Ken Ham to Give Public School Students a Huge Discount for Ark Encounter

When I saw the eye-popping ticket price for Ken Ham's Ark Encounter, it pretty much cemented my initial decision to not attend, even as a curiosity trip.  Adults 13 and over: $40, children 5-12: $28.  This came in concert with an announcement that the entrance fee for the Creation Museum, itself, would rise from $24.95 to $29.95 to “cover costs.”  As has been pointed out, one only needs to raise ticket prices to cover costs if attendance is flagging or inflationary costs of materials rises dramatically.  Since there have been o significant changes to the CPI in recent memory, it is largely possible that the former is happening.

But now, it seems, that Ham has made an offer of $1 admission to all public school children.  Brad Reed of Raw Story writes:

Hopefully, any school that actually takes advantage of this offer will go there to have students point and laugh at exhibits of Noah’s family rounding up dinosaurs onto an ark.

That said, there is sadly a chance that schools will see the Ark Encounter as a legitimate “educational” exercise, which is why groups like the FFRF are sounding the alarm to parents who don’t want their kids coming home from school believing the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and that Jesus used to heal lepers while riding around on a triceratops.

I will be curious to see if this moves the needle in terms of attendance, which may not be as good as was indicated by Ham.

Nobel Prize Winners: Ban Creationism in Scottish Schools

The Scotland Herald is carrying a story in which three Nobel Prize winners are urging the Scottish Government to ban the teaching of Creationism in public schools.  Judith Duffy writes:

Sir Harold Kroto, Sir Richard Roberts and Sir John Sulston have signed a petition lodged at the Scottish Parliament calling for guidance to be introduced for teachers.

The Scottish Secular Society wants a ban in publicly funded Scottish schools of the "presentation of separate creation and Young Earth doctrines as viable alternatives to the established science of evolution, common descent and deep time".

The move comes after an incident last year when it emerged that members of a US pro-creationist religious sect, the West Mains Church of Christ, had been working as classroom assistants for eight years at Kirktonholme Primary in East Kilbride. Children were given books intended to debunk evolution.

Although there is no mention of this in the story, the timing is such that some of these scientists may have seen the recent dust-up in England about the radical Islamic creationist influence in schools and decided to act.

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: Public cash to teach creationism

An article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette raises what is becoming more of a concern among educators: that creationism is being taught in schools funded with public money.  I am in favor vouchers because it is often the only way that kids can escape failing public schools but the more the spectre of creationism raises its head, the less support for the voucher programs there will be.  Julie Crothers writes:

Department of Education officials did not respond to calls or emails asking for a comment about vouchers and private schools teaching creationism.

Evolution is taught in public schools as “an explanation of the history of life on Earth and the similarities among organisms that exist today,” according to curriculum listed on the Indiana Department of Education’s Learning Connection website.

Several Indiana private schools are listed on CreationistVouchers.com, a website opposing the teaching of creationism in schools that receive taxpayer money.

Some schools, including at least five area Christian schools listed on the site, continue to use creationism and intelligent design textbooks for reading, history and science courses, according to curriculum and school missions posted on school websites.

As compelled as they are about teaching what they think to be God's word, this will blow up in the face of the people who use the voucher program to teach creationism as well as for those who use it in the way that it should be used—to get their kids a good education.  In the future, in order to save the voucher programs, riders will have to be introduced that mandate the teaching of established science in order to receive state money.  Otherwise, expect opponents of vouchers to use this as a club to kill the whole program.  That would be a shame, given the sorry state of the public schools. 

Teachers and Evolution: Coming Through the Back Door

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an interesting editorial on the creation/evolution question as it pertains to science teachers and, in the process, points out an insidious back-door approach that some teachers take. The article chronicles the experiences of a woman who took an AP course in biology that gave evolution short shrift.  When she got to college, she realized that she had been under-educated.  David Templeton writes:

Her experience represents the ill-kept secret about public school biology classrooms nationwide -- that evolution often isn't taught robustly, if at all. Faith-based belief in creationism and intelligent design continues to be discussed and even openly taught in public school classrooms, despite state curriculum standards.

This is not new per se. This particular issue has been fought in Louisiana, Tennessee, and, of course, in Pennsylvania.  But this represents an additional facet of the problem.  Even though quite a few teachers are following the mandate to not teach creationism, that does not cover how they teach evolution:

But Mr. Berkman said their most alarming finding was that teachers need not introduce creationism in class to undercut interest and belief in evolution."You just have to throw doubt and downplay evolution," he said. "The idea that teachers are doing a really weak job -- many a really weak job -- of introducing evolution, we think, is because of reactions they get and maybe because of the lack of confidence in what they are teaching. That especially is the case with evolution, where many students have been primed by parents and youth groups to raise difficult and challenging questions."

This produces students who have little to no knowledge of evolution when they reach college. If they skip through college with minimal biology (engineering majors, let's say) and then end up in school boards later in life, they won't have the knowledge to make educated decisions about how evolution should be taught.  Thus, the cycle simply continues.

Another issue at work is that high school teachers differ from college professors in how they are trained.  High school teachers go through a curriculum that is heavily geared toward the facets of pedagogy and less, if at all, towards the particular subject they will be teaching.  Basically, they are taught to be teachers, not biologists, or chemists, or what-have-you.  We ask how, of those polled, 19% of science teachers can believe in young-earth creationism?  That's how.  

Science Teachers Express Frustration

Science teachers are beginning to express frustration about having to get around legislation that requires them to add ID-tinged education to their classrooms.  As Bob Fowler, of the Knoxville News Sentinel writes:

Teachers today face daunting, sometimes scary challenges, a trio of Oak Ridge High School educators said Thursday.

“We’re teaching science in a climate of denial,” biology teacher Beth Adler said. “We have legislated denial.”

From the theory of evolution to climate change, teachers are becoming wary of teaching basic scientific consensus because of the potential backlash they can face, she said.

“This leads to intimidated and capitulating teachers,” she said. “We need courage. It is scary,” Adler said. “We need to hear ‘Thank you for teaching the scientific consensus.’”

Adler said she’s faced 14- and 15-year-old students, some of them in tears, “ready to argue basic scientific principles,” and other students “thinking that climate change is a liberal hoax.”

This is what happens when people who have no basic scientific knowledge get into positions of power in legislatures and then can wreck havoc on educational policies. You need to have a policy in place so that people who are appointed to education committees or who run for state education boards have to pass a basic test in the understanding of modern science. Those who cannot or will not try to understand it should not be on education boards.

News Looking Up For Accurate Science in Homeschooling?

The Atlantic has an excellent article on changes that are happening in the homeschool market that suggest that many homeschoolers are getting disgusted with the bad science.  David Wheeler writes:

For homeschooling parents who want to teach their children that the earth is only a few thousand years old, the theory of evolution is a lie, and dinosaurs coexisted with humans, there is no shortage of materials. Kids can start with the Answers in Genesis curriculum, which features books such as Dinosaurs of Eden, written by Creation Museum founder Ken Ham. As the publisher's description states, "This exciting book for the entire family uses the Bible as a 'time machine' to journey through the events of the past and future."

It's no secret that the majority of homeschooled children in America belong to evangelical Christian families. What's less known is that a growing number of their parents are dismayed by these textbooks.

Take Erinn Cameron Warton, an evangelical Christian who homeschools her children. Warton, a scientist, says she was horrified when she opened a homeschool science textbook and found a picture of Adam and Eve putting a saddle on a dinosaur. "I nearly choked," says the mother of three. "When researching homeschooling curricula, I found that the majority of Christian homeschool textbooks are written from this ridiculous perspective. Once I saw this, I vowed never to use them." Instead, Warton has pulled together a curriculum inspired partly by homeschool pioneer Susan Wise Bauer and partly by the Waldorf holistic educational movement

If you will recall, it was the whole "dinosaur-with-a-saddle" problem that got Ken Ham into hot water, recently.The sad thing is that the biblical stories have been twisted so far out of proportion that they are barely recognizable for what they are and pictures like this, which should strike any student of the Bible as ridiculous, are simply accepted. 

Wheeler writes that many people homeschool not for religious reasons but because they don't like what is being taught in the public schools. That is partly so and partly not. One of the principle reasons that many do not like the public schools is that God has been summarily removed from the picture and it is hard to instill biblical values over the secular ones that the kids are pummeled with every day.

Part of the reason that some of us do not have our kids in public schools is because of the progressive dumbing-down not just of the students but of the administration, as well. Witness the recent problems resulting from lack of rudimentary common sense on the part of teachers and administrators involving children with pastries and toy soldiers. In the first case, the common sense was evident to everyone except the school officials, who suggested counseling for kids (rather than themselves) who were troubled by the incident. Most homeschoolers look on at these stories with a mixture of disbelief, horror and amusement and think, "There but for the grace of God, go we." But for those of us who despair of the lack of critical thinking in the sciences, hope is on the way:

The rising number of homeschool families striving to reconcile belief in God with today's scientific consensus has attracted the attention of at least one publisher -- Christian Schools International in Grand Rapids, Michigan...The CSI science curriculum clearly presents science from a Christian perspective, but does not attempt to discredit the theory of evolution. The content presents God as the author of all of creation, no matter how he did it or when he did it."

This is welcome news for those of us that just watched a child slog through It couldn't Just Happen, which does no better a job than Of Pandas and People in getting the biological and evolutionary sciences right. For both of these books, the emphasis is single-minded: the destruction of evolution. There is no other objective.  If conventional, accurate science is trod upon in the process, so be it.

I don't expect miracles overnight but this is a good first step.  There will be backlash from groups like Answers in Genesis, Abeka and Bob Jones, however.  I just hope that these "underdog" publishers stay true to their mission.  We will all benefit from it. 

Jonathan Merritt: Why conservative Christians should oppose teaching the Bible in public schools

Jonathan Merritt of the Religion News Service suggests that it would be a very bad thing for public schools to teach the Bible.  In the wake of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey's History Channel miniseries The Bible, he writes:

Two days before the first episode aired, however, the couple penned a controversial opinion column in The Wall Street Journal titled, “Why Public Schools Should Teach the Bible.” They argued that public schools should encourage or perhaps mandate teaching courses on the sacred book. This should apparently top the list of priorities in a time when America’s educational system is faced with depleting resources and failing to keep up with the rest of the world’s students.

Christian pastors and leaders in social media lauded Burnett and Downey’s article as wise and appropriate. And while the timing of publication could not have been more perfect—the article reads like a thinly veiled marketing piece with a commercial for the television show inserted as the seventh paragraph—the  arguments are worth considering.

The crux of the problem is, as Merritt sees it (and I fully agree with him) how would the Bible be taught? He suggests that it would not likely be the Bible that most evangelicals want taught. For example:

Those who teach these courses will most likely be non-literalists trained at secular state universities, not homeschooled conservative evangelicals or Bible college graduates. They may believe that the many “seeming contradictions” of the Bible are actual ones. If asked, they may teach students that the stories of “Jonah and the Whale” or “Noah’s Ark” are mythic allegories, rather than historical accounts of miraculous events.

Do the Christians crying for a reintroduction of Bible courses want their children taught, for example, that the creation account in Genesis is little more than pretty poetry? It’s safe to assume they do not. But most haven’t thought this deeply about the issue.

I have used this argument against the teaching of young earth creationism in schools. Typically, when Christians advocate this kind of thing, they are unaware of the insurmountable scientific problems associated with these views.  Aside from the fact that it is ersatz science, teaching these arguments in a public school setting would paint a target on those cherished beliefs and open them up to complete ridicule when it is discovered that they don't hold up to even rudimentary scientific examination. If Christians thought this one through, they would not want this.

AIBS State News on Teaching Evolution

The American Institute for Biological Sciences has a web site that tracks "threats to the teaching of evolution in public school science courses" in each state. In most cases, this includes the text of each bill as well as the course of each bill through the state legislatures and the ultimate disposition.  A useful site for finding out where your state is. 

Credit for Creationism Class Bill

Glenn Branch of the NCSE has shown light on a bill in the Alabama legislature that has, mercifully, died. This bill would have allowed local school districts to allow students to take a class in creationism and receive credit for it. According to the NCSE:

House Bill 133, if enacted, would have authorized "local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students." Its sponsor, Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), explained his purpose in introducing the bill to WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama (February 5, 2012): "They teach evolution in the textbooks, but they don't teach a creation theory ... Creation has just as much right to be taught in the school system as evolution does and I think this is simply providing the vehicle to do that."

I guess my take on this is that you should always allow students to take courses that involve religious instruction since it is such an integral part of the framework of American life. Such a course would, ideally, fulfill a credit in the social sciences and might be a benefit to the individual students, especially as a discussion forum.

But that is not what is going on here. It is evident from the words of representative Galliher that he envisions such a class to count as a science credit. Such a position is absolutely indefensible. There is no validity to the young earth creationist position and to teach it in public schools as legitimate science would be tantamount to miseducation. Young earth creationism should only be taught as an object lesson in science as a theory that has been discarded in favor of new knowledge. To suggest a course swap like this is simply ignorant. The students of Alabama dodged a bullet this time.

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Yup, They Asked It

Youtube has a video of the Miss America 2011 contestants in which they are asked whether or not evolution should be taught in public school. The results?



Some things that stood out in the answers:

• Most contestants think that “all sides” should be taught, although I don't remember a single contestant using the phrase “intelligent design” in their answer.
• Only three contestants that I heard seemed to understand the concept of “theory” or that evolution was rooted in science. Miss New Mexico stated that evolution was “based on science,” Miss South Dakota remarked that it was part of basic science and Miss California stated that it should be taught and that she was a science geek. Miss California is also the only contestant to mention human evolution, and did so in a positive way.
  
• Almost all contestants equated evolution with a belief system and that all sides should be taught so people could decide “what to believe in.”
• Only one contestant, Miss Alabama, came out against teaching evolution completely, stating that she didn't believe in it.
• Miss Arkansas stated that she was never taught evolution.

Did the question make the slightest difference in the outcome? I doubt it, but it is something we will probably never know. What is clear is that public school science has a long, long way to go before it can turn out science-literate future Miss America contestants.

Great Article Title!

There is a report on Fox News about the rise of homeschooling. The title? “Educating Our Children: The Evolution of Home Schooling.” I laughed long and hard when I read that. The first paragraph reads:

Anne Gebhardt’s kids are learning about geography -- in her dining room in Bedford, Texas. It’s not your typical schoolhouse, but it’s one that Gebhardt says is serving her six children well. "We can teach our religious values to our children freely,” says Gebhardt. “We can teach anything that we want."

Yes, we can teach that a flood once covered the entire earth, even though there is not a scrap of evidence for it. We can teach that the earth was created six thousand years ago, even though there is not a scrap of evidence for it. See, we can teach anything we want!

I sympathize, though. We homeschool our children because of the terrible quality of the public schools and the astronomical prices of the private schools but we make dang sure what they do get from the home school curriculum is a good education in the arts, humanities, language and civics in the process. Having said that, my wife and I are currently debating what to do about the advanced part of the science section because it covers, you guessed it! Creationism. I have told my wife that I will not challenge our ten and eight year olds but I will provide an alternate perspective if asked. I do not want them to have to choose at this age and I don't want to turn them away from God because of my detestation of recent earth creationism.
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The British Primary Curriculum and Evolution

According to a story by Polly Curtis in the Guardian, evolution will finally be added to the curriculum for primary school education. She writes:

The schools minister, Diana Johnson, has confirmed the plans will be included in a blueprint for a new curriculum to be published in the next few weeks.

It follows a letter signed by scientists and science educators calling on the government to make the change after draft versions of the new curriculum failed to mention evolution explicitly.

The open letter sent in July to Ed Balls, the children's secretary, was signed by 25 leading figures from science and education, who urged the government to rewrite the curriculum before it was finalised.

There is no mention in the article about push back but I am sure it will come.

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Rumblings in Kentucky

The Kentucky Board of Education is still debating about who to appoint as their head. According to a story in the Lexington Herald Leader, when one, Dennis Cheek was accused on a blog of having creationists leanings, he responded forcefully:

Cheek told reporters outside the meeting that he had sent a reply to the blog. He said he believes evolution, not creationism, should be taught in science classes. He said he also supports the 2005 federal court ruling that struck down the teaching of "intelligent design" in science classes in Pennsylvania's Dover Area School District.

"What should be taught in school is exactly what the judge in the Dover case said. He was quite clear ... and I concur 100 percent with the decision that was made," Cheek said.

Cheek said that while people of various religious beliefs can differ on evolution, "when it comes to what is taught in the science curriculum, evolution can be demonstrated and seen in many different dimensions of science."

This seems to mirror the views of the other three finalists as well. A far cry from Texas.

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DesMoines Addresses Evolution (Sort of)

The DesMoines answer to the problem of evolution is to make a class that critiques it an elective. The Spencer School District, according to a story by Stacy Hupp in the DesMoines Register:

Public school students in Spencer will get to study the Bible and pray at graduation if school district leaders approve a proposed "religious liberties" policy, the first of its kind in Iowa.

The plan calls for elective classes such as "Critic of Darwinism," which includes arguments against the theory of evolution, and "The Bible in History and Literature."

School officials say they want to set clear rules for religious expression without discouraging students, for example, from writing "Merry Christmas" on holiday cards in class.

Spencer Superintendent Greg Ebeling said most public educators who fear lawsuits go too far to exclude religion from schools.

"We're going to have critics, but we're not out to cram religion down anybody's throats," said Ebeling, whose northwest Iowa district enrolls about 2,000 students. "It's just about what's the right way to handle it. The way we handle it right now is to avoid it at all costs."

What about the teaching of evolution? The story doesn't say, although one would hope that if they have a class critiquing it, the students would know what they are critiquing. And how do you make the class "Critics of Darwinism" academically sound?

Teaching Evolution at the Grade School Level

The Harborough Mail has an article on a contest held by a local public school on how life would evolve on different alien landscapes. Here is the winning entry:

The Yark can run on water, eats anything, needs neither oxygen nor water to survive, can grow extra teeth whenever it wants and has a huge tail which can be used for gathering food, scaring enemies and swimming.

But fortunately, you're not likely to see one running around Harborough anytime soon.

For the Yark exists only in the creative mind of seven-year-old Abigail Reeves, a pupil at Harborough C of E Primary School, who came up with the creature to win the Key Stage One section of the UK-wide Darwin in Space competition.

The article also notes:

The contest was organised by the British Science Association to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin – the British scientist who came up with the theory of evolution.

It invited pupils to draw and describe life forms which might have evolved on four environmentally-different islands on an alien planet, inviting them to think about what their creature looks like and how they would have been shaped by the surroundings in which they live.

This is similar to a board game that I have, which is made by Eon products called Quirks. It is a game in which you evolve your creatures (plant, herbivore, carnivore) through a series of biomes so that they will become the dominant creature in each niche. Each card was a section of a creature that had traits you could use to optimize it for a given environment.

This program at Harborough sounds like something that we ought to do over here in US public schools. As Glenn Reynolds would say: "Good luck with that."