Amanda Glaze: Teaching Evolution in the South

Vox has an interview with Amanda Glaze, a professor at Georgia Southern University, about what it is like to teach evolution in the south.  Sean Illing writes:

Earlier this year, she produced a video for sciencefriday.com about the challenges she’s encountered as a science educator. 

Teaching science, evolution in particular, can be a thankless job in this part of the country. In some communities, you’re colliding with a culture and a worldview that is both central to the identity of people and deeply threatened by scientific materialism.

“It is such a deeply personal and gut-wrenching reconstruction of identity,” Glaze says, “and you really have to be empathetic to that personal restructuring experience to understand why so many people reject evolution in spite of knowing a lot about it.”

One of the principle comments that she makes is that, while we suspect that evolution rejection is higher in the south, we really don't know for sure:

I am hoping that with the national study data we’re assembling now I can finally answer the question as to whether people in the South are more resistant to evolution than others. As of right now there has not been a study to look at this nationally. So what we are going on is based on the breakdown of small studies that suggest that religiosity is a big factor, more so in some places than others, and that literal interpretations of creation are one of the leading points of contention.

It might turn out that there are other regions that are just as likely to accept or reject, but right now we don't have data to represent those areas. We are making inferences based on the different data sets that are out there and the things that they appear to point to as we learn more. That is precisely why this national study is important.

What we do know is that, at the very least, the South seems to be the region that is the most widely vocal in their anti-evolution positions. It will be very enlightening to see what happens now that we have, and are continuing to collect, data from around the country.

I would be most curious to find out this as well. Given that I have never lived anywhere in this country outside the south, I have no perspective on this, unfortunately. Read the whole thing.

Another Professor in Hot Water Over Evolution

Inside Higher Ed is posting a story about a professor at Georgia Southern University, a state school in Statesboro, Georgia.  Quoth Colleen Flaherty:

Lecturing for a week about how “evolution could not have happened.” Offering extra credit for students to watch the film “God’s Not Dead.” Showing religious bias in exam questions. Student reviews saying he’ll try to “convert you.”

Those charges, among others, make up a complaint filed recently by two First Amendment watchdog groups against T. Emerson McMullen, an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. The institution says it’s now investigating the professor for allegedly using his classroom at the public university to promote his anti-evolution Christian beliefs.

Apparently the Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science have become involved in this and have pushed for an investigation into the charges.  It strikes me that if he is a science professor, these are serious charges.  If, on the other hand, he is a history professor, then it is incumbent on him to get the history correct.  If he does that, then the sole focus should be on whether or not he is using his classroom as a pulpit.  Despite his insistence otherwise, enough of the student comments indicate that, at least to some degree, he is. 

When I teach Anthropology 110: Human Origins, I am open to speaking with students about the apparent conflicts between evolution and Christianity, but I do not openly discuss them in class or promote EC.  I also use established science.  To do otherwise, I believe, would hurt the cause of Christianity.  Wisely, the Discovery Institute has left this one alone.