Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

It's really a cheap attempt at poisoning young minds against science where this country is beginning to lag year-by-year compared to many other countries. We're starting to increase our importing of educated scientists, technicians, et al.

Creationism could be taught in schools under Tories, claims Ed Balls
(Tom Baldwin, The Times, November 21, 2009)

Conservative plans to grant schools freedom from central control risk bringing the creationist doctrines of a “Religious Right” into the classroom, the Government warned last night.

Ed Balls, the Education Secretary, this week introduced new rules making the study of Darwin’s theory of evolution compulsory in primary schools. Previous guidance has banned Biblically derived ideas that the Earth and species were created suddenly within the past 10,000 years from science lessons.

Yesterday Mr Balls told The Times that Conservative policies to remove “prescriptions” under the National Curriculum and create hundreds of new independently controlled state schools posed “a real threat to the integrity of science teaching”. He added: “Creationist dogma, whether home grown or from the extreme Religious Right in America, has no place in our science classrooms.”

Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, said: “No school which receives state money could teach creationism as if it was science.” He indicated that this would be enforced through funding agreements rather than the National Curriculum.

There has already been bitter controversy over the policies of some existing Academies sponsored by prominent Evangelicals such as Sir Peter Vardy and Bob Edmiston, both of whom have made significant donations to the Conservative Party.

Mr Edmiston, a Pentecostalist who sponsors two Academies in the West Midlands with a strongly Christian ethos through his Grace Foundation, has donated more than £2.2 million to the Conservative Party since David Cameron became leader.

While emphasising that his schools would make no “attempt to proselytise”, Mr Edmiston has criticised the theory of evolution, saying: “If you tell people they are descended from monkeys, how can you expect them to behave like anything other than monkeys?”

Sir Peter, who given the Tories £53,000 in the past year, has a network of four academies in the North East, which he wants to expand to at least seven.

He suggested that the high marks given to the schools by Ofsted contradict persistent allegations about how science is taught. He said: “We don’t teach creationism [but] students are made aware of others’ beliefs as they are about all sorts of things.

"I believe that God created the Earth. How long it took, I don’t know. It could be 6,000 years or 6 million years. This is not something I lie awake at night worrying about. All I want to do is help children get a good start in life."

Critics have highlighted comments by Stephen Layfield, head of science at Sir Peter’s flagship school of Emmanuel College in Gateshead, who advised teachers to “point out the fallibility” of evolution and “give the alternative (always better) Biblical explanation”.

The school’s principal, Jonathan Winch, issued a statement this week saying pupils were taught “the theory of evolution as the consensus view of the scientific community”. He added: “Naturally this raises questions in students’ minds. Our teachers seek to answer ... honestly according to personal convictions.”

Emmanuel College has been praised by the Conservatives as a model for a new generation of “free schools”. Mr Gove, saying that he was not aware of “any sponsor of an existing academy” that wanted to teach creationism as science, stressed he believed “the situation would not arise” if he loosened rules.

Professor Richard Dawkins, who has written about the school in his book, The God Delusion, yesterday cited testimony from former Emmanuel College pupils over how Biblical doctrines were taught alongside evolution in science lessons. He said: “I'm not doubting Michael Gove’s sincerity but he may well have been misled.”

Prof Dawkins voiced fears that withdrawing restrictions on how science is taught under the National Curriculum could open the way for Christian or Islamic fundamentalists to press their views on children.

“I'm absolutely sure that there is eager pressure to leap through any chink in the armour. Creationism should be taught only in religious studies as comparative religion,” he added.

He suggested that the high marks given to the schools by Ofsted contradict persistent allegations about how science is taught.

Evolving our education system
(By: Shawn Hanrahan, Texas A&M Student Newspaper, 11/23/09)

This month marks the 150-year anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species." The main premises of Darwin's theory have been repeatedly reinforced and modified to form the modern understanding of evolutionary theory. It is largely accepted scientific fact that the natural history of the Earth has undergone evolutionary changes for the past three billion years. But students who attended Texas public education system might have difficulty understanding the theory.

Many schools in this state inadequately educate students on the theory. The result of this lack of education will affect the next generation of Texans. Given the speed of genetics and biomedical research, knowledge of the theory will dictate the public's understanding of discoveries and potential finds in the field. This understanding will impact current and future laws in the coming golden age of genetics.

U.S. polls show 44 percent of the country accepts no part of evolutionary theory, with only 50 percent accepting some or all of it. These percentages have stayed essentially stagnant for more than 15 years. This sadly reflects a lack of education on the subject despite the abundance of additional evidence and resources on evolution.

If half the country did not understand or even disbelieved a different scientific theory, it would be very disconcerting to the general public. Imagine half the country not accepting the basic components of the atom, or having difficulty understanding why water readily dissolves salt but not oil. Basic concepts of evolution are poorly understood at best by a large percentage of the adult population of this country.

Even with the advances in understanding, there has been a good deal of pushback on simply mentioning evolution in the classroom. Four years ago next month, the first court case on teaching intelligent design in the public classroom came from a school district in Dover, Pa. The decision unambiguously stated that Intelligent Design was a form of creationism, and therefore couldn't be taught alongside evolution in a science class.

In March of this year, the Texas Board of Education voted narrowly to prevent politically motivated language describing the "weaknesses" of evolution to be presented to the state's high school biology students. Despite this victory, many districts simply avoid teaching much about evolution due to the political climate surrounding it. The end result of the absence of evolution in public education is the continued degradation of the country's collective understanding of the basics behind modern advances in science.

Genetically modified crops, stem cell research and cures for cancer, HIV and other infections are all deeply rooted in the application of evolutionary theory. Now is a perfect time to take some time out and be educated on what the state of Texas has failed to properly teach. The anniversary of the discovery of evolution is a wonderful excuse to catch up on the basics of the underlying theme of all of biology.

The biology department is having the "Darwin 150" lecture series in coordination with other universities around the globe. The final lecture is next Tuesday with additional information found on their website. There is also the new Richard Dawkins book "The Greatest Show on Earth," which is presented as a defense of evolution and introductory explanation of the theory. Both of these are excellent sources of information for those who may have missed out previously in their high school years. Additionally, there are several classes offered here at A&M in the biology and genetics departments that could fill up a class slot for next semester.

The current status of evolution in our public education is appalling. The U.S. ranks No. 17 out of the world's richest countries in science education. The end result is the next generation of Americans will not be as equipped with the same knowledge and understanding as the rest of the modern world.

With much of the planet becoming interconnected, surrendering the leading edge of education will have disastrous effects on the U.S.'s role in the next century of scientific progress. Science is propelling us into the age of genetic engineering, gene therapy and evolutionary research. But without a proper education on evolution, many of us will be unable to understand even what the next century's discoveries mean.

What's you response to this poll in the Press Enterprise in regard to creationism being taught in schools alongside evolution -- which means it has to end up in a science or even a history class. The results are pretty overwhelming:

http://blogs.pe.com/news/digest/2009/11/related-councilman-seeks-advic.html

Myths are wonderful ways to explain the unexplainable, but they are no substitute for real science and facts. 29% (286 votes)
Religious fanaticism should have no place in the classroom, even in a school linked to a church. Stick to the textbooks. 43% (420 votes)

What's you response to this poll in the Press Enterprise in regard to creationism

The Political Gene " How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics, by Dennis Sewell
(Iain Macwhirter, Herald Scotland, November 3, 2009)

The truth is out.

Charles Darwin, author of On The Origin Of Species, was a Nazi. Well, not quite " but his ideas, according to Dennis Sewell, provided the intellectual seedbed in which National Socialist eugenics could thrive. “The evidence that Darwin’s evolutionary theories had a significant influence in shaping the ideology of National Socialism,” he argues, “and was even at the root of its genocidal practices, is so abundant and well attested that to ignore it would be perverse”. Oh dear, Edinburgh University had better tear down all those Darwin anniversary posters and stop holding exhibitions about the old man if they don’t want to be accused of giving intellectual comfort to the BNP.

Of course, Sewell " a former BBC journalist and producer " doesn’t come right out and declare Darwin as Hitler’s granddad. “I have not set out to indict Darwin for any crime,” he says in his introduction. He then presents a highly selective case for the prosecution. He accuses Darwin of fathering the doctrine that races can be purified and improved by selective breeding, just like farm animals. He quotes a passage of from Darwin’s Descent Of Man where the writer appears to say that allowing “the weak members of civilised societies to propagate their kind” could be to “the detriment of the domestic race”.

What he doesn’t say is that Darwin explicitly rejected the application of crude natural selection to humans because we are sentient beings and can use education and medical science to counter any harm done through the propagation of inferior genes.

Where Sewell has a point, however, is in the way Darwin allowed his friends Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer " two influential Victorain scientific writers " to misuse his evolutionary science. They reduced Darwinism to the phrase “survival of the fittest” and applied it directly to humankind in the form of eugenics " a term coined by Galton, who set up the Eugenics Society in 1885. Social Darwinism was influential in intellectual circles in the late 19th century. Eugenics was popularised by a range of prominent Edwardian writers. The novelist HG Wells said: “It is in the sterilisation of failures and not in the selection of success for breeding that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.” But it took the iconoclastic playwright George Bernard Shaw to propose the use of “the lethal chamber” " though I suspect the old joker was just seeking attention as usual.

Sewell is a Catholic polemicist, and sees eugenics as a vice of atheists. This is not an even-handed and balanced assessment of the influence of Darwin’s ideas, but a broadside against those who refuse to see God’s work in the face of man. However, that doesn’t invalidate his critique of eugenics. It was a repellent pseudo-science which was used by Herbert Spencer to oppose poor relief and even proper medical treatment for the underclass of his day, on the grounds that this would lead to degenerate genes polluting the true seed of England.

All the more astonishing then that eugenics was popular on the political left. The Fabian socialist Sydney Webb, the founder of the London School of Economics, was a eugenicist, according to Sewell, who wanted to prevent “thriftless and irresponsible” immigrants from breeding. Even David Beveridge, the liberal reformer who pioneered the welfare state, wrote in 1909 that the undeserving unemployed should be denied citizenship rights “including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood”.

Really, this book should have been called The Eugenics Conspiracy " Sewell finds them everywhere. John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain. Even the British Medical Association argued against National Insurance on the grounds that it would encourage degenerates to “multiply their breed at the expense of the healthy and intellectual members of the community”. The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 established colonies for the segregation of “idiots, imbeciles, the feeble minded and the moral defective”. Unmarried mothers, petty criminals and homosexuals were included in the net. The system remained in place until 1959 and some 60,000 people were locked up in institutions.

But it took the Nazis to carry eugenics to its logical conclusion and start ­building the “lethal chambers” that Shaw had talked about. In 1934 they set up a nationwide system of eugenic courts to decide who should be sterilised, using IQ tests as a means of assessment.

Sewell says there was never an explicit order to exterminate the genetically undesirable, only a permissive edict “Aktion T4” which licensed doctors to do so. Sewell claims they adopted the idea enthusiastically because eugenics was so influential in the profession. Pretty soon gypsies, Jews and gays were being gassed along with Downs Syndrome children and people with malformed limbs.

The charge sheet is pretty damning, However, when Sewell arrives at the 1967 Abortion Act you suddenly realise that this paranoia is really getting the better of him. He claims that this was the work of eugenicists, which is simply untrue. I know the politician who moved the bill, David (now Lord) Steel, and he is no eugenicist. This conspiracy theory goes a long way to discrediting Sewell’s entire case. It is only at the end of this book that Sewell reveals himself as a supporter of a form of Intelligent Design, the Christian counter-theory to Darwinism. He hints that contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins are also infected with the Darwin-eugenic virus.

The truth is that eugenics was a dangerous fad that captivated the chattering classes of the Edwardian era, but had largely burnt itself out by the 1920s " only for it to be revived by Hitler as a means of social control.

Darwin, like Karl Marx, cannot be held to blame for what people did with their ideas. They could perhaps have been more careful, but how were they to know that Hitler and Stalin would come along to justify mass slaughter on pseudo-scientific grounds? Sewell commits the same error as those who say that Islam is to blame for 9/11 or that Christ is to blame for the Spanish Inquisition. This is unfortunate because this is actually a very valuable book. It exposes one of the liberal left’s dirty little secrets " lest we forget.