...I find that many of my students are biased against or profess naive or ignorant assumptions about evolution. If what buzsaw says is true, then why do most of my freshmen (I would say 2 out of every 3) have major misconceptions/outright hostility towards a robust scientific theory like evolution?
In my neck of the woods, I find that the anti-intellectual "ugly-stick" is swung by several groups.
1)Baptist and non-denominational churches that actually show films by creationists in Sunday school and preach against evolution and higher education in general. ("Girls belong at home and don't need an education", "Do not suppose that you can learn more than god", and "Education is unnecessary and useless if you want to get to heaven"(I actually heard these from a minister during several services I had attended for some "research" into the mindset of some of my students!).
2)Other "educators" that actually make snide comments about evolution and other science topics that are out of their areas of "expertise". Not to sound too stereotypical, but most of these people are young females teaching in elementary schools. In fact, I was talking about religious matters with an elemenatry ed teacher this past weekend and was taken aback when she brought up evolution. She was trying to tell me why she believed in God and that she feared that I was going to hell b/c I had "received the word, but refused it"! While asking me for reasons why I did not believe in god, she smugly said "I bet you believe in evolution"! How that was relevant to our talk is still beyond me!?! I didn't say anything about evolution during the entire conversation.
3)Parents with expertise in other areas that think their degrees in computer whatever and engineering and etc. make them experts at everything. "You are not going to teach my child about evolution are you?" "I was watching a show on TBN that said it would be impossible for life to spontaneously generate or for the human eye, blood clotting, bacterial flagella, etc. to evolve or etc..." "Isn't evolution just a theory?" Blah, blah, blah...
Creationists complain that scientists act like they know everything!?!