Evolution Must Be Taught in Public Schools

[peter]

This subject has been debated for very very long time in the past. In the religion dominated societies, such debate will continue.
In all religions, the heaven is where the Gods live, it will be very interesting to know what is the percentage of astronomers and cosmologists believe in God, what is the percentage of biologists who clone life believe in that God creates lives.

[REASON]

Originally Posted by peter

This subject has been debated for very very long time in the past. In the religion dominated societies, such debate willl continue.

I agree. But this debate should reside in places such as these forums, not in the science classroom.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by peter

it will be very interesting to know what is the percentage of astronomers and cosmologists believe in God, what is the percentage of biologists who clone life believe in that God creates lives.

These are interesting question, and much studied.

In general in the past roughly 100 years (prior to this, publishing and statistical methodology is too unreliable for simple comparison), data indicates that the fraction of scientists affirming belief in the existence of a “personal God” (defined as a "God to whom one may pray in the expectation of receiving an answer") and the related belief in “personal immortality” (life after death), is much smaller than among the general population. “Famous” scientists (eg; NAS members and people appearing in published lists of “distinguished scientists”) are less likely to affirm these beliefs than other scientists. Biologists are less likely than scientists in other disciplines.

Even more interestingly, these beliefs among scientists are decreasing fairly rapidly, from 32/37% in 1914, to 10% in 1998. Though I’m unaware of any sound supporting data, I strongly suspect that this trend extends back at least 3 centuries – Among famous scientists such as those in the Royal Society ca. 1700 (eg: Isaac Newton), I strongly suspect that the fraction was close to that of the general population, 90%+.

The 7-8/2007 American Scientist article “Evolution, Religion and Free Will” is a well-written discussion of the subject.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by CraigD

These are interesting question, and much studied.

And sometimes numbers contain some surprises!

I found this in yesterday's SF Comical:

Originally Posted by Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason"

In 2006, a Gallup Poll found that only 30 percent of Americans continue to believe in the literal truth of the Bible, with its six days of creation - a 10 percent decline over the last three decades. It is difficult to reconcile that finding with the results of a 2005 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, indicating that only 48 percent of American adults accept evolution (even if guided by God) and only 26 percent are convinced of the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. If only 30 percent believe that the Bible is literally true, why do so many more Americans reject the evolutionary theory considered settled science in the rest of the developed world?

The answer is ignorance - and Americans may be no more ignorant about evolution than they are about other aspects of science. According to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation over the past two decades, more than two-thirds of adults are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 Americans - nearly 63 years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima - do not understand what radiation is or its effects on the body. One in 5 believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.

This knowledge deficit has nothing to do with religion, but it does point to a stunning failure of American public schooling at the elementary and secondary level.

Its actually mostly *not* because of deeply held religious beliefs: that's only a small--and shrinking--minority (sorry folks!). The real problem is a combination of "science isn't cool" and the "no child left behind" emphasis on "the basics" where science is considered as much of a luxury as art or music (ask any teacher or parent with a kid in school right now!).

For NASA, space is still a high priority,
Buffy

[REASON]

20 percent of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Pathetic!

Well you know what they say, "ignorance is bliss."

[The D.S.]

I bet we would see a significant increase in public knowledge of such basic things like the Earth revolving around the Sun ect. if only the public school system was given additional funding by the government. Do they not realize how essential a quality education is to societies future?

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by The D.S.

Do they not realize how essential a quality education is to societies future?

Of course they do, and that might be part of the reason our education is so poor. It's a lot easier to control and force your views and policies on a population of uneducated sheeple than on highly educated critical thinkers.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I found [URL="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/12/EDCPV0DED.DTL"]this in yesterday's SF Comical[/UR:
… One in 5 believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.

I’m so flabbergast by statistics like these that my first instinct is to mistrust it (newspaper articles are often spectacularly wrong in their use of statistics), but this one’s confirmed by this 1999 article on Gallup’s website:

Originally Posted by Gallop.com article

The results below are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,016 adults, 18 years and older, conducted June 25-27, 1999. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
…
As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?

Earth revolves around the sun 79%
Sun revolves around the earth 18
No opinion 3

Originally Posted by REASON

20 percent of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Pathetic!

But no cause for Americans to feel singled-our in our embarrassment:

Originally Posted by the same article

These results are comparable to those found in Germany when a similar question was asked there in 1996; in response to that poll, 74% of Germans gave the correct answer, while 16% thought the sun revolved around the earth, and 10% said they didn't know. When the question was asked in Great Britain that same year, 67% answered correctly, 19% answered incorrectly, and 14% didn't know.

What stands out to me in this is that the Germans and English polled had such a high “don’t know/no opinion” rate. Unfortunately, the Gallop article doesn’t source its data on the other polls, but at first glance it seems to indicate that, while about as likely as Americans to be correct on basic science questions, Europeans are much less sure of themselves.

Originally Posted by Buffy

The real problem is a combination of "science isn't cool" and the "no child left behind" emphasis on "the basics" where science is considered as much of a luxury as art or music (ask any teacher or parent with a kid in school right now!).

As a parent with a kid teaching at a pre- and elementary school right now, I’ve heard some horrific anecdotes about No Child Left Behind, describing some pretty nasty fights between teachers and the school principle on one side, and NCLB “school inspectors” on the other. My 23-year-old son describes these inspectors as essentially political appointees, without appropriate educational backgrounds or experience. The most colorful of his stories involved an argument between the teacher of a small (2-6) class of autistic preschoolers and an inspector over her students satisfying a requirement to construct “patriotic displays” (red, while and blue construction paper on a bulletin board) that escalated to the point of the inspector threatening the principle with a complete withdrawal of the school’s federal funding!

Though likely both exaggerated and due in large part to personal tension between conservative Republican federal Dept. Education staff and liberal Democrat educators (in the greater Washington DC area, particularly suburban Maryland, most school staff fall into this demographic), I believe it shows that NCLB has added new and unwelcome distractions to the already difficult job of teaching. The increased Federal funding is welcome, but many of the attached “strings” are not.

[somebody]

didnt had time to read all the comments (sorry), but referring back to the original question:

i think it is very hard for many people (mainly Christians) living in US to believe in Evolution because since they were little, they been taken to church and asked to believe that God created everything.

So even if we start teaching evolution in schools, who can guarantee that those kids will adopt this new idea. Sure they going to sit there and listen to it but isn't it a waste of resources when you don't use that resource. ( way i look at it is that you giving someone very important advise and they sit and listen to you but they are not willing to try it, so what was the point of giving that advise????).

Anyways, i think evolution should be taught in school so by the time holy kids get in college, they don't go

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by somebody

So even if we start teaching evolution in schools, who can guarantee that those kids will adopt this new idea.

Evolution has been taught in the public schools of all states and districts of the US for several decades.

The cause of recent controversy is not the teaching of evolution in public schools, but “giving equal time” to non-scientific ideas (“creation science”, “intelligent design”, etc.) perceived by some people as alternatives to the theory. Although attempts to include these ideas in the same textbooks (or, in some cases, separately printed inserts and attachments, and booklets) and class curriculum as standard evolutionary biology are ongoing, all have been, to the best of my knowledge, unsuccessful. The NAS’s recent book mentioned in post #1 is one of many efforts by scientists and educators to assure that these efforts continue to be successful.

So, a more accurate title for this thread would be “Evolution Must Be Taught in Public Schools, and Creationism or ID Must Not Be”. I think (and Delaware’s courts agree) that opponents of creationism and ID are justified in suspecting that their proponents will not stop at getting “equal time” for the teaching of their beliefs, but have the ultimate goal of removing the teaching of evolutionary biology, and possibly other sciences, from public schools.

Originally Posted by somebody

i think it is very hard for many people (mainly Christians) living in US to believe in Evolution because since they were little, they been taken to church and asked to believe that God created everything.

The point raised by Turtle, Buffy, and others is, I think, that religious belief is less of a cause of poor science education than a symptom of the same general failure of education responsible for it.

Though I can’t at the moment offer any solid statistics to support it, my personal experience supports this. In the six years that I tutored and taught college science in “Bible belt” southern West Virginia, I knew several students who were devout young Earth creationist Biblical literalist fundamentalists, and also straight A evolutionary biology students, from which I conclude that even the most extreme religious beliefs don’t necessarily prevent a person from learning science. I’ve actually had this seeming contradictory combination of knowledge and belief explained to me a couple of times: these students believed that the Earth was created in about 144 hours about 6,000 years ago, complete with modern animals and humans, and also with DNA, fossils, radioactive elements, etc that agreed with scientific theories such as evolution. Even though they believed the scientific evidence to be the product of a divinely elaborate hoax to test their faith in a belief innately not supportable by scientific evidence, they saw nothing wrong with mastering the science this hoax evidence supported, and seemed to enjoy learning and wondering about science as much as less theistic students. I’ve great respect for some of these people, not only for their academic ability, but for their profound philosophical perversity.

However, the majority of fundamentalists, in my experience, are not so respect-worthy, having little knowledge of or desire to learn science, other academic subjects, or even the scripture, traditions, and history of their own professed religion. One of the most surprising things you may learn from discussions with Biblical fundamentalists is how little many of them know about the Bible.