By GUARDIAN, RICHARD DAWKINS, STEVE JONES
Added: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to Linda Ward Selbie for the link.

Reposted from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/23/science-evolution-creationism-education

• 29% say science classes should include theory
• Poll supports views of former education head

More than a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers.

The Ipsos/Mori poll of 923 primary and secondary teachers found that 29% of science specialists agreed with the statement: "Alongside the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory, creationism should be TAUGHT in science lessons"

Some 65% of science specialists disagreed with the statement. When asked if creationism should be "discussed" alongside evolution and the Big Bang 73% of science specialists agreed.

That such a large minority of science teachers advocate teaching creationism has dismayed prominent scientists who believe supernatural explanations for the origin of the universe have no place in school science lessons. Professor Richard Dawkins, Britain's best-known evolutionary biologist and a leading secularist, called the findings "a national disgrace".

The teachers who advocate teaching creationism are also directly contradicting the government's guidelines on the subject, which state: "Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science national curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science." The sample includes teachers from all types of maintained schools including comprehensives, grammars, faith schools and academies. It does not include fee-paying schools.

The survey also indicates strong support for the views of the Royal Society's former director of education, Professor Michael Reiss. He resigned in September over his views on how to include creationism in science lessons. But a majority of science specialists polled endorsed his argument that creationism should be "discussed" in science lessons.

In response to the poll, Reiss said: "School science lessons provide wonderful opportunities for students of all ages to be introduced to scientific thinking about the origins of the universe and evolution of life. At the same time, some students have creationist beliefs. The task of those who teach science is then to teach the science but to treat such students with respect."

Reiss argues that creationism should not be treated as a misconception but as a world view. "Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson," he wrote on guardian.co.uk shortly before his resignation. "When teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have ... and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion."

At the height of the row, two Nobel prize winners and Fellows of the Royal Society - Sir Harry Kroto and Sir Richard Roberts - publicly called for Reiss to be sacked.

The Ipsos/Mori poll also canvassed support for the more hardline position of only mentioning creationism in the context of dismissing it. It found that only 26% of all teachers and 46% of science specialists agree with Professor Chris Higgins, vice-chancellor of the University of Durham, who is quoted as saying "the only reason to mention creationism in schools is to enable teachers to demonstrate why the idea is scientific nonsense".

The poll was conducted between 5 November and 10 December and the results are statistically weighted by sex, age and teaching phase to the known profile of primary and secondary school teachers in England and Wales. Many of the primary teachers polled for the survey may have a science specialism, but teach a range of subjects day to day.

Higgins said creationism as an alternative to Darwin's theory had been "thoroughly discredited". He added: "If a pupil raises it as a hypothesis then a brief discussion as to why creationism is wrong might be appropriate ... But it would undermine any educational system to purposefully teach discredited ideas which are now only perpetuated through ignorance or flawed thinking - one might as well teach astrology, flat Earthism, alchemy or a geocentric universe."

Phil Willis MP, chair of the parliamentary innovation, universities, science and skills select committee, said: "There are ample opportunities elsewhere in the curriculum to discuss belief rather than scientific theory. Science teachers should simply explain why evidence is crucial to good scientific practice."

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Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones give their views on creationism teaching pol

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/23/dawkins-jones-creationism-teaching

Steve Jones

I find this very depressing. Do those teachers believe that they should also teach the possibility that water is H3O, that Bacon wrote Shakespeare and that babies are brought by storks?

The logic is exactly the same: and there is just as little, or as much, scientific controversy about the idea of evolution as there is about those of physics and chemistry.

Next year is, of course, Darwin Year – the 200th anniversary of his birth and 150th anniversary of publication On The Origin of Species). It is my profound hope (likely to be disappointed) that teachers and everyone else should learn to stop treating him as a prophet, or a pariah, or a philosopher, or even as a trained ecclesiastic who turned to atheism – and just take him for what he was, the greatest biologist in history.

He made biology into a single science linked by the idea of evolution, rather than a bunch of ideologies.

Steve Jones is professor of genetics and head of the biology department at University College London. His lastest book – due for publication in the New Year – is Darwin's Island

Richard Dawkins

The 'Michael Reiss position' is defensible. Just as a chemistry teacher might discuss the phlogiston theory, or a physics teacher might discuss the Ptolemaic theory of the planets as history of science, so it is defensible to teach that there are people called creationists, and they believe what they believe.

But if teaching creationism 'alongside' evolution means what it seems to mean, it is no more defensible than teaching the stork theory alongside the sex theory of the where babies come from.

If 29% of science teachers really think creationism should be taught as a valid alternative to evolution, we have a national disgrace on our hands, calling for urgent remedial action in the education of science teachers. We are failing in our duty to children, if we staff our schools with teachers who are this ignorant – or this stupid.

Prof Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and fellow of New College, Oxford. He wrote The God Delusion

TAGGED: COMMENTARY, EDUCATION, RICHARD DAWKINS

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