Daniel Willingham--Science & Education
Hypothesis non fingo
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"Freedom of inquiry" and intelligent design in the classroom

2/22/2013

 
A new bill just passed the Education committee in the Oklahoma House of representatives, as reported in the Oklahoman. Titled "The Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act," the bill purports to protect the rights of students, teachers and administrators to explore fully scientific controversies.

The bill supposes that some people currently feel inhibited in their pursuit of truth regarding "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning" and so the bill forbids school administrators and boards of education from disallowing such "exploration."

According to opinion pieces in the Daily Beast, The Week, and Mother Jones, the bill is a fairly transparent attempt to allow intelligent design into science classrooms, one that is being pursued in other states as well.

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me too.

But even if we take the purported motive of the bill at face value, it's still a terrible idea.

Why shouldn't science teachers "teach the controversy?" Isn't it the job of teachers to sharpen students critical thinking skills? Isn't it part of the scientific method to evaluate evidence? If evolution proponents are so sure their theory is right, why are they afraid of students scrutinizing the ideas?

Imagine this logic applied in other subjects. Why shouldn't students study and evaluate the version of US history offered by white supremacists? Rather than just reading Shakespeare and assuming he's a great playwright, why not ask students to read Shakespeare and the screenplay to Battlefield Earth, and let students decide? And hey, why is such deference offered to Euclid? My uncle Leon has an alternative version of plane geometry and it shows Euclid was all wrong. I think that theory deserves a hearing.

You get the point. Not every theory merits the limited time students have in school. There is a minimum bar of quality that has to be met in order to compete. I'm not allowed to show up at the Olympics, hoping to jump in the pool and swim the 100 m butterfly against Michael Phelps.

Indeed, the very inclusion of a theory in a school discussion signals to students that it must have some validity--why else would the teacher discuss it?

The obvious retort from supporters of the bill is that intelligent design is actually a good theory, much better than the comparisons I've drawn.

That belief may be sincere, but it's due, I think, to a lack of understanding of scientific theory.  So here are a few of the important features of how scientists think about theories, and how they bear on this debates.

1) It's not telling that legitimate scientists point out unanswered questions, problems, or lacunae in the theory of evolution. Every theory, even the best theories, have problems. People who make this point may be thinking about the status of scientific laws as scientists did until the early part of the 20th century--as immutable laws. Scientists today think of all theories as provisional, and open to emendation and improvement.

2) A vital aspect of a good scientific theory is that it be open to falsification. It's not obvious what sort of data would falsify intelligent design theories, especially young-earth theories, which make predictions that are already disconfirmed by geology, astrophysics, etc., and yet are maintained by their adherents. Evolution, in contrast, has survived tests and challenges for 100 years--indeed, the theory has changed and improved in response to those challenges.

3) In the case of old-earth intelligent design theories, the focus is much more on the putative beginnings of the universe of or life on Earth, and these don't have the feel of a scientific theory at all. They seem much more like philosophical queries because they focus on large-scale questions and how these questions ought to formulated--they never get to detailed questions that might be answerable by experiment, the meat-and-potatoes of science.

4) Good scientific theories are not static. They not only change in the face of new evidence, they continue to spawn new and interesting hypotheses. Evolution has been remarkably successful on this score for over 100 years. Intelligent design has been static and unfruitful.

These are some of the reasons that scientists think that intelligent design does not qualify as a good scientific theory, and therefore does not merit close attention in K-12 science classes, and more than my uncle's theory of geometry does.

If you're going to write bills about what happens in science class, it's useful to know a little science.

EDIT: 2/22/13 1:20 p.m. EST: typos

Tim Holt link
2/22/2013 12:58:44 am

One of the biggest problems here is that lay people do not understand the term "theory" as it applies to science. There is for instance "germ theory" used to create antibiotics. There is "nuclear theory" used create atomic weapons and nuclear reactors. No one would say "nuclear theory" is just a theory, let us teach an alternative view of atomic structure," yet that is what happens with evolutionary theory.
You are correct when you say it would be nice if people creating science legislation knew a little about science. Actually, that is the problem: they know a LITTLE about science. Not a lot.

David Wees link
2/22/2013 03:26:26 am

I'm going to be less charitable and suggest that many of these people do understand the difference, but are deliberately using this language because they know that it is confusing to the general public.

Which message do you think would have more sway?

"We'd like to teach the principle that scientific theories are not necessarily the definitive source of information and present some alternatives."

or

"We'd like to indoctrinate your children with our religion and convert them to our way of thinking."

Roger Sweeny
2/23/2013 07:34:56 am

Most people don't understand what "theory" means in science because they have been lied to by their science textbooks. (Yeah, I know that's harsh but it's true.) Just about every high school science text has a first chapter which tells them very clearly that a "law" is something that has so much evidence in its favor that all scientists accept is as true, while a "theory" is something less than a law, something that is only provisional. If enough evidence accumulates, it will become a law. I suppose the writers do this because it makes the process of science sound so neat and progressive, moving stately forward. Also, high school texts really like to categorize and name, and sort things into categories.

I make it a point to very deliberately tell my students that whether something is called a theory or a law is largely historical, that there are things called "laws" that we know aren't completely true and that there are things called "theories" that everyone accepts. Further, that "theory" is often used to mean a general way of looking at things, thus the "theory of plate tectonics" or "the kinetic theory of matter" or "the theory of evolution." These sorts of theories are incomplete. Scientists who accept the general outlook of the theory can disagree about lots of specific things, e.g., how much is evolution characterized by "punctuated equilibrium"?

Doug1943
2/22/2013 06:26:49 am

Of course, evolution is a fact, not a "theory" in the sense in which the "Evolution is just a theory" people use the term.

But there are three points that ought to be acknowledged in this debate.

(1) A consistent approach to teaching only rationally-establishable facts in the schools would require a direct attack on all religion. Ready for that?

(2) Not all of the people propounding "Intelligent Design" are green-toothed fundamentalists. Read Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box to see some of the more intelligent arguments against orthodox Darwinism.

(3) A lot of what is taught as "social science" is as unfounded on fact, and reflective of the prejudices of those who teach it, as "Intelligent Design" in the hands of an anti-evolutionist would be. So it's not as if our educational system was really rigorously devoted to an unbiased pursuit of truth, lead where it may.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My own experience tutoring teenagers in science in the United Kingdom, where evolution is the absolute standard taught in the schools, is that in fact most of them have little idea about it. Besides knowing a few rote examples -- why are many of the living creatures from the same family, such as the big cats, in Africa and Latin America, different from each other enough to be classed as separate species, while the fossils are the same species? -- hardly any of them could explain how natural selection works, how an eye could develop from a light-sensitive cell, and so on.

They find science dull and boring. (Maybe it's different in the US but I would bet against that.)

So I would welcome showing the kids videos of debates with flat-earthers of all sorts, not just on the evolution question, but on other subjects too, such as alternative medicine --- let each side bring forth their best advocates and go at it for an hour. It might actually make the kids sit up and get interested.

Steve Peha link
2/22/2013 11:26:21 am

"If you're going to write bills about what happens in science class, it's useful to know a little science."

You certainly got it right there, Dan. And this idea could, of course, be extended to just about everything our legislators attempt to legislate.

Often I have found that expertise is not valued in American culture. I don't know too much about many other cultures, so perhaps this is a human universal. But the strong strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through American politics really confuses me at times.

I don't expect my legislators to know everything about everything. But I do expect them to ask people who do. Case in point: How many phone calls or e-mails did you get from Oklahoma legislators before their bill was passed? How many other learning scientists do you think they consulted?

You make very solid, simple, sensible statements about how responsible people might go about deciding what gets taught and what does not. So my supposition is that many people who legislate about education simply don't want educated opinions messing up their sense of what's right and wrong.

Having read "Darwin's Black Box" and other pro-ID texts, I'm pretty sure that it's a non-theory. It doesn't seem to prove anything. Rather, its adherents simply try to point out that evolution has a few holes in it. It's a sort of logical shell game: If Not A, then B. With B being, to ID folks, the only other possible option and A being disqualified sort of just because they say it is.

I have never taught ID as science but I have taught it a couple of time as culture in Social Studies. The most fascinating thing I've learned is that if I present as my own belief, and don't give it a name, all the kids in the class think I'm crazy. But if I introduce as someone's "theory" (and I don't even say "scientific theory") then kids seem to think it makes sense. Just anecdotal proof for your very good point about the assumptions kids make about why anything is taught in school.

The question I find myself pondering often is "Who should decide what kids learn?" I'd vote for you in a New York minute. But if I'm willing to say that it should come down to voting and the endorsement of a person, a governmental group, or some elected or appointed board, then I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get a lot of Dan Willinghams because the best people I know are all too busy working in their fields—which is probably why they're so good at them.

What's your thought on who or how curriculum decisions should be made?

Thanks, as always, for your notable, quotable work. I turn many heads and win many arguments with the stuff I learn from you on this blog.

Best of all, I learn a lot, too.

Steve

Douglas Hainline
2/23/2013 10:05:39 am

Three points:

(1) Very often, when an argument is framed as "Is X a Y?" or "Is X a Y or a W", clarity can be obtained by dropping the "to be" verb, and asking something like "How useful is it to call X a Y?" or "How do people use the concepts X and Y (and W)? And is there possibly ambiguity or lack of precision or even contradictions in their usage?"

(2) In a democracy, if we decide to let the (democratic) state control education, then what is taught will -- very loosely -- correspond to what the voters want taught. Or at least it will not, for long, violently contradict what they want taught. This may or not may not be congruent to what you think the truth is. The best we can do is to promote a spirit of critical inquiry in all our education, as opposed to the spirit of dogmatic indoctrination, so that if your view is a minority, it has at least a chance of getting a hearing. This should even extend to science.

(3) I have a number of fundamentalist relatives in Texas. They are not bad people, and probably no more ignorant of science than the average non-fundamentalist. Their concern about evolution is not really driven, in my opinion, by some misguided idea of the Bible as the source of absolute literal truth, but by the worry that if there is no transcendant reality, then everything is permitted. (Not that they would put it that way.) And belief in evolution undermines the concept of a transcendant reality.

No matter how much anyone protests that it does not, the fact is that it does. And they know it. I don't think there is a good answer to their concerns, in the sense of one that would satisfy them, except to point out that as religion has lost its grip on humanity, our behavior, averaged out, has actually improved, and that people are capable of holding logically contradictory ideas in their heads and being happy while doing so.

Douglas Hainline
2/23/2013 10:07:10 am

Three points:

(1) Very often, when an argument is framed as "Is X a Y?" or "Is X a Y or a W", clarity can be obtained by dropping the "to be" verb, and asking something like "How useful is it to call X a Y?" or "How do people use the concepts X and Y (and W)? And is there possibly ambiguity or lack of precision or even contradictions in their usage?"

(2) In a democracy, if we decide to let the (democratic) state control education, then what is taught will -- very loosely -- correspond to what the voters want taught. Or at least it will not, for long, violently contradict what they want taught. This may or not may not be congruent to what you think the truth is. The best we can do is to promote a spirit of critical inquiry in all our education, as opposed to the spirit of dogmatic indoctrination, so that if your view is a minority, it has at least a chance of getting a hearing. This should even extend to science.

(3) I have a number of fundamentalist relatives in Texas. They are not bad people, and probably no more ignorant of science than the average non-fundamentalist. Their concern about evolution is not really driven, in my opinion, by some misguided idea of the Bible as the source of absolute literal truth, but by the worry that if there is no transcendant reality, then everything is permitted. (Not that they would put it that way.) And belief in evolution undermines the concept of a transcendant reality.

No matter how much anyone protests that it does not, the fact is that it does. And they know it. I don't think there is a good answer to their concerns, in the sense of one that would satisfy them, except to point out that as religion has lost its grip on humanity, our behavior, averaged out, has actually improved, and that people are capable of holding logically contradictory ideas in their heads and being happy while doing so.

Robert DiDomenico
2/27/2013 02:19:24 am

First, any bill that has Freedom in it these days should be viewed with suspicion.

The unstated, but to me, obvious problem is that many of the "science" teachers in the state might not be so pro-evolution. They will "teach the controversy" in a way that will make evolution seem to be weaker than it really is, and they just got a green light from the state to do so. Not trying to denigrate Oklahoma science teachers, but if I had to bet, there are more than a few fundies doing "science" ed. there. What a sad country we live in.

Douglas Hainline
2/27/2013 06:05:26 am

This is always a problem. For a look at people on the other side of the political spectrum using the classroom to get their political agenda over, see here: http://www.edchange.org/

Of course we may not like teachers going beyond the curriculum to push their own views on students, especially when those views don't coincide with ours.

But I don't think it would be easy to prevent teachers projecting their personal political/social views in their classes. And I'm not too worried about young people just swallowing their teachers' prejudices whole anyway. With the internet, it's getting harder and harder to indoctrinate people.


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