Re: Challenges to teaching biology

Kids challenging their teachers -- how awful! How can any learning happen
unless the kids are a bunch of compliant mindless blobs? OK, so they
challenged the teacher based on some YEC stuff. At least they aren't afraid
to ask, challenge, debate, and question orthodoxy. I wish they were making
challenges on stronger grounds, but at least they're rising above the usual
apathetic high school crowds. And I'm pretty sure a good teacher can handle
it, and even use it for good pedantic purposes.

On 4/1/06, Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu> wrote:
>
> 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 Sun Apr 2 20:24:52 2006