Squaring the Circle
La lutte continue, as the saying goes – the struggle continues. Education can be a slow process, and as we’ve seen in the US lately, it can turn around and march smartly backwards. People can make resolute, determined efforts to become more ignorant than their parents, and to make their children more ignorant than they are themselves. People can also make resolute efforts to have it both ways – to live on technology and the safety and comfort it brings, while at the same time scorning the rational ways of thinking that technology depends on. There’s something a little contemptible about that – but so it goes.
James Colbert has been on the frontline of America’s culture wars for 20 years but his hoped-for final victory of reason over faith is not yet in sight. Now an associate biology professor at Iowa State University, he has found since he started teaching that about a third of the students beginning his introductory course are creationists, in many cases with no knowledge of evolution at all.
That’s students at university level, in a country which has laws about mandatory education for all children through the age of sixteen – yet a lot of them manage to slip through with no knowledge of evolution at all. Because education can go backwards.
While trying to tread softly to avoid offending their sensibilities, he has increasingly had to defend his faculty and scholarship against what he sees as a far greater threat – the incursion into science faculties of backers of “intelligent design”, the belief that evolution is so complex that some higher force must be behind it.
That’s a threat? Science faculties being infiltrated by ‘backers’ of unscience? Of nonscience, of antiscience? Gosh, how could that be a threat?
Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution. Alarmed at what he saw as the growing influence of some i.d. supporters in the science faculty, Prof Colbert drafted a petition condemning “attempts to represent intelligent design as a scientific endeavour”. In response more than 40 Christian faculty and staff members signed a statement calling on the university to uphold their basic freedoms and to allow them to discuss intelligent design.
‘Calling on the university to uphold their basic freedoms’ – meaning what? Their basic freedom to teach nonsense? Is that a basic freedom, and is it a basic freedom that they have? Does a French teacher have a basic freedom to teach a mixture of Farsi, Tagalog and gibberish and call it ‘French’? Does a history teacher have a basic freedom to teach that Hitler fought the battle of Trafalgar in 1217 and thereby won the freedom of Papua New Guinea? Does an engineering teacher have a basic freedom to teach that precision really isn’t all that important when it comes to bridge building, lighten up a little? Do teachers have a basic freedom to teach any old balderdash to their captive students? I would have thought they didn’t. And then, there is surely a difference between ‘discussing’ intelligent design and claiming that it is a scientific endeavour, and there is also a difference between condemning something and forcibly removing someone’s freedom to do it. In short, the Christian faculty and staff members seem to be resorting to the much too familiar tactic of claiming to be oppressed and repressed and unfairly treated.
But – we keep endlessly circling back to this – education is education. It’s not education if it traffics in falsehoods, it’s something else. Educators don’t have a ‘basic freedom’ to teach any old fool thing they feel like teaching. They have academic freedom, yes, but it’s not infinite or absolute – it doesn’t cover outright raving. Once a teacher starts dribbling and talking to phantoms, the issue of freedom is overtaken by the issue of competence. Or at least it should be.
There is a class in which to discuss ID.
It’s “Critical Thinking”, AKA “How to think about weird things”.
If they want to discuss it, they could do worse than teach how the controversy was manufactured and test on students’ understanding of Judge Jones’ ruling. Of course, not in science class, where it has no business.
Well said. A good start to the New Year, OB.
Sadly, though, one could easily argue that universities have been teaching “any old balderdash” for some time, as your multiple precision target attacks on literary theory and group think history (“Black Athena, anyone?)
HAPPY NEW YEAR, and keep up the Good Fight!
“Sadly, though, one could easily argue that universities have been teaching “any old balderdash” for some time,”
Yes, indeed. As a general principle, though, I would cut the universities some slack. Sometimes it takes years to decide whether something is balderdash or an interesting new way of looking at the world. Universities are good places to sort this out – lots of intelligent people who usually get to the truth eventually.
And for me, the difference between balderdash and something more valuable is best discovered in debate.
In a way, I have more (tho not much) sympathy for creationism than for ID. The Old Testament story can be looked at as a nice myth (if you are thusly inclined). ID is simply bad science and in almost all cases, dishonest.
“lots of intelligent people who usually get to the truth eventually”
Not always, unfortunately, before some of the nonsense has become enshrined as unassailable. Makes me think of Steve Fuller again; the claims he makes about how science works (in the sense of power politics taking precedence over knowledge) are perhaps applicable to no field as much as the one in which he himself works.
Just realised what a funny sentence this is:
“Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution.”
When did “separation of lunatic frnge and Presidency” go into effect in the US?
Just realised what a funny sentence this is:
“Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution.”
When did “separation of lunatic fringe and Presidency” go into effect in the US?
Just realised what a funny sentence this is:
“Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution.”
When did “separation of lunatic fringe and Presidency” go into effect in the US?
Just realised what a funny sentence this is:
“Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution.”
When did “separation of lunatic fringe and Presidency” go into effect in the US?
Sorry about that. Probably because of my attempt to insert the missing “i” in “frnge” after I had clicked “submit.”
“lots of intelligent people who usually get to the truth eventually”
“Not always, unfortunately, before some of the nonsense has become enshrined as unassailable. “
Well some things – flat earth theory – can take a long time. But if you are talking of pomo and its bastard children, it is being assailed all the time (by us, among many) and its territory in the universities is shrinking.
I’ll bet Steve does not have many loyal disciples these days.
It’s tempting for we Brits to see ID and creeping anti-science as an American issue, but Blair has no problem with this crap being taught in his academies and I recently sat through several hours of so-called training by educational kinesiologists which made me bite my knuckles so hard I drew blood.
I had already circulated among my colleagues a memo on these charlatans (drawn from this site, http://skepdic.com/ and the incomparable Ben Goldacre http://www.badscience.net/?page_id=7) but eventually had to walk out when the ‘trainers’ urged us to perform some kind of chi Twister. My carefully polite parting comment; ‘You are wasting my time and insulting my intelligence’ was followed the next day by a very half-hearted rebuke from my boss who suggested that next time I just slip away quietly.
But let’s not. Be the awkward squad who challenge this at every turn, even when it seems trivial and beneath us. Because that’s how the buggers creep in; when it seems rude or unworthy of our time to make it an issue.
We’ve celebrated the Dover verdict, let’s also celebrate Tracy Morton and Kay Wilkinson who saw off Vardy at Northcliffe Comp. Ok, it may be mad New Year optimism, but maybe the forces of unreason have reached their high water mark.
“As a general principle, though, I would cut the universities some slack. Sometimes it takes years to decide whether something is balderdash or an interesting new way of looking at the world. Universities are good places to sort this out – lots of intelligent people who usually get to the truth eventually.”
Yes, but – as Stewart says, not always. Universities turn into bad places to sort this out (it’s the marching smartly backwards thing again) when there are people who throw out the rules and other people who support them in this endeavour. Read Mary Lefkowitz’s account of her experience, for example – asking Yosef ben-Jochannan at a lecture why he claimed that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander and stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandra when that library hadn’t been built until after Aristotle’s death, and getting no support from some of her colleagues. When she told the dean of her college that there was no evidence for ben-Jochannan’s claims, the dean said we each have our own different but equally valid view of history.
In other words, if evidence is officially ruled irrelevant because of the ‘different but equally valid view’ theory of knowledge, then the university has no way to sort this out. It’s surrendered its tools. The university isn’t the best place to sort out truth claims because of some kind of magic, or because of its status or authority, but only because it’s a place where people who know how to sort out truth claims gather to do so. To the extent that it transforms itself to the opposite of that, it becomes the worst instead of the best place to sort things out. Which is bottomlessly depressing, because who else is going to do it? Hence the need to fight back.
Educational kinesiologists – ah. Something else to look into.
“let’s also celebrate Tracy Morton and Kay Wilkinson who saw off Vardy at Northcliffe Comp.”
Okay! Haven’t heard of them before; will look.
Hope knuckles have healed, Don!
G,
You’re right not to waste your time looking this nonsense up. It starts with two reasonable propositions;
1. Kids learn better when not dehydrated.
2. kids learn better with occassional exercise.
However, you can’t really sell a course based on the bleeding obvious, so we are told that water held in the mouth seeps through and hydrates the brain, increasing it’s conductivity (because water conducts electricity, duh.)
the exercises are very precise because they are aimed at co-ordinating the brain’s hemispheres, which can only be done by clearing the chi pathways. (In case you want to try it, it involves crossing your ankles and rubbing your collar-bone.) At this point our guest ‘trainer’ mentioned that ‘western science’ had failed to grasp the importance of energy flow…
I’m afraid that was as far as I managed. There something about the phrase ‘western science’ which just rattles my cage.
For background on Northcliffe;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2004/06/23/tenedu221.xml
And this from Saturday’s Guardian;
In January, John Harris talked to parents and teachers battling to save Northcliffe comprehensive near Doncaster, which their LEA planned to replace with an academy sponsored by Christian evangelist Sir Peter Vardy. (Vardy Foundation schools teach creationism alongside evolution, and regard being gay as a sin.) Their fight to save the school was successful, and later in the year Tracy Morton and Kay Wilkinson, co-founders of the parents’ action group, became parent governors at Northcliffe. Parents and staff are hopeful that the school will be taken out of special measures by next spring.
So, in Britain they are literally shutting down public schools and replacing them with fundie indoctrination academies? I hope I recall someone saying this is very rare.
This hydration and exercise thing sounds like a revisit of Waldorf (Steiner) schooling, which as one of its principles includes a rhythmic exercise discipline. My kids were lucky to avoid this system after my wife read a manifesto about it. We visited and enquired carefully.
There must be a lot of kids with damaged ability to engage with the modern world in the alternative schooling system.
ChrisPer: I’ve read, though, that there are benefits associated with the “whole child” approach to education espoused by the Waldorf Schools?