed to creep into the science classroom. Scientific issues must not be confused with philosophical issues. The “guided” vs. “unguided” issue is a serious philosophical debate. It lies well beyond the bounds of legitimate science. Science must limit itself to issues or questions that are scientifically testable (at least in principle). Philosophical questions cannot, in principle, be addressed using the methods of scientific inquiry. They must be approached some other way. If the issues of design, purpose, or guidance are to be avoided in the classroom, then so must the implication that evolution is an unguided process (as 38 Nobel laureates declared in 2005)

How should creation-believing students respond to the teaching of evolution?

How would you expect a creation-believing student to react to evolution being taught as only using unguided processes? When the secular philosophical ideology of materialism comes into conflict with the religious views of 1/4^th to half of the classroom students, do you expect those students to compartmentalize the two conflicting ideologies so that they do not interact? Think again. Some scientists say that a student exposed to evolutionary truth should simply reject any previously held creationist belief! Do you think a student is really going to do that?

And the science instructor –how is he supposed to deal with the problem? Should he carefully study the faces of his students, trying to respond sensitively to their reactions? Some say “no” --he should just ignore their reaction, and continue teaching his material. He shouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by any negative emotional reaction a student may have to evolution. But students do react. And the instructor can be blind to it.

What’s wrong with that, one may ask? What’s wrong is that it happens to violate the guidelines of the California Education Code --section 60044a. According to section 60044a, classroom teaching should always be done in a manner that neither encourages nor discourages religious belief. (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_in_education, page 1) The origin and arrival of life on earth must not be taught in a way that makes a materialistic world view more plausible than a theistic one.

Let me put it this way: Suppose a student enters a science classroom indifferent to the question of whether life was the product of guided or of unguided processes. Maybe he just never paid much attention to it. Now, he’s in the classroom and finds the instructor teaching about unguided evolutionary processes (either directly or by implication). When that happens, has science been taught in a manner free of philosophical or religious bias? No. Has science been taught in a manner that neither encourages nor discourages religious belief? No. Let’s look at this matter carefully. What has happened? Suppose that student, at some future time, uses his acquired belief that life resulted from unguided processes as sufficient reason not to adopt a religious point of view. He has become biased against religious belief. That’s what’s happened! And that’s not all that’s happened. His instructor has violated section 60044a of the California Education Code.

Great care must be taken to insure that K-12 science instruction is kept philosophically neutral. Scientific integrity is always compromised whenever a science writer allows his own personal philosophical bias to affect the way he writes about a scientific subject. That is why a large majority of Americans believe that the duty of specifying how evolution should be taught in public schools should be shared between parents, scientists, science teachers, and school boards. 41% of Americans believe parents should have the primary authority; 28% believe scientists and science teachers should have the primary authority, and 21% would give primary authority to school boards, according to the Pew Research Center. (ref?)

Science should be taught using words that convey the clearest meaning to students.

What should the goals of the K-12 science instructor be? One is that he should be faithful to current, well-supported scientific material. Another is that student learning should occur with maximum efficacy and efficiency --in a way that excites the student’s curiosity and interest in science.

However, one particular problem rears its ugly head whenever material about the origin and history of life on earth is taught. (It doesn’t seem to occur with any other scientific subject.) It’s not a scientific problem. It’s not a problem about including well-supported scientific material into a science curriculum. It is the semantic problem.

Whenever the words “evolution”, “evolutionary” or “evolve” are used, they fail to communicate meaning with the precision usually expected in science. Few, among dominant concepts in the world today, are as misunderstood as evolution.

Furthermore, it’s an especially serious problem because of the negative emotional reaction that occurs in the minds of some students whenever the word “evolution” is used. Why does that happen? It happens because, in any given California public school, 1/4^th to more than 1/2 of the students would be expected to believe in some type of creation, intelligent design, or at least providential guidance of processes that brought life, as we know it, into existence. (www.conservapedia.com, 11/27/08) This is not surprising, since, according to the Pew Research Center, at least 60% of all Americans believe that God was responsible for the existence of life on earth. (www.people-press.org/report/254) In the minds of those particular students, the very word “evolution” becomes an emotionally-charged word. The problem is serious because the use of that word can temporarily disable the learning process in the minds of those students.

Why does this happen? It happens because students who believe in any form of creative guidance usually assume that evolution only involves unguided materialistic processes. 38 Nobel prize winners did not help matters when they signed a statement that “evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided process of random variation and natural selection.” (www.2.1jworld.com/news/2005/sep/15) They made the mistake of using a definition with a very strong philosophical implication.

Why can’t words or phrases be substituted for the word “evolution”, if they convey a more precise meaning?

The word “evolution” (or one of its other forms: “evolutionary” or “evolve”) appears once every 100-200 words in relevant pages of commonly used high school biology textbooks, as well as the California Science Framework? Every time an “evolution” word is used, either in a textbook or in a classroom presentation, you can be sure that an emotionally-charged “red flag” reaction temporarily blocks the learning process in the minds of some students –students who believe that life on earth is the product of guided forces or processes.

What’s the solution? One solution would be for the writer to substitute other words and phrases for “evolution” –words or phrases that have a more precise meaning. A good biology instructor must define his terms carefully when he comes to the subject of evolution. He must dissect the word “evolution” into its separate meanings, using great care to make sure the students know which meaning he intends whenever he uses the word.

Both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation encourage the use of words that are more specific than the word “evolution” in titles and abstracts of grant proposals submitted to them. More specific terms such as “mutation”, “natural selection”, “genomic recombination”, and “emergence” are preferred to the less specific “e-word”. As a result, in proposals favorably awarded by NIH, the frequency of use of the word “evolution” is now approximately one-tenth of its use in titles and abstracts of science journals, generally. This is true even though the best example of evolution occurring at the present time seems to be the increase in resistance of human pathogens to antibiotics. In relevant medical journal reports, the terms “emerge”, “arise”, “mutation”, “natural selection”, “genomic recombination” and “change in allele frequency”, are preferred to “evolve” or “evolution”, because of their greater specificity of meaning. (Antonovics J, and Abbate J, et. al. “Evolution By Any Other Name: Antibiotic Resistance and Avoidance of the E-word” Journal PloS Biol. 5(2), p.1371, 2007.)

Some definitions of evolution (my definitions A-C) do have some support for scientifically explained processes being involved in producing life as we know it. But the remaining definitions (D,E) cause trouble. They have strong philosophical implications. They are materialistically biased against any guided process (e.g. creation or intelligent design, etc.). Those implications cannot be addressed by science. Those troubling definitions of evolution provoke a negative emotional reaction in the minds of too many students. And students certainly don’t deserve to have their emotionally-driven reactions ignored. To do so degrades the quality of K-12 science education, because it compromises every positive goal that truly effective science instruction should have.

On January 30, 2004, Kathy Cox, Georgia’s Superintendent of Schools reported (to the New York Times) that a very significant percentage of K-12 students and their parents react negatively whenever the word “evolution” is used. As a result, the “e-word” has frequently been replaced by “change over time” in Georgia’s science education framework. In Arkansas, one survey revealed that approximately half of all K-12 science instructors avoid the subject of evolution because of community pressure. (Jason R. Wiles, 3/23/06, www.arktimes.com)