Teaching Evolution in Florida
I strongly recommend every educator with even a passing interest in science read this story on David Campbell, a science teacher from Florida who helped to write the new standards that “Evolutionis the fundamental concept underlying all biology.” I expected some of the students to be hostile, but by far the most cringe-worthy passage came with describing another teacher:
With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”
Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”
This means, of course, that she decided to spend time axe-grinding with her students instead of teaching them actual biology.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
How often we forget that our job is not necessarily to teach them what to think, but rather HOW to think. Even I sometimes have to remind myself to leave my EGO at home.
“Great Spirit, please give me the strength to know when to keep my pie hole shut!” (Ancient prayer of the enlightened ones).
September 1st, 2008 at 7:42 am
Kia ora Jeff!
While I agree with you in principle there comes a time when the leader/mentor/facilitator/teacher/tutor has to bite bullet. If what is being thought is not aligned by how they are thinking, then the target’s not being hit no matter how good the aim appears to be. It is too easy to mistake the ‘how’ for the ‘what’. Science is a discipline, not a set of rules. There are many ways of assessing if the target’s been hit, and if ‘what’ is thought is involved a priori then the learner should be able to also explain the ‘how’ in support of it.
Ka kite