Evolution education down to a science on Web
Evolution education down to a science on Web
UC Berkeley experts offer advice on facing 'pitfalls'
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Monday, March 29, 2004
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As controversies simmer across the country over teaching evolution, scientists at UC Berkeley are taking the offensive against the modern-day foes of Charles Darwin.
Experts at the university's Museum of Paleontology have created a new Web site designed to offer beleaguered classroom teachers support and guidance through the often slippery attacks they can encounter teaching natural selection and other concepts.
The site, at evolution.berkeley.edu, grew out of a conference that the museum hosted four years ago at which representatives from virtually every national scientific and education organization gathered to consider the growing pressures against evolution curricula.
"We realized we really needed to put new resources into teachers' hands, and that's how the idea of using the Internet emerged," said David Lindberg, chairman of Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology and former director of the paleontology museum.
The Web site was developed with a $460,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, and its creators have another $380,000 grant -- this time from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute -- to develop a version for the general public and another for students.
The new site offers a basic course in the methods of science and, in particular, the mechanics of evolution. It provides a history of evolutionary thought and discusses "misconceptions" and "pitfalls" that teachers may confront in explaining evolutionary concepts.
"Evolution, simply put, is descent with modification," the Web site states in its introduction. "Through the process of descent with modification, the common ancestor of life on Earth gave rise to the fantastic diversity that we see documented in the fossil record and around us today.
"Evolution means that we're all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales."
Lindberg said the site tries wherever possible to show how evolution affects people in everyday life, and he offers flu shots as an example. "The power of the flu vaccine doesn't just wear out year by year," he explains. "But we need new shots each year because new species of the flu virus continually evolve that are resistant to the previous year's strains of the virus that are used in the shots."
Scientists often argue about the detailed processes in evolution -- whether new species emerge slowly or rapidly, or whether Darwin's concept of "natural selection" is the only mechanism for change over time -- but they consider evolution itself to be a fact as solid as gravity or the round Earth.
Opponents, however, insist evolution cannot fully explain how long life has flourished and how its manifold species have come to be. Some are avowed "creationists" who hold the Bible and Genesis as literally true, while others believe in "intelligent design" -- a view that humans, and indeed all organisms, are so complex that only some unknown intelligence must be guiding at all.
Intelligent design advocates include a small body of credentialed scientists. In the past few years, they have virtually supplanted the creationists in dominating the controversies that are ongoing in cities and states from Georgia to California.
Experts at the National Center for Science Education, based in Oakland, say that the teaching of evolution in public schools is under active attack in at least four state legislatures, four state departments of education and five local school boards, including one in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville.
Last month, Larry Caldwell, a Roseville attorney representing a small group of parents, renewed a yearlong dispute over teaching evolution there by filing a complaint against the local Union High School District. Caldwell's complaint contends that the district has unconstitutionally refused to provide students with access to what he maintains are "all sides" of a legitimate scientific debate.
He insists he merely wants Roseville high school biology teachers to "help students develop critical thinking skills in relation to science, by introducing them to scientific evidence that poses challenges to evolutionary theory, as well as scientific evidence that supports evolutionary theory."
To Caldwell, the dispute is basically over the school district's refusal to allow teachers to expose students to what he calls a "dissenting scientific viewpoint" over evolution as opposed to the "orthodox scientific viewpoint," and to provide them with a textbook challenging the standard concepts of evolution.
But Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which is dedicated to "defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools," insists Caldwell's motives are suspect.
"Evolution is a science, a fact, and it's not something to vote on," Scott said in an interview. "When alternate views on evolution are proposed to be taught, they must be about accepted scientific alternatives, and they need to be appropriate to the knowledge base of the students. Caldwell's proposal in Roseville doesn't meet either of these criteria.
"Let's be grown up about this: We're talking God in this dispute, not real issues in science," Scott continued. "That's what's really unconstitutional about debates over teaching evolution in Roseville."
Caldwell said in an interview that he supports the intelligent design view of how life's complexity has arisen, but seeks only to have that view and others that challenge "orthodoxy" represented in impartial biology classes. The Roseville high school district, Caldwell argues, is unconstitutionally excluding supplemental evolution materials from biology classes.
The new UC Berkeley Web site on evolution contains entire sections on "potential pitfalls" and "overcoming roadblocks" that teachers may encounter as they teach evolution.
To overcome one roadblock, for example, teachers are urged to point out to students that "there are no alternative scientific theories to account for the observations explained by evolutionary theory. Alternative 'theories' that have been proposed for insertion into the science curriculum have not been supported by valid science and are often based on belief rather than science."
And a "potential pitfall," the Web site notes, might come when a student asks whether a biology teacher "believes" in evolution. The recommended answer: "No, I accept the fact that the Earth is very old and life has changed over billions of years because that is what the evidence tells us. Science is not about belief -- it is about making inferences based on evidence."
To Caldwell, the entire Web site is "a shocking misuse of the University of California's resources," and proof that UC's only aim is to "indoctrinate" students rather than offer them legitimate education.
But Judith Scotchmoor, director of education at the UC paleontology museum, said the new Web site is not about indoctrination or religion. Rather, she said, it is a "nonconfrontational way to help biology teachers cope with the confusions their students may have about evolution, and to help students understand the difference between science and religion in the controversies over evolution that keep endlessly cropping up in schools all over the country. "
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