That radical fundamentalists what their views printed in text books is neither surprising nor all that concerning. That our school system has come to the point where we have political battles over what our children are forced to memorize (whether it comes from scientists or theologians) is ridiculous.
The ‘Science’ community losses these flights because they are trying to fight indoctrination with indoctrination. Forcing children to accept Creation theory doesn’t serve to advance a child’s understanding of science… But neither does forcing them to except Darwinism. Science isn’t a collection of facts and theories – it is learning to ask questions, make observations and draw conclusions.
If our school children graduated highschool with scientific skills and the ability to question and search for answers it wouldn’t matter what origin story they believed. This is easily seen in that people from all faiths and creeds have contributed to science. We don’t need airheads quoting Darwin anymore than we need airheads quoting Falwell.
Yep! I might not have seen it quite that way but for a science teacher I had (in the Bible Belt) who was also a preacher. He loved his religion AND his science, and he was up front about it. For him, it was all about having a mind-blowing experience discovering the universe he believed was created by his God. No controversy - just believe as you choose, experiment as you see fit, maybe they’re connected.
Regardless of who came up with it or why, I’m just fine with a school telling kids there are many different ideas about it all. I barely remember anything that teacher taught that year - so much gets repeated over and over. But I remember his TREATMENT of science perfectly! His eyes lit up as he spoke! Dude was happy we were there! He didn’t teach me ‘stuff’. Instead, he taught me why science is so cool and left me excited about all its possibilities. I wonder more about what we lose by artificially separating Science and Philosophy than I do about addressing both. (Tesla, anyone?)
Pro tip: Nobody quotes Darwin, outside of History and Philosophy of Science (a totally different subject) or as generic frontispiece boilerplate (he has some reasonably poetic lines that aren’t nearly wrong enough to be a problem, so he makes for good titles 'n chapter headers fodder). His role is pretty much entirely historical background material at this point (some of his fieldwork may still be valid, if dated). Really, almost any biology before contemporary genetics is getting close to stamp collecting with a side of vivisection.
There are a great many things wrong with homogenized contemporary science curricula; but the amount of time spent memorizing Master Darwin’s Unaltered Truths (zero) is not one of them.
Thanks for the “pro tip” about the last line in my post. You missed pointing out that the time spent memorizing Dr. Falwell is also not the problem with creationist science curricula. Clearly this statement was just a literary device to juxtapose the worthlessness of just regurgitating other people’s thoughts/works. I also think that the point of the post is pretty clear – that you don’t teach science by indoctrinating students.
When responding to a post, I think you would do better to respond to the content of the post itself rather than providing “pro tips” about why one or more detail in an illustrative statement are incorrect.
