Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

My brother was a milk maid and a cowboy . I never thought of him as having a sunny dispositions.

A Nationwide Day for Honoring Charles Darwin, but Handled With Caution
By AMY HARMON
Published: February 14, 2011 :from NY TIMES Science Section
There was trepidation on both sides when a squadron of biologists set out to celebrate Darwin Day in rural America during the weekend.
Charles Darwin’s birthday was remembered in 475 celebrations across the United States.
At Dinosaur World in Plant City, Fla., a birthday cake was cooked to celebrate Charles Darwin’s birth.
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C., which instigated the road trip in the name of scientific outreach, first held a workshop where seven of its Ph.D.’s staged role-playing games and practiced debunking misconceptions about evolution without sounding confrontational.

The group’s small-town hosts took their own precautions. A high school principal in Ringgold, Va., sent out permission slips so parents could opt out of sending their children to the event (two did). A museum vice president in Putnam, Iowa, publicized the festivities only to teachers, rather than risk riling members of her conservative Christian community.

Darwin Day, conceived as a way to promote science on the 202nd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth — he was born Feb. 12, 1809 — had until this time been commemorated mostly by those inclined to science, at natural history museums, by secular humanist groups and in university biology departments.

“Maybe this year,” Jory P. Weintraub, the education director at the evolutionary synthesis center, proposed to his colleagues last fall, “we should try to go to places that wouldn’t otherwise have a Darwin Day.”

Craig McClain, a marine biologist at the center who studies giant squid, was initially opposed.

“You want to send evolutionary biologists out to rural America?” Dr. McClain asked. “On purpose?”

He recalled previous clashes between scientists and religious conservatives in some rural communities over Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Nineteen schools agreed to host the scientists, but negotiating the terms of the visit was sometimes a delicate process: The goal, they assured a principal who worried about their ideological agenda, was simply to tell students why science was “cool” and perhaps interest them in a career. Still, if questions about religion and science arose, they reserved the right to answer them.

Of the 475 mid-February celebrations listed on the Web site DarwinDay.org, none had been scheduled in any of the states — Virginia, Nebraska, Montana, and Iowa — where the center’s scientists landed.

The center, which receives financing from the National Science Foundation, paired junior scientists with a senior scientist in each of the locations, “so they wouldn’t feel alone and isolated,” Dr. Weintraub said.

The road trip came on the heels of a study that found that a biblical explanation for the diversity of life on Earth is still taught in many schools. Few of the nation’s biology teachers, the study found, directly tell students that evolution forms the foundation of modern biology.

Such statistics, along with rejection by many Americans of what scientists say is evidence that human activities are causing Earth to heat up, concern scientists: the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a major private funder of biomedical research, recently announced plans to spend $60 million producing documentaries in an effort to raise the nation’s scientific awareness.

Poised for conflict, the traveling scientists found mostly curiosity. “Why did Darwin say that humans evolved from monkeys?” one Virginia student asked. (He did not, the scientist said. Darwin said humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor, like all living things.)

Dr. McClain, who wrapped up his Nebraska-Montana tour at a middle school on Monday, found himself explaining how giant squid evolved.

“Smaller squids get eaten by everything,” he said. “It’s not a very good lifestyle to have.”

Shae Carter, 16, a 10th grader at Muscatine High School in Muscatine, Iowa, was pleasantly surprised by the visiting biologists who, she wrote on her blog, “told it like it is.”

When students recoiled and said “Ewww!” watching pictures of large jungle cats devouring their prey, the scientists told them: “This is what happens, people. Get professional.”

“I had imagined that these periods in the auditorium would be cold and boring,” Shae said in an interview. “But I liked it.”

“You want to send evolutionary biologists out to rural America?” Dr. McClain asked. “On purpose?”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLES DARWIN

Quote:

A Nationwide Day for Honoring Charles Darwin, but Handled With Caution
By AMY HARMON
Published: February 14, 2011 :from NY TIMES Science Section
Poised for conflict, the traveling scientists found mostly curiosity. “Why did Darwin say that humans evolved from monkeys?” one Virginia student asked. (He did not, the scientist said. Darwin said humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor, like all living things.)

Few of the nation’s biology teachers, the study found, directly tell students that evolution forms the foundation of modern biology.

“I had imagined that these periods in the auditorium would be cold and boring,” Shae said in an interview. “But I liked it.” [/i]

It isn't clear from that whether Shae prefers "cold and boring" to "hot and interesting."

Why was the NCSE not in the loop?