Now that Twitter and Facebook have been invented, I don’t usually put up blog posts that simply link to someone else’s posts. (Although I wonder if that policy is a mistake.) But this morning I put up a link to a post at Jerry Coyne’s blog, and it was almost immediately deleted from Facebook. (The Twitter entry was fine, of course.) I wouldn’t even have known, except that someone commented that it had been “flagged as inappropriate by Facebook users.”
Of course, Facebook being Facebook, I have no idea whether this is a nefarious conspiracy or simple incompetence. Probably both. In any event, you should go check out the post, which comments on this YouTube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkBmhM0R2A0
It’s a compilation of the answers given by contestants in the Miss USA contest to a simple question: “Should evolution be taught in schools?” Miss California, Alyssa Campanella, who eventually won the contest, gave a strong pro-science answer that will bring a smile to your face. At least, if you are finished crying and throwing objects at your computer monitor after seeing some of the other answers. Due to the vagaries of alphabetical order, Miss Alabama comes first, and it’s not pretty.
For the most part, the contestants are interested in being good politicians and keeping everybody happy, not in staking out courageous stances in the science/religion debates. But that’s exactly what’s so depressing: here we are, in the most advanced country in the world (albeit in its waning years), and it’s considered controversial whether we should teach science to our children. The question wasn’t even “should we teach creationism,” which is actually a harder issue (although still very easy). It was just whether we should teach straightforward science at all. Very sad indeed.
Way OT, but there are examples in numerous other industrialized nations that could provide guidance for how to improve public education in the USA without dismantling it. In fact, I’m not aware of any nation that has superior scores on science tests to ours that lacks a public educational system. Many of them are robust democracies, so public opinion can, in practice, yield superior results compared to the American example. Certainly there’s need for reform, but if the rest of the world provides any relevant examples, it may very well be that a public education system is necessary to get the widespread science literacy needed to make it function sustainably. If public education can’t work in the USA, we would be a remarkable aberration.
But I can’t dispute the assertion that it’s functioning sub-optimally here.
The sorry state of science education in gradeschool in America must have something to do with these girls’ confusion. I remember being taught the “five step scientific method” as a rote list of things I had to memorize and reproduce on tests. When you reproduced the concept but not broken into the exact five steps, or in exactly the correct order, you got a low grade since work was graded on a “rubric” with 20 points for each category (so breaking them into 3 steps with the correct content gave you a 60% automatically). The confusion about what it means for something to be an acceptable “theory” must result from the fact that, unfortunately, the way science is taught by rote exactly resembles the way you learn in religious school — by blindly accepting ideas that need to be reproduced on a test. Many children do not learn about science as a means of establishing ideas through evidence and critical thinking.
Incidentally, I think we also have to be careful about trying to teach science to children too early, before they can critically analyze ideas themselves. The point is not to “know” evolution so that you can reproduce on a standardized test (this seems to almost fall into some measure of literacy), but to understand why it is well supported even if this means you must attain this “literacy” a little later in your educational development.
What irritates me about the ‘teach both views and let the kids decide’ is the totally unjustified assumption that the kids are competent to evaluate the issue.
Growing up (many) years ago, evolution was taught and the few students who were seriously religious functioned in a rather schizoid manner – the part of their lives involving religion was kept completely separate from the rest of their lives. They didn’t give any thought to the conflict until they were later challenged to act in the public world in accordance with their private, religious views. Some dropped the religious view, some became vociferous fundamentalist and some just kept being schizoid.
People believe whatever makes them comfortable.
@MM Thomas First off, good job using anecdotal evidence to argue your point and I counter with an anecdote of my own: I live in a very conservative area yet all five biology teachers I had in secondary school (and an Environmental Science teacher) explained evolution correctly. So I guess Public School teachers aren’t morons.
Second, so sense you have abolished public schools (who are legally obligated to teach the scientific consensus) all the parents who are creationists will push that on their kids, and since most parents in America no longer have a solid grasp of anything their kids are taught after Elementary school, none of these students will learn anything that they need.
Also, so what happens to all the students with neglectful/abusive parents? Will they even learn to read? How about instead of insulting your kid’s teachers, maybe talk to them civilly and voice your concerns? Maybe these teachers have been verbally abused by small-minded overly zealous parents, and if they thought they could get away with teaching it they would?
Yes around only 20% of high school teachers teach evolution, and that is a tragedy and we must fix it. However, cutting most children in America’s access to education won’t help, it will destroy this country. Those of us who understand and accept science need to voice our concern, and fix the problems, pay attention to your state congress and if a pro-creation bill rears its ugly head contact your representative and get other’s to contact them as well. Yes it can be hard and frustrating, but that is what happens when you live in a diverse republic.
I guess though screaming loudly and insulting people is a lot easier than trying to create a positive change in the world.
The amount of arrogance in this blog post and its comments is astounding. Many of you seem legitimately offended over the subject matter, and blindly oppose views that contradict yours. How can you be so ignorant in the name of science? How can you be so horribly biased?
You need to embrace and consider alternatives at every turn, not shut them out. I was personally taught several different theories in High School and I feel more enlightened as a result.
Scientists were laughed at when they proposed the Earth Revolved around the sun, and when they suggested the Earth was round. If “Scientific fact” remained as-is, we would still be teaching those wrong ideas in schools today. I’m thankful our scientific fore-fathers didn’t carry such a nasty closed-minded attitude, or we would still be banging rocks together to make fire.
I must admit, I’m kind of leaning towards unsubscribing from this RSS feed and leaving with a bad taste in my mouth. I’m ashamed to be an Atheist science-lover at this moment.
Bill, I think that you need to consider the following. If you step off a cliff, you will fall, due to gravity. It’s as established a scientific fact as can be. I think that you are reacting to the above comments as being arrogant because the commenters regard evolution as having been established just as firmly.
There are of course still interesting scientific questions about evolution, just as there are still interesting scientific questions about gravity. But no (real) scientist seriously questions that life evolved on earth according to natural selection any more than they question whether you will fall off that cliff.
What is appalling (and the comments above to this effect may also feed your perception of arrogance) is that evolution by natural selection is not taught with the same level of certitude as gravity in our schools. The sole reason this is not done is religion. We’ve done a great disservice to generations of students as a result.
This is a good probing question about someone’s values. The question was “Should evolution be taught in schools?” Bible study schools, technical schools, grade schools, high schools, private religious schools, seminaries? The questions doesn’t say, probably because it’s the poise in the response that’s important. Yes, many of the answers were inane. But the questions is just plain stupid with no chance to qualify. Did we all assume this was meant as public schools? Do we really think evolution should be taught in art school, trade schools, and religious study schools? It is really hard for me to agree that someone at Bob Jones University should be taught evolution.
We’re all judging these silly contestants based on how we heard the question, which probably differs from how the contestants (under some pressure) interpreted them. Now if they asked whether evolution should be taught in a science class and that generated the responses in the compilation then I think we could get our knickers in a righteous twist.
I may watch this again because they are all so stunning….
Thanks again for a great post Sean!
“in the most advanced country in the world”
In what sense?
Yes, the US will turn up at the top in some things simply because of the large population. Unless that is “advanced” per se, one definitely has to talk about some measure of advancedness (however one defines it) per unit population size. Does the US still come up tops anywhere? If so, where?
I can think of a couple of dozen countries which, though not perfect, are certainly more advanced in the US, with “advanced” meaning that I would prefer to live there.
As Oscar Wilde said, the US is the only country which went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in-between.
Bah. Before evolution is taught in schools, the philosophy of science should be. Then at least kids would understand that our current theory of evolution is an application of Occam’s Razor to a bunch of theories that could explain the way that humans came into being, that it is a theory (and what a theory is), that it is just a model (and what a model is), and that it is incomplete.
And (#34) that, as scientific explanations go, it is much, much, much better than creationism, which is the “alternative” in these conversations.
@33 RE: Wilde quote
Mr. Helbig neglects to mention that Wilde died well over 100 yrs. ago & therefore obviously wouldn’t know what’s going on now. He also conveniently forgets that if it weren’t for the U.S. there’d be no civilization in Europe either, due to the activities of certain Germans approx. 40 yrs. after Wilde’s death … (g)
@Steve Turrentine:
True, but these ‘activities’ happened themselves over 60 years ago. And what does this have to do with Sean’s statement anyway? He wrote “here we are, in the most advanced country in the world” and not “60 years ago, we were…”.
37. makes the correct reply to 36. Another reply to 36. is that all serious historians agree that the primary reason for the success of Hitler was the Treaty of Versailles, which literally imposed reparations on the children’s children’s children (and Germany didn’t even start the first World War, they just lost).
“The question wasn’t even “should we teach creationism,” which is actually a harder issue (although still very easy).”
^This is exactly how I feel. I’m not mad at silly pageant contestants, many of whom probably come from the most conservative fringes of society. I’m frustrated that some pageant organizer thought that evolution, not creationism, was the more controversial and school-inappropriate concept.
I also wonder how answers would have been different if the question had been phrased the other way, particularly given pageant girls’ desire to be nice and inclusive. Would we at least have gotten one “No creationism” response if it was phrased differently?
@35: And what the meaning of the word “better” means the way you use, i.e., most probable given some prior expectation (in this case, the prior is that any phenomena that man has yet to observe is unlikely – a higher power, etc).
They should also know that if you chose some sort of other prior – like an equal chance of there being a higher power or not (which is perhaps more reasonable, since we cannot directly observe it, and non-observations are should not be weighted heavily, ala the bayesian solution to the black ravens paradox) – then alternative theories, like the universe being created 100 years ago and made to look like it was created 15 billion years ago – are perhaps “better”.
Induction is all kind of subjective, you see. That’s why reasonable people can disagree on things like this – and why people that dismiss other people’s beliefs out of hand as illogical or irrational are, in fact, themselves being irrational.
A lot of things about America are sad today. Unfortunately anglosaxon protestant objectivism and randian free market economics have turned out to be a poison pill for America.
America has extreme high incidence of creationism and AGW denialism for the same reason. The negative correlation of religiosity with cognitive ability.
Should Math Be Taught in Schools?
“Math is just a theory….” Teach the controversy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBv2CFTSWU
@30. Bill: “Scientists were laughed at when they proposed the Earth Revolved around the sun, and when they suggested the Earth was round. If “Scientific fact” remained as-is, we would still be teaching those wrong ideas in schools today. I’m thankful our scientific fore-fathers didn’t carry such a nasty closed-minded attitude, or we would still be banging rocks together to make fire.”
Once the science of heliocentrism was proven, nobody was laughing at it (actually, it had more to do with religious leaders opposing it – sound familiar?). And, contrary to popular belief, it has been known for a long, long time that the earth was round. Do you have any examples of people laughing at that idea, or is that just a strawman?
That you think that it was the scientific community that fought these ideas is odd, to say the least. And making a comparison with evolution through natural selection vs “creationism” is simply bizarre.
@Ron: That’s a horrible analogy. Math is not a theory. Evolution is. They just both happen to be models.
Math is taught primarily because it 1) is useful for getting through life and building more specific models for getting through life, and 2) it exercises critical thinking skills.
Thanks for posting the video though! It really codifies how misguided your argument is!!
Kansas hurts! Couldn’t go on. “It shouldn’t be taught because there are so many different views of it”. No words!
By the way: the war on evolution isn’t just in the US. I happened to dial a catholic church radio in Spain trying to brain-wash the audience against evolution.
It just doesn’t catch here, fortunately.
@Federico
The difference is that in America the flat-earthers have power. One of the two major political parties is wholly religious, white conservative christian.
Its the electoral demographics of Distributed Jesusland™
Assume that one of the “contestants”, (snort) gave an answer that caused a paradigm shift in the thinking of educators and philosophers of science. A hugely profound, epiphany generating concept. It wouldn’t help her overcome a flat chest and kankles.
Why should evolution be taught at schools? When I was at high school I distinctly remember my science teacher carefully skirting around the issue and saying stuff like ‘who knows whether life really evolved as stated or whether God was there guiding things along the way’. Some of you may be horrified at this and would strongly prefer that the teacher had told me that life evolved, and religion is stupid. But consider what would have happened if my teacher had taught me that. At the time I was very much under the influence of my strongly religious parents and I’m sure I would have rejected science as a danger to my faith. Instead I avoided a confrontation between my religious upbringing and my burgeoning exposure to scientific thought, and continued on to study science at university. This confrontation then happened several years later when I was much more able to think independantly of my parents influence and decide that all reasonable evidence pointed towards an earth that is 4.5 billion years old, and on which life has evolved.
Perhaps the hatred and ignorance of science in America is partly fueled by the teaching of evolution in schools?
@49: The problem with that is that this argument can be used to justify anything. Also, your last sentence is probably wrong since in countries where evolution is taught in schools with no ifs, and or buts there is much less opposition to science than in God’s Own Country (which, as Pat Robertson recently informed us, is going down the drain anyway since the US has now “embraced” gay marriage).