A Cheerful Mistake
Once in a great while someone does something intended to have one result, but the actual one is something completely different. It is entirely possible such an error was made in Kansas yesterday. The Kansas board of education passed new standards which are intended to weaken the teaching of evolution. The standards they adopted are anything but.
Basically what they said was, that it should be taught with a critical eye. "Question everything." That sentiment is at the heart of all things science, and now they have made that idea the core of the primary point of biology. Science teachers, more than many other areas, are prickly beasts, and so now they are told they must teach their students to operate in this arena. As teachers of social studies and english may be about to discover, students who question everything are not anything they bargained for.
To be sure, the average student will be just as docile as any bored teenager is. The problem is, every school has at least one and often more than a few very good ones. At the tender age of 13 or 14, they will find out, "oh, you mean I can ask questions that may make the teacher look like an idiot?" Now the science teachers won't mind this too much, for the most part they will have a better understanding of most every part of their subject. The same cannot be said of teachers in other areas. For whatever reason, teachers in other subjects run across students who have taken an interest in some specific, the Miracle at Midway, the mistakes in Vietnam, the writing of Faulkner. And when that happens, they will now be confronted with a room full of students who will no longer accept their statements, they will ask questions. And not the kind of question that asks "what happened here" but more on the line of "what did this mean in terms of this thing over here?" Oops.
Kansas based their faulty choice on the concept that there are recent findings in molecular biology and the fossil record that call evolution into question. Now I haven't seen anything of the sort, and I do look for such things to see what explanations of the "monster" might be. Kansas has stepped into a mistake that may actually improve the quality of education.
I feel sorry for the teachers of dubious ability there. They are about to find out what happens when you teach critical thinking to people who are learning rebellion, and not college students who are trying to find their place in the world. The science teachers are going to have fun if they want to turn their fellow "educators" into gruel.
And as a lovely aside, the school board that put together the Pennsylvania ID item now in court? Was completely demolished in Tuesday elections. It's quite heartening to see the anti-science slapped down.
Basically what they said was, that it should be taught with a critical eye. "Question everything." That sentiment is at the heart of all things science, and now they have made that idea the core of the primary point of biology. Science teachers, more than many other areas, are prickly beasts, and so now they are told they must teach their students to operate in this arena. As teachers of social studies and english may be about to discover, students who question everything are not anything they bargained for.
To be sure, the average student will be just as docile as any bored teenager is. The problem is, every school has at least one and often more than a few very good ones. At the tender age of 13 or 14, they will find out, "oh, you mean I can ask questions that may make the teacher look like an idiot?" Now the science teachers won't mind this too much, for the most part they will have a better understanding of most every part of their subject. The same cannot be said of teachers in other areas. For whatever reason, teachers in other subjects run across students who have taken an interest in some specific, the Miracle at Midway, the mistakes in Vietnam, the writing of Faulkner. And when that happens, they will now be confronted with a room full of students who will no longer accept their statements, they will ask questions. And not the kind of question that asks "what happened here" but more on the line of "what did this mean in terms of this thing over here?" Oops.
Kansas based their faulty choice on the concept that there are recent findings in molecular biology and the fossil record that call evolution into question. Now I haven't seen anything of the sort, and I do look for such things to see what explanations of the "monster" might be. Kansas has stepped into a mistake that may actually improve the quality of education.
I feel sorry for the teachers of dubious ability there. They are about to find out what happens when you teach critical thinking to people who are learning rebellion, and not college students who are trying to find their place in the world. The science teachers are going to have fun if they want to turn their fellow "educators" into gruel.
And as a lovely aside, the school board that put together the Pennsylvania ID item now in court? Was completely demolished in Tuesday elections. It's quite heartening to see the anti-science slapped down.
posted by Mike N | 10:48 PM
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