Challenges to teaching biology

To all:

This is a very sobering account of the reality of teaching biology in
some school districts. I happen to know the teacher being featured
in this article. He is one of best biology teachers in state and
nation.

Keith

__________________________________________

   Los Angeles Times

   Testing Darwin's Teachers

By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer

March 31, 2006

LIBERTY, Mo. -- Monday morning, Room 207: First day of a unit on the
origins of life. Veteran biology teacher Al Frisby switches on the
overhead projector and braces himself.

As his students rummage for their notebooks, Frisby introduces his
central theme: Every creature on Earth has been shaped by random
mutation and natural selection -- in a word, by evolution.

The challenges begin at once.

"Isn't it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?" sophomore
Chris Willett demands. " 'Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they
mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they
couldn't."

Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but
Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his
friends, drawing laughter.

Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the
whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two
lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He's about to
start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: "How
are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could
just be some deformed raccoon."

  From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: "Those
are real bones that someone actually found? You're not just making
this up?"

"No, I am not just making it up," Frisby says.

At least half the students in this class of 14 don't believe him,
though, and they're not about to let him off easy.

Two decades of political and legal maneuvering on evolution has spilled
over into public schools, and biology teachers are struggling to
respond. Loyal to the accounts they've learned in church, students are
taking it upon themselves to wedge creationism into the classroom,
sometimes with snide comments but also with sophisticated questions --
and a fervent faith.

As sophomore Daniel Read put it: "I'm going to say as much about God as
I can in school, even if the teachers can't."

Such challenges have become so disruptive that some teachers dread the
annual unit on evolution -- or skip it altogether.

In response, the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science is
distributing a 24-page guide to teaching the scientific principles
behind evolution, starting in kindergarten. The group also has issued
talking points for teachers flustered by demands to present "both
sides."

The annual science teachers convention next week in Anaheim will cover
similar ground, with workshops such as "Teaching Evolution in a Climate
of Controversy."

"We're not going to roll over and take this," said Alan I. Leshner, the
executive publisher of the journal Science. "These teachers are facing
phenomenal pressure. They need help."

About half of all Americans dismiss as preposterous the scientific
consensus that life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor over
millions of years. Some hold to a literal reading of Genesis: God
created the universe about 6,000 years ago. Others accept an ancient
cosmos but take the variety, complexity and beauty of Earth's creatures
as proof that life was crafted by an intelligent designer.

Religious accounts of life's origins have generally been kept out of the
science classroom, sometimes by court order. But polls show a majority
of Americans are unhappy with the evolution-only approach.

Daniel Read, for instance, considers it his Christian duty to expose his
classmates to the truths he finds in the Bible, starting with the six
days of creation. It's his way, he said, of counterbalancing the
textbook, which devotes three chapters to evolution but just one
paragraph to creationism. A soft-spoken teen with shaggy hair and baggy
pants, Daniel prepares carefully for his mission in this well-educated,
affluent and conservative suburb of 28,000, just outside Kansas City,
Mo. He studies DVDs distributed by Answers in Genesis, a "creation
evangelism" ministry devoted to training children to question evolution.

Other students gather ammunition from sermons at church, or from the
dozens of websites that criticize evolution as a God-denying sham. They
interrupt lectures to expound on the inaccuracies of carbon dating; to
disparage transitional fossils as frauds; to show photos of ancient
footprints that they think prove humans and dinosaurs walked side by
side.

Most will learn what they need to pass the test, but some make their
skepticism clear by putting their heads down on their desks or even
stalking out of class.

Liberty High School senior Sarah Hopkins was proud of her response when
a botany teacher brought up evolution last year: "I asked, 'Have you
ever read the Bible? Have you ever gone to church?' "

Such personal questions can make teachers uncomfortable, but they're
fairly easy to deflect. Far tougher are the science-based queries that
force teachers to defend a theory they may not ever have studied in
depth.

"If a teacher is making a claim that land animals evolved into whales,
students should ask: 'What precisely is involved? How does the fur turn
into blubber, how do the nostrils move, how does the tiny tail turn into
a great big fluke?' " said John Morris, president of the Institute for
Creation Research near San Diego. "Evolution is so unsupportable, if you
insist on more information, the teacher will quickly run out of
credibility," he said.

Anxious to forestall such challenges, nearly one in five teachers makes
a point of avoiding the word "evolution" in class -- even when they're
presenting the topic, according to a survey by the National Science
Teachers Assn.

"They're saying they don't know how to respond.... They haven't done the
research the kids have done on this," said Linda Froschauer, the group's
president-elect.

In a classroom cluttered with paper models of DNA, newspaper clippings
about global warming and oddities such as a four-eared pig in
formaldehyde, Frisby parries his students' questions patiently but with
a bit of disappointment.

For the first 27 years of his career, he taught life's origins without
controversy. Then in 1999, the Kansas Board of Education deleted
evolution from the mandatory science curriculum.

Frisby was teaching biology at the time in Shawnee Mission, Kan., and he
was determined not to alter his curriculum. His students, however,
seemed emboldened by the board's action.

The daughter of a local minister took to bringing in creationist
research that she thought proved Charles Darwin wrong. That year, more
than a third of the students wrote in their class evaluations that they
did not accept their teacher's account of how life emerged.

Kansas restored evolution to the science curriculum in 2001 after
conservatives lost their majority on the board. A subsequent election
again shifted the balance, and last year the board issued a mandate that
still stands: Students must be taught that the theory of evolution is a
"historical narrative" based on circumstantial evidence. They must also
learn specific criticisms of evolution.

Though he retired from his Kansas teaching job in 2002 for personal
reasons, Frisby remains active in efforts there to elect a more liberal
state school board. His job across the state line in Missouri is less
political; Missouri does not require teachers to introduce criticisms of
evolution or alternative accounts of life's origins. Nonetheless, those
views come up in Room 207 every year.

Toward the end of his second class one recent morning, Frisby held up an
old issue of National Geographic. The cover asked in bold type: "Was
Darwin Wrong?"

"Yes!" one student called.

Another backed him up: "Yes!"

Six or eight other voices joined in. Frisby quieted them and opened to
the article inside, which began with the one-word answer: "No."

"It's my job to show you the overwhelming evidence for evolution," he
said.

"What about the other side?" Jeff Paul called. An approving murmur swept
the room.

Frisby, 59, rarely gets angry at such interruptions; even his most
skeptical students praise his willingness to listen. He has attended two
creationist conferences to hear their evidence firsthand; he digs out
articles that respond to their doubts; he'll even sit down with a
student to talk about God -- though only after class.

Growing up in nearby Independence, Mo., Frisby learned the biblical
creation account from his mother, a Sunday school teacher. "I believed
it without question," he said. "It was literal to me."

He doesn't remember hearing about evolution in high school, but then he
didn't pay much attention to academics. It wasn't until college that he
discovered a passion for biology.

One evening in 1968, Frisby was dissecting a shark's heart for a night
course. As he spread the organ out in front of him, studying the looping
valves and arteries, he had what he can only describe, with wonder, as a
religious experience. "All those beautiful arches coming off the heart
-- it was just too perfect," he said. "I thought to myself, 'God
couldhave created this animal just this way.' "

That satisfied his religious nature. But the scientist within him
wouldn't let the matter rest. Dissecting more animal hearts, Frisby
found the same awe-inspiring beauty. He also came to understand how an
organ as complex as the heart could evolve; he could see the progression
there on his lab table, from one chamber to two to four.

Frisby still believed that God created the universe, but his faith
couldn't tell him what happened next; to answer that question, he
concluded, he would need science.

At 22, he decided the best way to honor his faith was to hold it sacred
in his heart -- and to keep it out of his lab.

Casting about for ways to explain that to his students, Frisby tried a
new approach this year: He strapped a leather tool belt around his
waist. Life, he told the class, required a variety of tools. Sometimes
they would find it helpful to use art or music to help them make sense
of their world. Sometimes they would use religion.

"We're in science class now, so we're going to use our science tools,"
he told them. "I don't want to be in a debate about religion or
literature or art. My job is to explain evolution so you can understand
it. Whether you accept it or not, that's your business."

On the wall behind him, a poster read: "Courage is what it takes to
stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and
listen."

To engage students who might be inclined to tune out, Frisby fills his
lesson plans with hands-on activities.

In one, he'll unspool a long roll of adding-machine tape and have the
kids make a timeline of Earth's history. They'll be able to see at a
glance how long it took for a vast diversity of creatures to evolve,
from the humble worm 430 million years ago to the first fish 345 million
years ago and on through dinosaurs and mammals. On his timeline, early
man won't appear until the very end of the paper.

Frisby hopes the exercise will make an impression on students like Chris
Willett, who offered this rebuttal to evolution: "I think it's kind of
strange that they can find all these dinosaur fossils from what you say
is millions of years ago, but they can't find any transitional human
fossils."

Frisby promised to show the class several fossils that document the
halting and gradual evolution from apes to humans. Then he reminded them
not to expect equal numbers of human and dinosaur remains, because
hominids emerged only recently, while dinosaurs ruled the planet for
nearly 200 million years.

At that, sophomore Derik Montgomery snapped to attention. "I heard that
dinosaurs are only thousands of years old, like 6,000. Not millions," he
said.

"That's wrong," Frisby responded briskly. "What can I tell you? You
can't believe everything you read."

Sprawled out across his chair, Derik muttered: "You can't believe
everything you hear in here, either."

Frisby put up his next transparency.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times |
Received on Sat Apr 1 18:21:53 2006