Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for)

Hey it's your thread so your rules apply. back.However while I have my soapbox out..........I was a science teacher in a previous life. I know many who still are. These are normal people with a wide range of attitudes and beliefs. Their main professional concern is dealing with a series of ever-changing syllabi, exams and guidelines whilst at the same time tackling the low aspirations and lack of enthusiasm, for education in general, of a proportion of their class who see school as little more than day prison.In short, whilst most would agree in principle with the need to keep religion out of the science classroom, it is hardly the burning issue of their day to day lives as teachers. I doubt many have even considered the question to a fraction of the extent that those of us preoccupied enough with such things as to spend our time discussing them from afar on internet forums, have done.It therefore seems grossly unfair to expect, or require, science teachers to be unwittingly thrown into the front line of the eternal debate between religion and science.
I don't think many science teachers have the appetite for the issue required to turn their classrooms into the battlefields on which the long campaign to tackle the role of religion in society is to be fought.
Nor do I think it does the teachers, the pupils or the education system as whole any good to force educators to be the foot soldiers of such wider principles.If people are being taught disproved irrational nonsense by their parents, churches, community leaders or whoever else then that is a problem for society as a whole. Not just for, or even primarily for, science teachers.If anything we should be protecting the science education of students by keeping this whole debate as far away from the science classroom as is possible instead of making science teaching the focal point of discussions that should be much much wider in context.Thankyou for listening. I'll put my soapbox away now.

And I'm not proposing teaching anything else. Ethics and social issues regarding science are part of teaching about science. Merely teaching theory and scientific facts does not seem to me to be a well-rounded science education. Absolutely agree. And yes, it is not (last I checked) outright forbidden to discuss these issues - it is now officially recommended to not bring them up, though. Indeed - yet I don't see Reiss saying anything significantly different. Whatever preconceptions people have to the concept of Creationism in the classroom should be divorced from the actual proposal at hand. I agree with the latter sentiment about stressing that regardless of belief it is possible to still learn about evolution. However, I have met adults who were not even aware that it was possible to marry evolution with religious thought, since it is in fact possible (I remember having the discussion with my mother: Like many boys I loved dinosaurs, but I was an independently minded Christian type. I noted the incongruity of Genesis creation and dinosaurs living millions of years before humans. She explained the CofE's position to me: I was fortunate where others may not be so. I later had a teacher who discussed theistic evolution and the argument of design - but I'm sure many others missed out on this valuable lesson). It is a significantly held position, and it is likely, given the statistics - that school children will encounter people whose religious upbringing leads them to reject a major scientific theory. A significant number will be alienated or cruelly confused by the mixed messages going on. It seems that we are actually stalling and possibly falling. A significant religious explosion has happened recently, and England seems to following, at least partially, in America's footsteps with trust in science going downwards. Added with a fairly sizeable Muslim population and ideas like Creationism are gaining strength. No problem.

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People in the United States are much less likely to accept Darwin's idea that humans and apes share a common ancestor than adults in other Western nations, a number of surveys show.

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A new study of those surveys suggests that the main reason for this lies in a unique confluence of religion, politics, and the public understanding of biological science in the United States.

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The proportion of western European adults who believed the theory "absolutely false" ranged from 7 percent in Great Britain to 15 percent in the Netherlands.

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The only country included in the study where adults were more likely than Americans to reject evolution was Turkey.

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The investigation also showed that the percentage of U.S. adults who are uncertain about evolution has risen from 7 percent to 21 percent in the past 20 years.

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First, the researchers found that the effect of fundamentalist religious belief on opinions of evolution was almost twice as much in the U.S. as in Europe.

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Miller says the U.S. has a tradition of Protestant fundamentalism not found in Europe that takes the Bible literally and sees the Book of Genesis as an accurate account of the creation of human life.

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After European Protestants broke off from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, they retained a hierarchy that remained part of the university system, Miller says.

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A tripling of uncertainty in the last 20 years? If the "Don't even mention creationism" system is the best one - then we're surely doomed. Obviously, it is not the only factor in play but I hypothesize that it is significant.I believe other scholars have pointed out the paradox of a country which attempts to separate church and state so vigorously has such high religiosity and fundamentalism.

More than a right, a duty. It would be highly unfair massively ludicrous and totally outrageous. Recent moves in America indicate that this might one day soon be an issue they have to deal with. Indeed they could. But unless you are making an oblique political argument that by acknowledging the existence of creationism we will find ourselves giving equal marks to creationist answers, I don't see your point.I'm not proposing giving credit to creationism. I'm just saying that its existence be acknowledged and the mental roadblocks it will present for those students be tackled so that they can actually learn about evolution, and the rest of science, without feeling the relationship is necessarily antagonistic.

I agree and disagree. I concede that your points are very strong, and I think we have both put elucidated where our positions differ. Maybe some other time I'll have put more thought into the 'Teachers as foot soldiers in the culture wars' line of reasoning and will be able to grace it with thoughtful commentary for future debate.Until then...

And that was crazy, malign, paranoid, and illiterate crap.This is why people like you aren't allowed to write school textbooks.

Thread copied to the Creationism in science classrooms (an argument for) thread in the Education and Creation/Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.