Among the Educationoids

MC gives a tour de force performance at  Pull on Superman's Cape in reply to a satirical piece by the Commissar on the move to open up education to "alternative views" of evolutionary theory. MC counters with  the ghosts of Simplicio, Salviati, and Sagredo from Galileo's Dialogue in a  clever and well-informed assault on dogmatic thinking in the educational establishment.  Both are excellent, funny, creative articles, and I am inclined to agree with both.

The Commissar is right to ridicule the present trend toward a completely low-impact curriculum in today's public education, but MC  is saying exactly the same thing, with just a bit of a twist. He reminds us that where there is pseudo-scientific dogma (like astrology, and in my opinion creationism and dumbed-down intelligent design) there is also scientific dogma, and a profound aversion to questioning  the accepted wisdom for fear of promoting religion, being non-PC, etc. The near-hysterical fear of religion in the public schools is, I believe, only a symptom of a more thoroughgoing aversion to uncertainty and  intellectual complexity. Intelligent design is caricatured as "God wants it that way" just as evolution is caricatured as "Darwin wants it that way."  In this debate, caricatures rule--you are either pro-science or pro-religion, either pro-Darwin or pro-Jerry Falwell. Educators,whether secular or religious, are not dealing with the complexities of theories such as Darwinism and intelligent design; they are choosing their favorite caricature and supporting it with knee-jerk polemic rather than informed debate.

Comments

[JWebb]

MC is also braving a very thorough exegesis of the book of Revelation. Highly recommended.

[gail]

I saw that, but I haven't had the fortitude to read it yet.

[Diana]

Beautifully said, Gail. Caricature can sometimes be the worst form of flattery.

JW - The Revelation series is absorbing. I haven't done bible studies in [some] years.

[Diana]

Dear heaven ... look at those Google ads!

[gail]

IT KNOWS . . . .ALL

[SeanH]

Google ads are spooky. The problem I have with the ID side of these debates is that I believe that it's disingenuous to present ID as an alternative to evolution. These are apples and oranges as theories; evolution is a scientific theory while ID is a religious/philosophical theory that borrows heavily from science. ID is interesting and warrants exploring, but it doesn't belong in a high-school science class.

I don't think that it's dogmatic to think that high-school children should be learning the standard scientific views held by biologists in their biology classes rather than being distracted by someone's pet philosophical theories.

[Jeff G]

I don't think that it's dogmatic to think that high-school children should be learning the standard scientific views held by biologists in their biology classes rather than being distracted by someone's pet philosophical theories.

Bingo.

Intelligent design has to do with first causes, which Darwinian silence doesn't address.

[JWebb]

Isn't Intelligent Design just a kinder, gentler form of Creationism? I tuned out of that debate a decade ago.

[Diana]

I dunno ... I'd like to see, at least, a mention of different theses, at a minimum, to encourage research and dialogue about different points of view.

[gail]

Sean & Jeff, you're absolutely right about ID and evolution being apples and oranges. There's no reason why evolution shouldn't be part of an ID reality or part of a multi-universe reality or whatever. I blame the creationists for turning it into a caricature for polemical purposes, and I wouldn't want to see it taught in that distorted form. But I don't think high school students are too young to hear about alternative ways of looking at the origins of the universe or about evolution for that matter. It isn't as if every biologist agrees on the mechanisms of evolution--you have the gradualists vs. the saltationists, for instance. I think it would be a very good thing for the schools to admit that there are questions that haven't been answered. When I say education is dogmatic, I mean there's too much certitude.It's as if they're trying to argue for one side or another on a debating team rather than figure out how the universe works. I remember learning about electrons spinning around their solid nucleus like little planets around the sun, and I remember being a little nonplussed when I found out much later that my science teachers didn't know what the hell they were talking about. I would have been much, much happier if they had told me that what they were showing me was a model based on a hypothesis that they didn't even know was true or not--it would have been more honest and more interesting, quite frankly.

I didn't really want to argue these points at all, dang it, just send people over to check out MC and the Commissar, but now I guess I'm stuck.

[Diana]

One of my pet peeves is that high school curricula don't establish a process of study and research required in post-secondary education. When the focus is on only established principles, students get lazy and rarely think outside the box.

[Diana]

Now you've done it, Gail.

[Ana]

JW--there are creationists and then there are Creationists. Young earthers who think that the world is flat, was created in six days, and had all of the animals as they appear today are not IDs. IDs think that there was something that put the whole thing in place and set it into motion. God. First Cause. Then there are naturalists and there are Naturalists. Some believe that God is behind it all (IDs, to some degree) and some believe that it was random (chance-law). So the field is pretty broad and the old nomanclature doesn't work so well any more. Here's a link that might help:
www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1153

[gail]

JW, ID is unfortunately presented as a kind of highbrow creationism, mainly by the creationists themselves, who improperly apply it to small-scale operations like evolution. ID doesn't oppose evolution in any reasonable definition of ID. It's more a mathematical/
philosophical theory regarding the very fine mathematical tolerances required to have had differentiated matter come out of the Big Bang. What the ID people say is that basically you have to posit either design or an infinite number of universes existing in parallel--the ID people prefer the design theory and many others (like Stephen Hawking, if I'm not mistaken) prefer the multiple-universe theory. Polkinghorne is probably the best person to read on ID since he's both a physicist and a philosopher and he writes in a very accessible but not overly simplistic style.

[gail]

I'll have to go back over my damn post now and make sure that it's clear I'm NOT saying that ID is an alternative to evolution. Crap. You people would have to come over here and READ this stuff.

[Ana]

jinx! You owe me a primordial soup!

[gail]

Do the scare quotes around "alternative views" help?

Ana, that was probably SUPPOSED to happen,if you know what I mean.

[JWebb]

Thanks folks, but I do know the difference. Intelligent Design was actually embedded within the Creationist's camp, but their overall approach was so ham-handed it got lost in the dogma fight. And you're right about Hawking, Gail. He also has flirted with the anthropic principle, which, don't even get me started on that.

[gail]

Well, embedded in the sense that they glommed onto it.

[gail]

Sort of cargo-cult like.

[Rob B]

Open deal from a close minded fundimentalist: You don't have to teach creationism or ID in school if you won't teach morality and "diversity" anymore.

I'm probably atypical in that I'm a creationist that doesn't care if they teach Darwin because the 7th part of the scientific theory is that you leave you hypothesis open to later data. What's wrong with that?

[gail]

Hawking is kind of a lame ass philosopher. He should definitely stick to physics and not try to debate first causes, etc., as he did in A Brief History of Time. Aquinas would have wiped the floor with him.

[gail]

Rob, I agree with your point about hypothesis. It's what the scientific method is all about. But what do you mean when you say you're a creationist or a fundamentalist anyway? You guys aren't all cut from the same mold. If you believe God created the universe, you're no different from most every other theist in the world. Does that make everyone who believes God created the universe a "creationist"? These labels drive me nuts sometimes.

[JWebb]

Gail - It's a short drive.

[SeanH]

Gail,

One of the things I love about your place is that we can talk rather than argue so sorry if I came off as argumentative. I agree with you about there being too much certitude in classes and I think Diana's makes a good point on including study and research. If our schools were doing an outstanding job of teaching kids science I'd have less of a problem with including some alternative ideas on the origins of the universe or evolution.

Our public schools do a piss poor job of teaching science though. Many of these kids will never take a science course after Biology and a huge percentage of Americans are incredibly ignorant when it comes to science. I don't think these kids are too young to hear about alternatives. I do think it's expecting a bit much for 16 year-olds to understand that evolution is science and ID is not if they are both taught in a science class. A half hour of looking around the blogosphere should be enough to find dozens of college graduates that can't make that distiction.