Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Kansas to help shape science standards
(By MATT CAMPBELLand JOHN MILBURN, The Kansas City Star, September 23, 2011)

Kansas has been named one of 20 lead states to help write academic science standards that could be used as a national model for public schools and will include requirements for teaching evolution, project leaders announced this week.

The state-led collaboration was assembled by the National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, and a nonprofit education reform organization called Achieve. The effort is similar to one developed through the National Governors Association that led to the so-called common core standards in English and mathematics that were adopted by a majority of states, including Kansas.

“Kansas will have an increased opportunity to have its voice heard as these standards come together and will reap the benefits of collaboration with other states,” state Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker said.

Harlan Parker, president of the Olathe Board of Education, said it was good that Kansas will participate in the process. But he said that while districts should teach to meet consistent national standards, it is important that local communities and school boards be allowed to set their own curriculum in the classrooms.

“Let’s leave it at local control,” he said. “That’s what we have now.”

Blake West, president of the Kansas National Education Association, said it was important that standards be developed with input from science teachers. He believes the new collaboration will do that.

“This process should result in something very useful,” said West, a math and computer science teacher on leave from the Blue Valley School District.

West said the emphasis on science in schools has been greatly diminished by the pressure to achieve high tests scores from the No Child Left Behind Act. He hopes that the waivers to that act, announced this week by the Obama administration, along with new national science standards, will allow school districts to focus more on the integration of math and science.

Up to now, states have used standards developed by the National Research Council and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science to create their state standards. The new effort attempts to coordinate what is taught across states to improve science education nationally.

It also will allow Kansas, only a few years removed from a heated public fight over the teaching of evolution in public schools, the chance to establish itself as a leader in science curriculum. The Kansas Board of Education approved the department’s application to be part of the national discussion.

Dana Tofig, spokesman for Achieve, said Kansas was chosen in part because of its willingness to commit staff to the writing process, gather feedback and to consider adopting the standards once complete.

“We are aware that there was a debate (about teaching evolution) in Kansas and other areas of the country,” Tofig said. “Evolution will be in the next generation of science standards.”

The Kansas science curriculum has drawn national attention in the past when conservatives on the education board pushed through science testing standards skeptical of evolution. They last succeeded in 2005, but two years later, with moderates controlling the board again, the current evolution-friendly standards were adopted.

A condition of being selected a lead state requires the Kansas State Board of Education to consider adopting the new standard when updates are completed in 2014. The standards outline what concepts and processes students must be taught, such as scientific methods and theories.

Other lead states are Arizona, California, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

Tofig said all 20 states that applied to be on the writing team were accepted because of the level of commitment and resources they were willing to offer.

Developing the new standards is a two-step process. In July, organizers released core ideas and practices in natural sciences and engineering that students are expected to learn by the time the graduate from high school. Then, Kansas and the other lead writing states will take that framework and help develop the new science standards.

States will gather feedback from science teachers, scientists and the public before the standards are completed and presented to all 50 states for approval by the end of 2012. As part of the process, each participating state board of education will be allowed to nominate representatives of business and industry to review the drafts.

The draft will be approved by Achieve and the National Research Council, then submitted to states for their consideration. States can then adopt the standards in whole, or modify them to fit their needs.

Why, I suppose that his nonsense suited their nonsense.

Muslim faith schools teach 'alien rubbish' says Dawkins
(BBC News, October 8, 2011)

Muslim faith schools fill children's heads with "alien rubbish" as they continue to teach them creationism is true, atheist Richard Dawkins has said.

In the Times Educational Supplement (TES), the Oxford author said they had a "pernicious influence".

The Muslim Council of Britain said it was unreasonable to expect schools not to teach fundamental theories of faith.

The Department for Education said creationism "should not be taught as scientific fact".

Professor Dawkins told the TES he had concerns with all faith schools, but Muslim ones worried him the most.

The author of The God Delusion, emeritus fellow of New College and evolutionary biologist, said young people were being taught that the world was only 6,000 years old.

The effect of this was "utterly deplorable" and could affect the way young people thought right up until their university years, he said.

"Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution - this is almost entirely Muslims," he said.

But Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, from the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Faith schools are by and large established to enforce the religious teachings of our lives, and the theory of creation is one of the cornerstones of our faith.

"To expect faith schools not to teach this kind of religious teaching is unreasonable, but I also think it is important for faith schools to teach science to children as well so they are aware of modern day findings and can use the information to ask further questions and strengthen their faith.

"I don't believe any religious teaching prevents people from being creative and independent in their thinking."

A MCB spokesman added: "The results of Muslim faith schools in England in maths and science show a strong compatibility between the Muslim faith and scientific learning."

The chairman of Muslims4UK, Inayat Bunglawala, said it was "important faith groups came to terms with evolution" and taught it in a fair manner.

"I don't think students growing up today are served well by being taught this way by religious leaders.

"It's symbolic and it makes no sense to take it so literally - it will only serve to undermine the faith of students when the two schools of thought could be understood side by side."

Naomi Phillips, from the British Humanist Association, said: "There are a number of problems that go throughout faith schools but I wouldn't say it's just Muslim schools, it's also Christian schools too."

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "All schools must teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and creationism should not be taught as scientific fact.

"Evolution first appears as a concept in the National Curriculum at Key Stage 3."

Naomi Phillips said however more needed to be done to ensure this.

"We've been encouraged certainly by the government saying very strongly that they don't think creationism should be taught in schools, but what we need to see now is real statutory measures, make guidance against teaching creationism."

The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, created by Wendy Northcutt to recognize individuals who contribute to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool, through putting themselves (unnecessarily) in life-threatening situations. A book series is paralleled by a website, "www.DarwinAwards.com" (stylised as "www.đar̆winĀwar̆ḍs.ćōm"), whose "Rules" section explains:

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.

Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies; however, the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." But the candidate is disqualified if "innocent bystanders", who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process.

The Darwin Awards books state that an attempt is made to disallow known urban legends from the awards, but some older "winners" have been 'grandfathered' to keep their awards. The Darwin Awards site does try to verify all submitted stories, but many similar sites, and the vast number of circulating "Darwin awards" emails, are largely fictional.

UK UPDATE

Quote:

Muslim faith schools teach 'alien rubbish' says Dawkins
(BBC News, October 8, 2011)

Initiative to Promote Teaching Evolution Across Life Sciences
(By Erik Robelen, Education Week, October 19, 2011)

Citing concern about how evolution is typically taught in high school and college—and the fact that even the study of it remains contentious—a new national initiative seeks to infuse evolutionary science into high school and college curricula as a "fundamental and integrating principle of modern life science."

The effort will be launched at a two-day meeting next week co-hosted by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences.

"Often [evolution] is presented as one discrete topic among many in the biology curriculum, leading to the false impression that it can be isolated or even removed from biology," says an announcement of the event and the broader effort. "A more appropriate and effective way to teach evolution is as a fundamental and integrating principle of modern life science."

The Oct. 25-26 meeting, titled "Thinking Evolutionarily: Evolution Education Across the Life Sciences," will bring together a variety of experts in education science to help develop a strategic plan to incorporate evolution as a central theme in biology teaching across institutions and academic levels.

It comes as the recent NRC framework for developing a set of common standards in science includes a call for teaching about evolutionary principles throughout the K-12 curriculum.

The national meeting next week will focus on a series of issues and questions, including:

• Why 'thinking evolutionarily' is a useful way to teach biology, with a look at how students, faculty, and science benefit;

• What curricular resources are currently available, what additional ones are needed, and who should produce them; and

• How to encourage and facilitate change, including professional development for high school and college faculty, communications strategies, and engaging "diverse communities" in the life sciences.

Old American theory is 'speared'
(By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News, October 20, 2011)

An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end - once and for all - a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated.

The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.

This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent's original inhabitants.

News of the dating results is reported in Science magazine.

In truth, the "Clovis first" model, which holds to the idea that America's original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.

A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.

The mastodon rib, however, really leaves the once cherished model with nowhere to go.

The specimen has actually been known about for more than 30 years. It is plainly from an old male animal that had been attacked with some kind of weaponry.

It was found in the late 1970s at the Manis site near Sequim, just north of Seattle, in Washington State.

Although scientists at the time correctly identified the specimen's antiquity, adherents to the Clovis-first model questioned the dating and interpretation of the site.

To try to settle any lingering uncertainty, Prof Michael Waters of Texas A&M University and colleagues called upon a range of up-to-date analytical tools and revisited the specimen.

These investigations included new radio carbon tests using atomic accelerators.

"The beauty of atomic accelerators is that you can date very small samples and also very chemically pure samples," Prof Waters told BBC News.

"We extracted specific amino acids from the collagen in the bone and dated those, and yielded dates 13,800 years ago, plus or minus 20 years. That's very precise."

Computed tomography, which creates exquisite 3D X-ray images of objects, was used to study the embedded point. The visualisation reveals how the projectile end had been deliberately sharpened to give a needle-like quality. And it also enabled the scientists to estimate the projectile end's likely original size - at least 27cm long, they believe.

"The other thing that's really interesting is that as it went in, the very tip broke and rotated off to the side," said the Texas A&M researcher.

"That's a very common breakage pattern when any kind of projectile hits bone. You see it even in stone projectiles that are embedded in, say, bison bones."

DNA investigation also threw up a remarkable irony - the point itself was made from mastodon bone, proving that the people who fashioned it were systematically hunting or scavenging animal bones to make their tools.

The timing of humanity's presence in North America is important because it plays into the debate over why so many great beasts from the end of the last Ice Age in that quarter of the globe went extinct.

Not just mastodons, but woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, giant sloths, camels, and teratorns (predatory birds with a nearly four-metre wingspan) - all disappeared in short order a little over 12,700 years ago.

A rapidly changing climate in North America is assumed to have played a key role - as is the sophisticated stone-tool weaponry used by the Clovis hunters. But the fact that there are also humans with effective bone and antler killing technologies present in North America deeper in time suggests the hunting pressure on these animals may have been even greater than previously thought.

"Humans clearly had a role in these extinctions and by the time the Clovis technology turns up at 13,000 years ago - that's the end. They finished them off," said Prof Waters.

"You know, the Clovis-first model has been dying for some time," he finished. "But there's nothing harder to change than a paradigm, than long-standing thinking. When Clovis-First was first proposed, it was a very elegant model but it's time to move on, and most of the archaeological community is doing just that."

"Format overrules substance" in our ed systems