Bill Nye on America's "horrible" science education

Popular Mechanics interviews Bill Nye the Science Guy on the state of US science education (Nye: "It's horrible."). He's anxious that science education ramps up too late ("Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10.") and, of course, that teachers are intimidated out of teaching the good science of evolution and other controversial subjects:

They're doing their job but they're under tremendous pressure. The 60 percent who are cautious--those are the people who are really up against it. They want to keep their job, and they love teaching science, and their children are really excited about it, and yet they've got some people insisting they can't teach the most fundamental idea in all of biology. There's the phrase "just a theory." Which shows you that I have failed. I'm a failure. When we have a theory in science, it's the greatest thing you can have. Relativity is a theory, and people test it every which way. They test it and test it and test it. Gravity is a theory. People have landed spacecraft on the moon within a few feet of accuracy because we understand gravity so well. People make flu vaccinations that stop people from getting sick. Farmers raise crops with science; they hybridize them and make them better with every generation. That's all evolution. Evolution is a theory, and it's a theory that you can test. We've tested evolution in many ways. You can't present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.

Science Guy Bill Nye Explains Why Evolution Belongs in Science Education (via Thoughts from Kansas)

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1. At least US schools are teaching science. While I understand Nye’s trepidation, I think it’s far more important for the American education system to add some philosophy and critical thinking into the curriculum.

2. It’s so tragic to me that Bill Nye feels he’s failed. Watching his show was always one of the most exciting things we did in elementary/middle school science class. I loved it to pieces, and it did so much to nurture my interest in science. It’s horrible more kids didn’t have the same experience I did.

3. My wife teaches Science to 7th graders here in Michigan. She loves her job and consistently gets good feedback from students and parents on how fun and interesting her class is. However, it is a real challenge to keep things that way.

   First she has the challenge of staying within the very rigid and somewhat dry curriculum set by the state, but that can be over come with some effort and creativity.

   Secondly, the schools have very little budget available for purchasing proper science equipment for the better experiments. We have spent a great deal of our own money for supplies because science needs to be hands on whenever possible. Unfortunately this is no longer an easy tax write-off like it used to be, but we still contribute.

   Lastly, we live in a country with more and more rules and more restrictions on what can and can’t be done with students in a classroom. Most chemicals are not allowed to be in the classroom at all OR can only be used by the teacher. I understand the need for safety, but somehow I was able to go through school using a thermometer with real mercury in it,( you would not believe the safety procedures the entire school would go through if a single drop of mercury fell on the floor if w thermometer broke!) or watch in wonder when a small chunk of potassium interacts with water in my beaker! That would never happen now!

   In fact we were just talking to our teenage girls the other night about Blood types. I remember doing my own blood type test in middle School by pricking my finger with just a simple push pin from a box out of my teachers drawer. They were all thrown away when we were done, but that would never happen today. If it did you would need a special expensive medical waste container. That discussion lead my High School daughter to express her frustration with the ever increasing curriculum rules. Soon she won’t have a choice on which classes she might like to attend in high school because her days would be booked to meet the minimum requirements to graduate. This leads to less and less creativity in her mind and less opportunity to explore different subjects at a younger age.

   It is a shame really.

   1. Dude, there is such a thing as green chemistry – doesn’t have to be dangerous for it to be science or be interesting. Take salt water vs. fresh water in conducting electricity (got to have salt to do it). Any school can do drosophila genetics, Punnet squares rule… We didn’t have “SCIENCE” in grade school, we had science – far more approachable. We did fish, tidewaters, water ecology, trees identification, uses and habitats, we even did anthropology (flint knapping, I think Mimi was taught by Craig Ratsat).

      Bill Nye is way cool in many ways, as a teacher he’s freaking scary for little kids (he’s a little too angry and militant for most of us, just like Oral Roberts is too scary and militant for me if you ignore the b.s. that used to stream from his mouth). Science should be served each day with breakfast, a familiar and common experience. Science begins at home, should be expanded in grade school and junior high/late grade school is far too late.

      – Ethel

4. The creationist movement is simply an outgrowth of the 90’s “culture warrior” mentality which politicized education in an attempt to shape US national elections.

   Suddenly, it wasn’t about turning out the vote for your local John Birch candidate, it was about getting seats on the school board and pressuring teachers and administrators with talking points from national organizations like “Focus on the Family” and whatever rock Pat Robertson is hiding under these days.

   I saw this happen with family members who work in education. A 25 year vet science teacher being told that she could not have a poster with Darwin in her 7th grade science class because it was “offensive to board members” or the chemistry teacher being reprimanded for saying that doubting the age of fossils was “nuts.”

   It’s about bullying people whose calling is to educate children. How utterly loathsome.

5. When science education is only preparation for the international competitive sport of standardized testing the system has already failed.
   Science will always be cooler if self taught because if you are careful you won’t go to jail for letting your kid make nitrogen triiodide or generating through electrolysis a bag full of hydrogen and oxygen to make a big boom.
   It is the fun science that got me interested although it was dreams of giant particle accelerators and Regans SDI fused with Sci-Fi which had me dreaming of building my own device to burn holes through steel.
   Fortunately my parents were not too opposed to letting me hang around at American Science and Surplus and even occasionally let the creepy little egghead buy another Geiger counter.

6. Ignorance is a choice. The decisions to reduce science teaching and ban ideas that conflict with religion will have consequences. maybe the people making the decisions are fine with seeing America fall behind the rest of the world in science and technology as long as we don’t have disturbing ideas in our heads or do something hazardous.

   1. They don’t have consequences for them.

      It doesn’t matter if the place goes to hell after they’re dead, they’re supposedly living it up with their 72 virgins because making life more miserable for generations of humans made a benevolent god happy to see all of the human suffering.

      Dissonant, illogical thought is a core tenet of anti-scientific beliefs. Ideas can coexist despite being mutually exclusive, and this is not even seen as being a problem that the ideas are opposite and both somehow true anyways.

7. I find it disturbing to see this going on south of the border. The increase of people who feel their holy book is all the evidence they need to prove anything, and who are driven to force this idea on other people, is something I worry about spreading into Canada.

   1. Isn’t that an irrational fear?

8. What bothers me is that the really mind bogglingly interesting topics like relativity and quantum mechanics aren’t even mentioned at school. I am not talking about an actual study in detail with lots of mathematics. Just showing kids the dual slit experiment and how time is not the same everywhere would be a real eye opener that could get lots of kids interested in science. Our education hasn’t really changed all that much in the last 50 years while science developed at breackneck speeds. Most of the science we teach is horribly outdated. I for example learned that there are only 3 states of matter (gas, liquid, solid) while there are so many more. All these other states are so extremely beautiful and mysterious that there is no way you could not be interested.

   I fear that in 200 years times our kids will look back at this period of time and laugh at us the way we laugh at the people that thought the earth was flat. We are now a 100 years beyond relativity and 50 years beyond quantum mechanics yet it still hasn’t entered public consciousness.

   1. “What bothers me is that the really mind bogglingly interesting topics like relativity and quantum mechanics aren’t even mentioned at school.”

      I’ll second that – I’ve taught diagnosis through differential white cell counts (a technique normally left until university) to year 10 students – it’s just pattern recognition. I’ve done DNA profiles (simulated using safe food dyes) with primary school students in margarine tubs (the gels, not the kids). I’m currently delivering research immersion programs to senior high school students which involve techniques not normally covered until later in undergraduate cell and molecular biology courses (really, if they know base pairing and transcription and translation there’s nothing to stop kids understanding PCR, cloning and protein induction). Bioinformatics doesn’t even need an expensive wet lab to run a few sequence omparisons. One of the biggest barriers to science education actually covering modern and relevant science is the idea that kids have to be taught what their parents learned at school before they can progress.

      If there’s a problem with science education, it actually cuts across all curriculum areas. Across the developed world (with a few exceptions) public funding of education is being slashed and new “acountability measures” are being introduced to ensure that what little money remains is “well spent”. High stakes testing is being used less as an indication of student achievement and ability and more of an indication of school and teacher quality. It would be great to give students meaningful classroom experiences which develop their critical thinking skills, but when the only indication of school quality is based on how the kids do in limited, largely content-based centralised exams, you’re going to find that one style of teaching will dominate (there’s your selective pressure right there).

      Bill Nye hasn’t “failed” – the rest of the country that tolerates and even expects the corporatisation of education are the ones who ahve failed. At least Bill didn’t take the easy route and blame the teachers.

9. If science is right, and protons and neutrons and electrons follow some sort of rigidly defined behavior, then all the miracles that I have heard about on the news and Oprah, etc. could never have happened. And I know in my heart that miracles happen every day.

   Just ask moms about miracles. Moms know the truth:

   http://stlouis.momslikeme.com/members/pollactions.aspx?g=1196150&m=16038217&grpcat=&poll=results

   Look at the discussion after the poll results. It is obvious that moms intuitively understand that the nature of reality involves miracles, not atoms. For instance, one insightful commenter says, “How did the NYE tornadoes do so much damage in the St. Louis area with only one person losing their life? To me that is a miracle.” This sort of clear thinking is what we need, not Bill Nye and his “theories”. I, for one, am thankful that so many moms pass on these valuable insights to their children. It helps inoculate every generation from the evils that come from science education.

   1. I… I have no idea if this is a sarcastic post or not. That worries me deeply.

   2. The evils that come from science education? Unlike religious education I don’t think science education has ever driven a person to kill someone.

      All positive events that are rare are described as miracles. Miracles happen every day, nature just works that way. There is nothing unscientific about that. Atoms produce miracles on their own, there is no need for god or anything supernatural. You can believe in a god that created nature and science. If you are going to teach your kids a specific religion, please don’t teach them that science is evil. They do not exclude each other.

   3. I started out with “well, I believe in miracles. I’m like Leibnitz, I think everything that exists is miraculous. It’s a matter of attitude, of taking a joyful view of the universe of cause and effect” or some such heartfelt blather.

      But then I read your link…

      Oh. My. God.

      I think I will have to swear off using the word miracle ever again.

      1. Oh man, thats a disturbing link…

         My favorite is the commentator who mentions a family that went on Oprah – they had lost 3 children in an accident, then a year later they had triplets, the same sexes as the kids they lost in the accident. She called it a touching story and proof of miracles.

         My opinion? Maybe god shouldn’t have killed the 3 children in the first place. That’s not a miracle, thats a -tragedy-. I understand that the parents are probably just looking for a way to cope, and I can understand if the grief is easier to bear if they believe their children were somehow given back to them. I’d probably twist my mind in similar ways to avoid the obvious and horrible reality, but it’s -not- a heartwarming story. If you decide to take that story in a religious miracle kind of way, god is VERY cruel.

   4. We need a “Moms Like Me”/Insane Clown Posse mashup, stat!

      http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/b4ce0e55cd/insane-clown-posse-miracles

   5. I wish there was a Chris Jordan image that could adequately quantify how much damage yourself and people like you have done to the unfortunate youth who are forced to learn and made to believe your twisted, deplorable ideology.

      1. That person was being obviously sarcastic.

      2. It seems pretty clear that mypalmike is being facetious. I suggest relaxing a little and taking a deep breath before firing off a response :)

   6. “Thermodynamic miracles… events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
      And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

      But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.

      Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another’s vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come…dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes… and let’s go home.”

      — Alan Moore (Watchmen)

   7. I’m so glad my mom was NOT like you.

   8. Awesome post, thanks for making me laugh, for doing lots of people’s heads in, and reminding me about a bit of golden stand-up from Bill Bailey.

      He once spoke about a woman on Oprah or some such place who said “Speaking as a mother, I know that the Middle East is full of terrorists”, prompting him to observe, “When did “speaking as a mother” become a euphemism for talking out of your arse?”

   9. Hello!!! You are not paying attention. Science specifically say protons and electrons DON’T follow rigid paths.

      1. Oh no, please let’s not make this a quantum mechanics discussion. Not in blog comments.It’s too subtle for that.
         The time evolution of the quantum state of any particle, in any given potential field, is mathematically well-defined. The outcomes of particular measurements of such states (such as the position of a particle defined to be in a momentum eigenstate) are in general only probabilistically defined. It is an open (and potentially unanswerable even in principle) question whether this is a fundamental aspect of the universe’s operation, or a function of our current limited knowledge and experimental results.

10. Always liked Bill Nye even though he became “famous” after I was well past his intended audience. Parents kept buying me science stuff when I was young and I have not look back since. My wife and I are instilling a love of science in our kids and they both embrace it. The hard part is that most of there friends and the friends parents look in awe on science and figure you are on an other level in both a good and bad way.

    I am worried with the new Teabagger movement who all appear to be completely ignorant on science policy and probably will set the country back even farther. I can see it here in OK already. Not sure what the cure will be be. Probably should start taking Mandarin lessons from the Chinese grad students.

    Also last time I look Gravity made the leap from theory to Law.

11. I was bored by chemistry in High School, and my rocket scientist father couldn’t understand why, until he found out that all the burning and exploding parts (that draw normal high school boys in) had been removed from the curriculum in the late 60s for “safety” reasons. I put safety in quotes because the real reason was just fear, kids were in more danger walking home from school or riding the ridiculously poorly engineered school buses than they were from experimentation in chem class.

    The stupid and the cowardly are in charge. Look up how many kids have committed suicide in the wake of “zero tolerance” laws – yet, school boards still love them, a few dead kids draw only crocodile tears from the eyes of a school board. I’d like to tar and feather every parent that ever voted for a “zero tolerance” politician and run them out of town on a rail. At what point did we become so sickeningly twisted that the words “zero” and “tolerance” seem like they should be joined together and pursued as a goal? Tolerance (although perhaps not acceptance) is necessary in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, religiously free society!

    Eh, sorry about the rant there. Bill’s right, and “zero tolerance” is the mark of a scoundrel.

12. I recently returned to school to become a teacher (my wife is an 8th grade science teacher, I want to do something similar).

    I was in a class discussing ethics and the professor told us we needed to be careful discussing evolution in our classrooms. I asked why, and she explained oh-so-expertly “It’s just a theory”.

    I blew an O-ring.

    I explained to her and the whole class that evolution was one of the most tested and well respected scientific “theories” today, accepted as fact by virtually every single scientist on the planet. We have physical proof that it happens in the real world. It’s as proven and respected as the laws of thermodynamics. Evolution – is – real.

    Half the class immediately started arguing STRONGLY against me, someone even said “Maybe -you’re- a monkey”.

    I had no support. Nobody in the class was speaking up for science. Everyone’s so afraid of hurting sensibilities that they keep their mouths shut and avoid the issue. I decided to take a different tact. Evolution is an incredible thing, bringing about every form of life we see today. How is that any less miraculous than some bearded flying space man just “creating” stuff? Why couldn’t evolution be gods process for creation? Why does it have to be perceived as -against- religious ideas? It’s elegant, it’s beautiful, it’s miraculous, it’s provable farking science. Evolution is every bit as incredible whether it’s a natural process or something VISHNU came up with on a quiet afternoon.

    Evolution is something we’ve observed directly, experimented on, and can -prove- exists. That’s the definition of good science. It has a place in the classroom and shouldn’t be offensive to people of any religion or belief.

    In the end, the teacher halted the conversation. There was simply -no- way to get through to these people. They have their heads screwed on one way and view evolution as some kind of anti-religion attack. Maybe it’s because I’m living in Arizona……

    I’m not trying to get rid of your god or tell you how to worship.

    1. Your in AZ, try OK. There are certain things I just don’t speak about here, sort of like talking to a brick wall and about as intelligent.

       1. It’s just hard to understand…

          I never expected to see evolution questioned at a college level in a class about ethics and teaching.

          Evolution is the basis for everything we know about biology. Take it away and -nothing- makes sense. Trying to rectify science in the eyes of one religion is extremely poor form. This is America – there are a massive number of practiced religions here. Teaching intelligent design in a christian sense is just as offensive to me as the idea of teaching children that we all live on the back of a giant space turtle, or explaining that life originated when Enki ate his own semen fertilized fruit and then became pregnant, eventually putting this “pregnancy sperm” into Ninhursag because she had a womb, eventually making her the mother of all life (look it up). It’s -offensive- to tell a little girl who’s family practices Hindu that the world was created by intelligent design from a christian god. That little girl wants to believe that Vishnu grew a lotus flower out of his belly button then decided to create the world – and I say she has every right to go on believing that. It -could- have happened, there being no proof for or against it, and Vishnu might have set evolution in motion to “create”.

          Evolution is observed, tested, and proven through testing. It exists, and that existence doesn’t stand in the face of god or any religious beliefs. Even if god -did- pop down and create man from dirt – meaning man didn’t evolve into present form – that still doesn’t take away the fact that evolution is happening all around us today. Humanity is evolving. Bugs are evolving, bacteria are evolving. It’s the correct thing to teach regardless of the truths or myths of religion. I’d rather keep religion out of the science classroom – let the parents explain their personal mythology to their children. I’m here to teach science.

          1. I wish you were my son’s science teacher! You have a very clear grasp of the boundaries and mission of science education, something I’m not sure his teachers have…

             My daughter’s in a wonderful private school, but I can’t afford a private high school for my son.

          2. Not-quite-but-almost related: When I took an intro to astronomy course in Santa Cruz, CA, the teacher’s first lecture was about how astrology != astronomy and how there’s absolutely no correlation between the position of the sun in the sky on the day you were born and your personality. He cited studies and concluded by saying that astrology is 100% false. Several women got up and walked out. I died a little inside.

             Later, when I took biological anthropology, a course explicitly about evolution, there was no controversy at all. Every area has its own brand of insanity, I guess.

             1. If I took an astronomy class and the professor started out by talking about astrology, I might walk out, too. Who wants a professor who wastes lecture time ranting about his pet peeves?

             2. Walking out would seem an unreasonably harsh reaction. Astrology is more than just a pet peeve. It is a misunderstanding of the functioning of objects directly relevant to his subject. Taking a bit of lecture time to address it may not be necessary, but “I might walk out, too”… Just seems a harsh and snobby reaction. Also, depending on the level of the class (makes some sense in more introductory classes), I think it is totally fine to address scientific vs. non-scientific thinking using examples like that.

             3. There’s a great Dilbert comic on that subject.

                I’m off to the Stupor Bowl party, where I will hang out with the engineers at the snack table drinking beer and discussing the way nss_ldap memory leaks are messing up Neil’s gyrocopter project. G’night all!

             4. It’s like a stand-up comic starting his act by saying, “I hope you think I’m funny.” It stinks of flop sweat. Starting your science class by catering to your most superstitious students reeks of defeatism. It would be better to teach your subject and if somebody asks a question about astrology, just tell them that it’s an astronomy class and astrology is off-topic. Basically, the professor in question allowed himself to be trolled.

                Plus, unlike in evolution v. creationism, whether or not you believe in astrology wouldn’t have any impact on your ability to understand astronomy.

             5. The professor was a jerk, but I don’t hold the astrology rant against him. New Age-y stuff is kind of the default belief around here and they take it every bit as seriously as the fundies take the bible.

             6. “Plus, unlike in evolution v. creationism, whether or not you believe in astrology wouldn’t have any impact on your ability to understand astronomy.”

                Well, if you thought that the positions of distant objects had some influence over the lives of organisms on this planet, it would demonstrate a lack of understanding about the way the universe works. Astronomy is just applied physics remember.

                Actually, everything is just applied physics.

                I’ve used Randi’s horoscope trick in introductory lessons in middle school astronomy. It’s a lot of fun and it demonstrates the distinction between astrology and astronomy early on to save some confusion later on. I’m also at pains to point out that a lot of what we now know about astronomy owes a lot to the observations of early astrologers, just as alchemists had an impact on the development of chemistry. Just because they were wrong doesn’t mean they didn’t play a role.

             7. We all have ideas in our heads that we don’t bother thinking about, because “everybody knows” this or that thing is so. It’s occasionally useful to take those ideas out and examine them afresh.

                Thought Experiment: If seasonal variation in diet has had effects on the evolution of humans (very likely) resulting in cyclic behavioural changes in the human organism (which provably exist) and the stars provide a reasonably accurate seasonal clock (provably true) for people in pre-timepiece technological states (historically true) is it unreasonable to suppose that some behavioural traits might be linked to the time of one’s birth, and that one may make broadly applicable predictions based on the current season (as measured by the positions of the stars) and characteristics known to be linked to the season of one’s birth (again, as measured by the stars)?

                It seems likely that as humans from extremely disseparate ethnic groups have interbred, and diets have become unlinked from seasons, and people have become more and more detached from the natural world, the predictive and prescriptive value of astrology would have become less and less accurate.

                But isn’t it foolish to leap to the conclusion that because astrology doesn’t work now, it has never worked ever, or because modern astrologists are artists (at best) that ancient astrologers were not scientists? There are good scientific reasons to postulate that human traits could once have been usefully tracked by noting the positions of the stars, the cyclic behaviour of one’s fellows, and their dates of birth.

                Once upon a time, the tribal shaman might have been able to predict that Libras were more likely to fall in love in June, for example. From his perspective, this was science, since it was based on observations and correlations. From the perspective of his tribe, the shaman was mystically wise, and knew things by noting the position of the stars. The shaman might even be able to convince the tribe to push big rocks up on end so he could take more accurate sightings! Especially if he told his tribe that the stars controlled their lives, and such a henge of stones would let him see the puppet-strings.

                End of thought experiment. Did I prove anything? Nope. That was not the purpose of it. The purpose of such experiments is to flex the metaphorical sinews of the mind.

                Thinking is required for science. Rote repetition of popular memes (astrology means stars control your life! That’s retarded!) is not science, because it is unthinking. We need to be ready to re-examine ideas and objects at any moment, or we are just parrots, right?

             8. Nobody is skeptical that personality might be linked to time of birth. What people are skeptical of is that you can link what happens to them to the position of planets; that there should be some regular cycles of nearly exactly 88 days, 225 days, 1.9 years, 11.9 years, and 29.7 years that are notable enough to tell you anything about your day.

                Nor is skepticism about this new, but it goes back to the first times people started to look at their traditional beliefs critically. What is it about astrology that makes people want to cut it more slack than other ancient forms of divination, like bird signs and entrail reading, which were taken just as seriously in their day?

             9. Nobody is skeptical that personality might be linked to time of birth.

                Hmmm, I think you might be wrong about that. I seem to remember most people were quite surprised by the research results. Stuff that’s obvious to you isn’t necessarily obvious to others, eh?

                As for cyclic periodicity, why should it matter what clock you use to measure cycles as long as you measure real events against them? You do realize that time itself, as humans measure it, is controlled by the movements of stars, right? You set the atomic clock to noon when Flamsteed’s stick has no shadow. Seriously!

                But I don’t want to defend astrology, I don’t even read the column in the newspaper.

                I just really like thought experiments because they are cheap and easy for anyone to participate in. I think reconsidering astrology makes a good model thought experiment.

             10. The clock doesn’t matter so long as it has the same period as what you’re measuring. Nobody should be surprised to find you can time seasonal things by the sun and stars, to the point that when you do, it usually gets called a calendar instead of astrology.

                 But what in nature matches up with Mercury or Mars? Something might be close by coincidence, but if it’s more than a tiny bit off – even 2 years instead of 1.9 – they’ll quickly lose synchronization. I’m all for thought experiments, but here they tell me that it’s very unlikely you could use the planets to time natural things, unless they are actually related to the planets.

             11. I think what you are saying is that when an astrologer claims that some phenomena is exactly co-incident with an astronomical cycle (and not, say, 3.525 times the period of Mars) the odds are extremely high that either the phenomema is directly related to that astronomical cycle (like the tides are with the moon, for example) or the astrologer is full of hooey.

                 If that’s what you mean, I agree! If not, I’m puzzled and possibly stupid.

                 (I apologize for the unclosed tags in my previous post.)

             12. Well, if you thought that the positions of distant objects had some influence over the lives of organisms on this planet, it would demonstrate a lack of understanding about the way the universe works.

                 Not really. It doesn’t impact it. In the case of creationism, or at least Young Earth Creationism, the “””facts””” are in direct opposition to what we know about evolution, not to mention about a dozen other scientific disciplines. Astronomy and astrology don’t really have any common ground. Believing that Mars in Libra makes you cranky doesn’t actually impact whether or not you would understand any aspect of astronomy, including the physics. Astrology is wholly metaphysical, whereas creationism is a hideous chimera of physical and metaphysical.

             13. I am pretty sure you are familiar with more advanced ideas of creationism, such as Hindu and quantum ones, so I will assume you are talking about Judeo-Christian mythos creationism here.

                 “Light and life are all around us in a continuous dance of creation and destruction; every moment is created afresh, every thought is the first of its kind”

             14. The journal Nature Neuroscience actually published a study this past December linking the season of birth and personality.

                 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101205202510.htm

                 I’m reminded of Arthur Clarke’s Three Laws, the third being:

                 “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

          3. It was allowed to spin out of control at the levels within the education system that could have stopped it. Effectively, they made it so we have to give time to people that are full of shit.
             You can have a discussion in a philosophy class about where we all come from, God, Aliens, whatever. Go ponder the world.
             But not in a damn science class. Do we give time to people in a serious manner who thing the earth is flat? No, because they are insane. Why do we have to allow anyone whose religious sensibilities are offended have a say in what goes on in a science class? Screw them, they’re idiots.

13. Meh.

    I remember high school science, too. I remember physics (balls rolling on slopes, balances, experiments relating to force, mass, and acceleration, and so on). I remember chemistry (chemical interactions). I remember the basic structure of a lab book, the need to keep notes, the need to organize thought and writing in a certain way, and so on. And I remember the scientific method: thesis, then tests of that thesis, then exploration of the results.

    None of this depended on I or the teacher agreeing on what happened 10,000 or 10,000,000 years ago. I have no idea what the religious beliefs of my schoolmates or teacher were.

    Yet, somehow, Bill Nye has failed because some students don’t agree with him about what happened in the prehistoric past? Somehow lab books can’t be written, and balls can’t be rolled down a sloped block of wood, because some students don’t agree with you about what happened in prehistory?

    Grow up.

    1. wow, way to miss the point- the issue is that evolutionary science is something that is currently happening, and is a fundamental part of how biology and the planet actually works. It’s not “something that happened 10,000 or 10,000,000 years ago”. It’s something that’s happening now, as well as then, and it’s something that scientists have reached a consensus about. It is simply the state of science.

       To not teach how evolution works leaves a gigantic gap in a student’s education, and cripples him or her (not to mention undermines our society’s ability to continue the advances evolutionary biology has brought us, like vaccines, etc.) If we were refusing to teach Algebra because somehow it didn’t jive with a vocal minority’s narrow interpretations of the bible, would you still be saying “Meh”?

    2. “Yet, somehow, Bill Nye has failed because some students don’t agree with him about what happened in the prehistoric past? Somehow lab books can’t be written, and balls can’t be rolled down a sloped block of wood, because some students don’t agree with you about what happened in prehistory?”

       Science is an approach which is held consistent across its many and varied branches. To say that students must follow a line of inquiry where interpretation is based on evidence in a non-controversial area of science, but they can ignore it in another because the idea upsets some people is completely missing the point. Evolution underpins biology – if you study biology and you don’t have even a basic grasp of evolution, then you don’t have biology. Creationism not only gets the facts wrong, it also throws out any of the evidence and proof through testing based approach that is science. ID is even more insidious because it deliberately misrepresents the evidence and ignores evidence which is contrary to its pre-established world view. Both are fundamentally anti-science because they refuse to change when their hypotheses fail testing.

       You obviously got some science through your schooling. You just missed out on a portion of it. No biggie, you’re obviously still functional. I’m just a little worried about the future of biological research and advancement if your experience is repeated across the whole population.

    3. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, he’s not saying he’s a failure because people disagree with him about evolution. He’s saying he’s a failure because people use the expression “it’s just a theory”. He’s a failure because he hasn’t made a dent in the public perception that theory means “guess”, where somebody says “I have a theory, it’s evolution!” and it’s just as valid as “I have a theory… it could be witches… some evil witches (which is ridiculous cause witches they were persecuted, and Wicca
       good and loved the earth, and woman power, and I’ll be over here.)”, as opposed to theory meaning “a testable scientific belief that has withstood an awful lot of scrutiny.”

    4. Biology without evolution is like chemistry without the periodic table. You can still learn facts and do experiments, but each can only be viewed in isolation, because you’re not discussing the underlying principles that tie them all into a coherent discipline.

14. So, let’s start using the word ‘model’ in place of ‘theory’. It’s more precise terminology and harder to dismiss through abused semantics.

    1. So, let’s start using the word ‘model’ in place of ‘theory’. It’s more precise terminology and harder to dismiss through abused semantics.

       I like the cut of your jib, sailor!

    2. In my field, mechanical engineering, “models” and “theories” are decidedly different things. Theories are valid because of their accuracy. Models are valid because of their utility, regardless of their accuracy concerning the underlying actual phenomena.

    3. Then we run into the Camelot defense: “It’s only a model.”

       1. Hlargl.

          Doomed.

15. ” Farmers raise crops with science; they hybridize them and make them better with every generation. That’s all evolution. ”

    Really? How can guided and manipulated reproduction and hybridization be compared to Evolution through Natural ( as in not guided/manipulated) Selection?

    -The complaints of Bill Nye, and every other pedagog/ideologue I know ( and I know plenty) want to blame some kind of Right-wing boogeyman for poor student performance. Never-mind how much influence the Right may or may not have in any given school full of poorly performing students who don’t give a crap about Biology class.

    -You guys talk about a “culture war” as though secular humanism isn’t the foundation of our Federally-mandated approach to “education”.

    1. “The complaints of Bill Nye, and every other pedagog/ideologue I know ( and I know plenty) want to blame some kind of Right-wing boogeyman for poor student performance. Never-mind how much influence the Right may or may not have in any given school full of poorly performing students who don’t give a crap about Biology class.”

       Well it certainly doesn’t help when successive right wing governments (including those run by Democrats) have decimated public education funding and turned the experience of schooling into passing a series of tests which are intended to reflect more on the quality of the school than the student’s performance. They have diverted funding away from the schools that need it the most in the interests of fostering “quality” and devolved responsibility for curriculum down to local school boards which are easily infiltrated by religious pressure groups with an axe to grind. They have disempowered teachers so much that most would omit a fundamental element of science rather than risk parental abuse, undue scrutiny and pressure from administrators and even student walkouts organised by the local evangelical church.

       It must all be the secular humanists’ fault. They’re obviously the ones stacking out the school boards, sacking teachers and shutting “unproductive” schools no doubt. Funny that systems which don’t do any of these things (Hello Finland) seem to have fewer problems with student performance. But no, let’s not let any evidence get in the way of truthiness.

       1. Finland enjoys an entirely different culture. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, if you compare the performance of white students in the United States, theirs falls just short of the students of Finland. Further, performance does not correlate with how much money is spent on schooling ( we spend more than any other country, btw).
          What really doesn’t help is our general cultural decline, which has nothing to do with Rightism or Leftism, and everything to do with laziness, cheap credit, and generalized ignorance. In a word, schools teach the children we send to school. They do not remake them.

16. Hold on a minute. The theory of Evolution by natural selection is not testable. You can prove that organisms change over time, but you cannot test for, or show, the mechanisms by which these changes take place. It’s an inference.It might be suggested by other, disparate facts, but it is an inference nonetheless.

17. I fail to see why the evolution discussion shuts science down. There are plenty of other scientific avenues that can be approached without ever having to cross that line. Why does there have to be a bold and decisive resolution on Evolution/Creation for the rest of science to progress? Even astronauts pray!
    Grobbbbbbbbb

18. It seems to me that one of the most urgent needs is to improve the science education of elementary school teachers and then encourage them to not be afraid of having FUN with science. Once you get to middle/high school teaching there are more requirements for subject specialization and those with a scientific bent become science teachers. I’m guessing many elementary teachers had horrible science educations themselves and therefor do the bare minimum required for their students. Does anyone out there know of an organization that supporting this idea in a big way, and one that encourages elementary teachers to then share their teaching science skills with other elementary teachers?

19. I believe in miracles (You Sexy Thing)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Sexy_Thing
    

20. ‘I was in a class discussing ethics and the professor told us we needed to be careful discussing evolution in our classrooms. I asked why, and she explained oh-so-expertly “It’s just a theory”.’

    The best retort I’ve heard to that is something along the lines of, “So is gravity. Should we also be careful about that? Perhaps give equal time to teaching the Sometimes Stuff Just Falls Up hypothesis?”

    I think it’s extremely difficult to try to teach an unreceptive person the difference between the meaning of theory as used in science and theory as used by the general public. The term has essentially been poisoned.

    Alternatively, I’ve heard of people teaching about the evidence we have that shows living things change over time, how we know this happens, and what the evidence says about how it happens, all the while avoiding the E word. The idea being, at least students will learn the science even if they label remains toxic.

21. this quite sad state of affairs really but it all ultimatlry deoneds on the indivuals effort and determination in there education,

22. Let’s not get too bent out of shape about a poll that only has 239 self-selected respondents, OK?

    That said, what we’re doing with evolution education is obviously not working. How about changing it? Why not compare evolution and creationism? Evolution wins. End of problem.

23. I loved watching ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ when it was on and it’s sad he feels like he failed. I believe in evolution and realize that life followed a pattern to get to us…too bad not every body can accept that.

24. Re Bill Nye:
    I completely agree, like most people here, that science needs to start sooner. But I don’t think it’s the specific “here are the facts of how the world works” that need to be taught at an early age. Nor is it the dazzling “here are the fun things that are part of doing science” that should be promoted to elementary school children. Both of these aspects of science are significant in maintaining life-long interest in it, but really what kids need to be learning from a young age is the SCIENTIFIC METHOD of exploring the world and testing their assumptions.

    The Scientific Method is what leads to inquisitive, critical thinkers. Children don’t need to be taught the test-your-hypothesis formula by wrote, but they do need to be encouraged to think–no, reason–for themselves. Passing on facts is not education, it is data acquisition. That’s the difference between nurturing a Wolfram Alpha program and nurturing an enlightened human. It’s not just Science class that owes this responsibility. EVERY subject would benefit from, and owes responsibility for, teaching students to reexamine and justify their conclusions. That’s the best way of bringing people out of their imagined realities and into truthful, involved existence.

    Re Creationism:
    I personally abhor the bible-based curriculum that has come to embody creationism, but when I really think about it, I can’t find religion as the original cause of this movement. There are lots of areas of modern life where the majority religions teach lessons that contradict how the average American leads their daily life. It probably did begin as a political strategy to rally constituents around and help shape the nation’s children; however that isn’t enough to explain why it endures. Even though I can’t empathize with the attachment many people have to the intelligent design belief, it obviously resonates with them more so than natural evolution. It really makes more sense to people at an intuitive level that they are willing to reject facts. Why? Because people are EGOTISTICAL.

    Creationism and to some extent all pre-contemporary Christianity teach that humans are better than all the other mortal creatures, not due to individual capabilities or society achievements, but at the basic, inherent foundation. Humans were given a distinct day and are made in a distinct way during the 7 days of creation. This appeals to our egos: Even the poorest, least skilled person in the world can be certain that they are more impressive than any animal because they were made special. Where science and technology doesn’t conflict with our egos, every human is ready to accept the advancements earned through scientific research and study – they may even be interested in understanding the technology’s underlying principles themselves.

    But when science tells us that we aren’t divinely special; that we aren’t the center of the universe; that our status in life is not inherent and forever secure; that we are as special as we are due to the slow, unplanned development of natural circumstances; that we could even one day have competition from those we consider beneath us… THAT is why evolution is too affronting to accept. People need to be willing to humble themselves, to see themselves without hubris in the great scientific universe, before they can accept that humans alone are not made in the image of God, but rather the image of our ancestors.

    And that all comes back to teaching children at a young age to explore their world, and to test their beliefs.

25. Science requires thinking,and so called education is geared at training obedient employees to complete tasks on schedule. That said,I’m very often amazed at how many scientists are very poorly educated.

26. Let’s face it, corporatists (like the Koch brothers) can only thrive when the masses are ignorant. An informed populace would destroy the Koch brothers (and they know it).

    People complain America doesn’t manufacture anything anyone… bullshit, we manufacture ignorance better than anybody else in the western world.

    This horrible state of education in 2011 isn’t an accident. When Generation X “slackers” were saying that Americans were being “dumbed down” back in the 1990’s — they weren’t kidding, they were dead serious. I wish the masses had took their warning seriously.

    So now here we are twenty years later and the ignorant chickens have come home to roost and are clucking some stupid, stupid shit.

    Gawd help us all.

27. I love Bill Nye and promote him in our online school.

    But drawing lines in the sand and throwing dirt clods at one another accomplishes nothing. I understand (believe me) the friction between different methods of inquiry. But deliberately creating us vs. them only entrenches people further, because no one wants to lose.

    There is always another approach that can get past false dichotomies and continue mankind’s search for truth.

    I admit that I don’t understand the cultures of many religions, although I have taught comparative world religions at the collegiate level.

    But I have found that pursuing both the religious and scientific search for truth is worthwhile and benefits society. They each have their own methods. Surely religious and scientific people would like to see a greater social benefit from the other side.

    For example, I have said to some that perhaps science is the means by which God accomplishes miracles. He’s just a much, much more knowledgeable scientist than we are. And apparently He would like us to assert ourselves and become more like him. To learn. To do. So, even though our own limits may be pronounced, let’s use our abilities to the fullest and see what we can learn about life, the universe, and maybe God himself. And so forth. I usually go on to talk about ancient concepts of time, the possibility that if God is eternal then he would exist outside of our universe’s time-space, etc.

    Flame away, but this approach has worked for me time and time and time again.

    In contrast, although his other classes were great, I vividly remember my high school teacher’s evolution lecture which largely consisted of him attacking religious people. There was basically no science covered. Everyone was miserable, including him. It sucked. Nothing was accomplished that day, except that everyone was thoroughly upset and uncomfortable by the time the class was over. Thank God.

    If scientists believe we are superior, then we must act superior. And like we need scientists starting *more* wars over religion.

28. Why not compare evolution and creationism? Evolution wins.

    But it doesn’t; I suspect you understand evolution (which is natural history) but I don’t think you have tried to understand creationism (which is philosophy).

    You cannot prove that the world was not created ten seconds ago. If it was created in all ways exactly as it existed ten seconds ago, with all the fossils, human memories, half-completed sentences, etc. it would be impossible for you, inside this creation, to know that. This is an important concept in philosophy – some aspects of this paradox were explored in the movie The Matrix which many people enjoyed (ignoring the awful sequels). In philosophy and theology ideas like this cannot be dismissed out of hand; they are a part of an ongoing inquiry that is a worthwhile human endeavor.

    There is no useful purpose to comparing creationism and evolution; they have little or nothing to do with each other except in one very restricted sense that is championed by fundamentalists who are as unfamiliar with the philosophical construct of creationism as they are with the scientific concept of evolution. When you fight on that battlefield, the ignorant fundies have already won by controlling the framing of the debate.

    Creationism belongs in philosophy, theology and religion classes. It has no starring role in any other classes. Evolution belongs in biology and natural science classes. Both concepts are important to history, anthropology and sociology. But they are not opposites or even in opposition to each others, except in the minds of ignorant fundamentalists. Don’t let the fundamentalists control the debate! ;)

    1. Creationism belongs in philosophy

       No, Mythology 101

       1. Oh, it definitely belongs in any survey of mythology. There are so many conflicting creation myths that it is impossible for them all to be correct, and many of them are trivially disprovable. They are useful in understanding history and folklore, so anthropologists and historians should definitely study creation myths.

          But ignoring the holographic paradox and restricting oneself to only Stalinist-friendly philosophies is not a good way to teach philosophy.

          1. There are so many conflicting creation myths that it is impossible for them all to be correct, and many of them are trivially disprovable.

             Myths need not be correct. Correct or incorrect don’t apply to myths; that’s not their realm of significance. Contradictory creation myths have nothing to offer the logician, but much to offer the cultural anthropologist.

             Trivial disprovability likewise has no meaning. We understand that dreams are disprovable; yet we pay attention to our dreams

             Myths need only be useful. If we gain insight — if we learn something, learn anything — if we learn only that the myth is a myth, then the myth is useful, and therefore good.

             And if the myth is a tale worth telling … if it’s diverting entertainment by the campfire … if it’s a ripping good yarn … so much the better: people need entertainment, they benefit from it. This is not logically provable, but experience tells me that it’s so.

             1. “And if the myth is a tale worth telling … if it’s diverting entertainment by the campfire … if it’s a ripping good yarn … so much the better: people need entertainment, they benefit from it. This is not logically provable, but experience tells me that it’s so.”

                There’s nothing wrong with fiction – even the most ardent scientist enjoys a good story. The problem occurs when the myths are presented as unchallengeable and start stepping in where provable facts are demonstrably more useful. Believing that the universe and all living things were created ex nihilo by divine fiat over the course of a single week does not help us understand how the universe works, and thinking that living processes are too complex to understand how they arose doesn’t encourage us to delve more deeply into understanding them.

       2. Maybe the important thing is the order we teach these subjects; teach the kids the independently verifiable stuff like evolution first, then introduce them to myth, politics, and finally philosophy? I dunno.

          1. I honestly think we have to destroy corporatists like the Koch brothers before we can accomplish anything else. They control too much and education isn’t going to improve under their corporatist dictatorship.

             Revolution like what’s happening in Egypt, etc. needs to happen here first. Until then, we can simply wish our lives aways and keep hoping education improves.

             Hope in one hand; shit in the other… see which one fills up faster.

             1. I fear you may be correct.

                I’d like to think that the corporate powers-that-be can see they have gone too far, and that they are sitting on a powder keg. Sometimes, though, it seems like the hereditary Board Member class are living in some sort of fantasy world where the oil will never run out and the people will never rebel.

             2. To be fair, it seems like the people never will rebel unless the oil runs out.

    2. You cannot prove that the world was not created ten seconds ago.

       Well, we should teach kids that; it connects to a very important concept for science, that theories should be falsifiable for experiments and analysis to work. And I feel if kids find out young earth creationism works exactly as well as this ten second model, they won’t necessarily grow up to give it so much weight.

29. I agree that the top science kids get roaring really early. They’re self starters and school never caught up with them. Having been in science faires in the 1950s I recall the competition as being staggering. The best were easily 3 grade levels ahead and some of them were well past what they’d get as undergrads in college.
    The teaching of science in high school was adequate at best and benefited some but not all. You had to be ready for some of the ideas. There were plenty of ordinary students who did well later.
    What concerns me today is the lack of wonder. I hung out with a group that would be called “makers”. We were always making electronic stunt boxes. Didn’t do crap for our grades but it gave us a life.

30. Several comments have touched on particular aspects of what’s happened to our science education: School boards are afraid of the Creationists; budgets have been slashed, so it is prohibitive to teachers to allow students to do the lab work we’d like; the worryworts are in charge of safety policy, which means no explosions, flames, fumes, color changes, metals, or in depth discussion — for fear the students might become distraught in some way and sue the school; and last, but certainly not least, the whole US education system has become preparation for standardized tests, so we cram the poor students’ heads full of facts without any reasoning.

    Does this sound right? It’s certainly what I see in the class everyday. My proposed solution is simple: Learn about religion in your place of worship; the kids will survive nearly everything they will encounter in school — including ideas; and let’s start teaching students how to analyze because it is a valuable skill in all subjects from scientific method to rhetoric (which share more similarities than most people understand or want to admit).

31. The american culture is the culture of “dumb it down”. Let’s face it: George Dubya got elected president TWICE. Stop thinking and go watch the Stupor Bowl. “Blessings of the state-Blessings of the masses.”

32. What if someone did an experiment (in college classes, not high school) with the hypothesis “discussing creationism in a respectful way while teaching evolution helps students to a better understanding/appreciation of evolution?” Suppose some one did do the experiment, and the data supported the hypothesis?

    Then how would we feel about including creationism in biology classes?

33. It is a philosophical idea. If you attach the man in the sky idea to it, it becomes fair game for mythology/theism. Either way, both fields are wonderful things to study.

    However, as sdmikev points out, philosophy, metaphysics, and religion have no place in a science classroom. Science is unassuming; it analyzes reality as it appears. If you don’t take reality as a given when studying science, then you have no givens. I don’t know what reality is, but I know that science does a damn good job of explaining what occurs within my observable universe and does so in a way humans can understand.

    Also, in this thread, many, many people fail to understand satire.

34. No, Bill Nye, you haven’t failed. You’ve inspired many students- I met some, in college- to shut out the ridiculousness being taught in schools, the ignorance forced upon them by their elders, and learn *real* science, including biology.

    I was lucky enough to grow up in a state that was (mostly) free of the anti-evolution crowd. The very first topic of discussion in my 9th grade bio class (the first time students take biology as a separate subject) was “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”

    I agree that most scientists I’ve met knew they were going to be scientists well before puberty. I certainly did. I think part of the danger is that anywhere you go in the US that I know of, up until about sixth grade, every single subject is taught by one teacher. I know for a fact that my 4th grade teacher had long since forgotten how to do 5th grade math. In retrospect, it is clear she was equally impaired by a lack of knowledge when trying to teach us about electricity and crayfish (the only 2 4th grade science topics I can remember). People who have a good enough understanding of any field of science to make it make sense to young children *don’t often become elementary school teachers.*

    Also, kids often ask really good questions- they’re perceptive. On Christmas my 4 year old cousin (who recently discovered astronomy and dinosaurs) started asking me all sorts of questions. I was able to answer them, but her dad- as much a nerd as any aspiring scientist could hope for- couldn’t. It’s really hard to explain why the sky is blue. And if the person teaching you science can’t answer obvious questions- well, bright kids are gonna pick up that their teacher doesn’t really understand what they’re teaching, and (what’s worse) that it’s ok not to understand these things- it won’t interfere with you becoming someone who is perceived as educated by others, as teachers are. For me, that just meant I had to go read up about it myself, or ask my bright older sisters about it, but a lot of people just stop being curious at that point.

35. JJ, I hear what you are saying. Let ‘theory’ be the sekrit code word for those in the know, for those who are publishing in a peer-reviewed culture.

    I’m after maximizing public dollars to the sciences, which is a political thing. If you remove the chance to get hung up on a misunderstanding, perpetuated by the poor science education in the first place, you get past the road block of calling something out as “just a theory”.

36. This thread kicked-up a half-recalled memory of my 8th grade year. We had two different science teachers in my high school (mine went 8-12 instead of 9-12). I think it was Mr. Martin who explained evolution to us. He made sure to say it was “just a theory. Just like gravity… is just a theory.” At which point he dropped an eraser on the floor. “See? Just a theory.” He went on with other illustrations to convey to us without the use of words that yes, evolution is as real a concept as everything else around you.

    I have no doubt some students didn’t comprehend the illustration, but I think he got through to most of us. Mr. Martin was a fun guy. He got canned because some students broke a lightbulb against his head and he shouted something distasteful at them as they ran away. Hardly grounds for termination in my book, especially because he was one of my favorite teachers.

    I also seem to remember something about him explaining the difference to me between barium nitrate and barium nitride. I’d read about it in the Anarchist Cookbook and asked him about it. Of course I never did anything with the information, but it was cool that he was willing to explain it to me anyway.

    Ultimately, I think the US is still a fairly stupid country. We’re not as bad off as more theocratic nations, but we’re nowhere nearly as advanced as our more secular contemporaries. It probably won’t change anytime soon, either. You just have to leave the morons to worship their sticks and stones, and find whatever enclave you can in which to study reality.

37. Just for starters, some people suffering from each year’s new strain of influenza would like to disagree with you that evolution turned off like a lightbulb 10,000 or 10,000,000 years ago.

38. It’s been mentioned, but schools aren’t for increasing intelligence or even general knowledge. I blame the Capitalist ideation of most prominent cultures. Schools are factories for producer-consumers. Your value to society in Western culture is determined by your buying power. Therefore, the most easily coerced area of education, pre- or sub-collegiate public education, is turned into a zone for the production of drones with the minimal knowledge required to survive and consume. College education is going that way as well, as it continues to become more and more job or career oriented.

    Knowledge and intelligence have no innate value in our culture. Expect to see schools continue to degrade. The root issue is not funding or teacher performance. It’s a fundamental apathy about improving the individual’s intelligence (and, thusly, the intelligence of the whole species) and extending human knowledge.

    /doom&gloom

39. Cool move by god to create evolution, keeps down the micro-managing.

    My god created your god.

40. It belies logic that anyone allows the religious nuts in America to force all kids in some states to learn the ridiculous bullshit known as intelligent design, yet the same assholes turn around and fear monger about the complete impossibility of sharia law being implemented in the US. Good luck with that cognitive dissonance.

41. I was raised a fundamentalist, I was fortunate enough to see this movie in the public school.
    The argument “God made the earth in 7 days, but who are YOU to say how long a day is??” was compelling enough even for 11 year old Baptist me.

    But this scene resonates more today than it has ever.

42. I wonder if Bill Nye feels embarrassed for co-starring in “Ellen’s Energy Adventure” (made about ten years ago when he and Ellen Degeneres were still major celebrities) at Epcot. I just went with my brother’s family a couple of weeks ago, and despite the amusing antics of both actors and the amazing animatronic dinosaurs, the take home message was that solar and wind power were pointless, because off-shore oil drilling was going to be the major solution to the energy problem. To the audience’s credit, they starting hooting when the off-shore platform was presented.

43. Controversial?

    Evolution is not controversial, unless you also consider “controversial” the idea that there is no Santa, that Snow White is not a factual account of life in medieval Europe, or that there is no giant white-bearded man floating in the sky to scrutinize what several billions of people do in order to sort them out in inexistent places when they die (but not them: just something of them that doesn’t exist anyway).

44. this has been a very intelligent thread, but a few main points are missing:

    Evolution requires a definition; I use the basic biological definition: “a change in allele frequencies over time.” Many creationist fundies confuse evolution with *speciation,* the latter of which does still hold numerous mysteries — although speciation in our lifetimes has been documented, e.g. see Antonovics & Ellstrand’s seminal work on sweet vernal grass evolving on toxic mine tailings w/ pollination timing divergence for the reproductive isolating mechanism.

    EVOLUTION IS **NOT A THEORY!!** It is a mathematically inescapable fact!

    given: particulate inheritance, aka DNA (check)
    given: finite population (they all are, check)
    given: possibility of immigration or emigration from distant populations (check)
    given: possible of damage or mutation to the genetic code (check!)

    ** Under these conditions, IT IS IMPOOSSIBLE TO **NOT** SEE A CHANGE IN ALLELE FREQUENCY, aka evolution, by the LAWS of mathematics! I don’t care if it was started by God, Vishnu, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Noodly Appendage, it **IS** the was the world works!

    Lastly, it I was amazed that it wasn’t observed more often that THE PERVASIVE CULTURE OF LITIGATION is part of the downfall of science edu. Dumbsht Dave heats up the open end of a test tube in his burner & uses it to brand Nerdy Eric on the arm — that would be court in a heartbeat in the contemporary environment! (… and yes, this did of course really happen to me in jr. high….) — but without the hands-on, the real science vanishes!! as soon as the spirit of exploration is eviscerated from the classroom, there’s little left to do except memorize vocab lists — and that sure as hell is NOT SCIENCE!!

    1. The religious fundies already have a counter to that argument, namely that micro-evolution is uncontested and empirically indisputable. However, macro-evolution is what most creationist and evolution deniers dispute. How could man have come from monkeys? That thought is just repugnant to some and I’m fairly certain that’s what causes the dwindling deniers to cling to the idea that humans are somehow special from other animals.

       1. They’re still mistaken.

          If one gene can mutate, and it’s frequency distribution can change over a few millennia, and if the same mathematical forces act on each of tens of thousands of genes in every population over millions of years, then macro-evolution *also* can’t not happen, by the same mathematical argument. Evolution necessarily acts at all levels of organization at which Anon’s premises hold., simultaneously.

45. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,

    At my middle school, we learned about all the major religions in social studies. This included Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hindu, and maybe some others. The teacher refused to tell the class what she personally believed, and made sure to control the class environment in such a way that, if a student spoke up about what they believed, they were respected and encouraged by the teacher; then, she would move the conversation away from that particular student’s religion back to the textbook so as to prevent uncomfortable interrogations about that student’s religion from other students.

    In addition, we learned all about evolution in science class.

    Atheist-fundies: Shut up your religion-doesn’t-belong-in-schools badmouthing. Religion belongs in schools. Ignorance of religions is not a good thing. However, you are absolutely 100% correct in that no religion, regardless of how many people believe in it, belongs in a science course.

    Religion-fundies: Stop imposing your beliefs on others; religion belongs in school in its appropriate context. That context is NOT in science class. Religion is not a science. It belongs in a Social Studies, philosophy, history, or other related course.

    1. Who has said “religion doesn’t belong in schools” and meant “facts about religion don’t belong in schools”? If I said racism doesn’t belong in schools, would you really take it to mean I think history should gloss over the causes of the civil rights movements?

    2. As an atheist fundie let me support your proposal. The one thing that I will admit the Catholic schools do better than public schools (at least here in Oz) is teach kids _about_ religion. Their studies of religion subject is second to none and above all balanced. One of the worst things a kid can develop is a knee-jerk opposition to religion based on the limited contact they’ve had thanks to some loud-mouthed wackaloons. This was my experience, and it wasn’t until I actually started learning about religion as an atheist that I actually starting respecting aspects of it.

       Unfortunately, in my own benighted state of Queenslandland, such a course of study was proposed for state schools – kids would be exposed to the tenets of all faiths in a balanced manner which showed respect (much what you described). Inevitably, the Religious Right kicked up such a stink (“Witches, Satanists and Atheists trying to recruit our kids !”) that it was handed back to the Scripture Union and now the kids only get to hear about one strand of Protestant Christianity, complete with denigration of other faiths, if they’re lucky enough to get a Hillsong affiliated preacher in.

       And people wonder why I have such a negative view of religion . . .

46. Having read some of the comments in here from people who clearly get negatively-biased US news in their country (who doesn’t get negatively-biased news these days?), I feel obligated, as an American, to state that the US is a big, big, big country. The United States is the 3rd largest and 3rd most populous country in the world. Our population ranges from the richest of the richest to perhaps the poorest of the poor in developed nations, and our children go to schools ranging from easily some of the best in the world to the worst schools in the advanced industrial nations. Our population also has access to a very healthy dosage of opposing opinions and facts in popular discourse, more frequently very lively than not.

    Science and education in the United States is not dead. Science and education is only dead in some places in the United States.

    No matter what, the US will likely always house some of the best and brightest in the world. However, we should fight hard to ensure equality of education. It’s not a good thing for an advanced nation to offer world-class education to children in one community, but religion-tainted science to children in another community. And that’s what we’re fighting to prevent. After all, religion is not a science that demonstrated with the scientific method, it is a philosophy and a belief.

    1. I don’t disagree that the US is a diverse place and not everywhere is Texas, Kansas or Oklahoma. However when the decisions in those states influence the learning in others (through changes to textbooks), the influence of just a few states can be far ranging.

       Nye was referring at least in part to a survey of science teachers which showed that not only a frighteningly high proportion of them reject evolution, but that of those remaining, a lot are either afraid to risk confrontation by teaching evolution, or lack a proper understanding of the basic concepts of it (probably due to the fact that _their_ teachers never taught it properly). This extends outside the bible belt, and it is currently impacting on the education of the next generation of educators as well as scientists.

       Regardless of what I think about religion in the classroom, the real threat to US education is underfunding and a market-driven approach which sees money taken out of the schools that need it the most and given to schools that don’t need it. There are some amazing good news stories that come out of US education (as an educator, I’ve seen them in action), however all of these involve spending a bit of time and effort in the right places, and most are currently in the gunsights of your new Republican majority. Best of luck.

47. I remember showing a Bill Nye video when I was subbing in a middle school science classroom and the students were interested and found it entertaining. I paused the video every few minutes to discuss the key ideas and ask them questions and have them write. It seemed like they got a lot out of it.

    The sad thing is, none of our cable or public tv stations seem to air these episodes any more. I’ll have to check whether the library or video store carries the series so that we can watch them at home. I’m also not above guilting the grandparents into springing for the box set. It would really be nice to have on some of our rain/ice/snow days.

    On the science vs. astrology issue, (Make this debate go away, almighty God, I’ll do anything!) I’ll leave you with the wise words of Rob Breszny whose weekly horoscopes have kept me riveted for the past 20 some odd years. He recently asked his 25,000+ Facebook friends to please inscribe this on the guts of the internet, so here goes.

    “Picture a no-nonsense physicist gazing at a Kandinsky painting, with its teeming blobs of mad color and exuberant shapes, and declaring it to be a superstitious eruption of delusion that’s not based on a logical understanding of the world.

    Like Kandinsky’s perspective, astrology at its best roots us in the poetic language of the soul, and isn’t blindly submissive to the values of the rational ego. It’s here to liberate our imaginations and encourage us to think less literally and to visualize life as a mythic quest.”

    Free Will Astrology. If your local alt weekly doesn’t carry it, your city sucks. No, I’m just kidding. You can get it online, anyway. :)

    1. “He recently asked his 25,000+ Facebook friends to please inscribe this on the guts of the internet, so here goes.

       “Picture a no-nonsense physicist gazing at a Kandinsky painting, with its teeming blobs of mad color and exuberant shapes, and declaring it to be a superstitious eruption of delusion that’s not based on a logical understanding of the world.”

       Wow ! He can actually get hoards of people to do his strawmanning for him. Now that’s a talent.

       Try mixing with a few scientists to actually see what we’re like. There’s nothing in the job description that excludes an active imagination, an appreciation of art or a sense of wonder. Why don’t you start watching a few reruns of Cosmos to get you into the mood.

       1. LOL, Worman. Good one. :) I won’t defend Breszny. He can do that for himself if he wants. I’m not going to enjoy his column any less either way. I’d venture his legions of adoring fans read his column less for the air-tight logic and more for the creative inspiration and psychological insight he generously puts out week after week. I think wading into the science vs. the irrational divine is somewhat of a waste of time. But who knows, maybe this really is a war that must be fought to the death. I hope not.

          Anyway, I did want to say one thing about teaching evolution. I think both sides have fixated somewhat on the politics of the situation instead of focusing on what really matters which is coming up with ever clearer means of communicating the key concepts at play. Maybe I haven’t encountered enough hard core creationists to feel like this is such a fundamental threat to education. Is it really so impossible to calmly present the mechanics of DNA and mutations, reproduction and survival of the fittest without getting bogged down in the culture war? I don’t see why it absolutely has to be that way.

          I think if scientists are really interested in making a contribution to elementary education, they could do so, not freaking out about the role of ancient religion in modern society, but by directing teachers toward the best, clearest explanations on evolution and other foundational concepts in science. Elementary school teachers and scientists can collaborate, and I know many do, by coming together to create outstanding curriculum. I could not care less if Disney or the Education Department puts it together as long as its good and teachers have access. I’ve been in too many situations where the teaching materials I needed were too expensive for the school or district or my own bank account and that is just a bug in the system. We need to figure it out, because regardless of our individual politics, we all share the same goal of developing the intellectual capital of the next generation. I don’t think ripping each other to shreds is ever going to accomplish that goal but maybe I’m wrong and war really is the answer! I don’t know!

48. How about this, The word “Theory” is causing all the pain… Get rid of it, use another word.

    The Bible bashers can’t bend, but we certainly can.

    If it’s “a proven fact” what then?

    You could try to find a definition in a thesaurus, or make up an entirely new word, that says absolutely everything you mean it to say.

    So you may have to change a few books, so what?

    Why does Science cling to this word as if it’s some precious artifact? it’s not, toss it, give it up, throw it away, start again.

    Wolfie Rankin

49. Quoting Anon quoting Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

    The really sad thing about that is what it implies: that for this population, evolution is indistinguishable from myth — that they are so insufficiently advanced is a cause for sadness.

    1. I think that the second half of Clarke’s observation is that it’s indistinguishable from magic *from the outside.* It isn’t magic to the wizard (read: engineer). That’s what makes technology different from magic.

       My computer is a magic box. I wiggle my fingers and all the world’s knowledge appears before me. It just works.

       My computer is a straightforward technological artifact. Semiconductors follow well-defined rules that allow us to build transistors, which can be understandably assembled into circuits that do arithmetic and logic, and store answers. Programmable logic can be understandably organized into human-readable code which is used to control a screen, and so on, up through so many levels of organization and abstraction that unless you spend years studying these things in a culture and context that can remove the aura of mystery, it feels like magic.

50. Bill Nye knows more about science than he does education. I went to 4 different elementary schools in small town West Texas… we got ZERO creationism and all Evolutionary theory — ditto jr. high and high school. There are about as many teachers who teach Genesis Chapter 1 in science classes as there are teachers who teach fisting in school… the occasional idiot who makes the news — who makes the news precisely because it is rare.

    My kids are currently in California public schools now and science begins in earnest in 2d grade. Yes they could use more science… but most of the problem is the teacher’s union, the bureaucracy AND the Kennedy/Bush No Child Left Behind disaster which makes testing in May paramount and they spend the last month watching movies and going to the beach (at least OC schools do) — slight exaggeration on that last part — but only slight.

51. While I’m not a science teacher, my wife happens to be one (high school biology). Here is what I’ve inferred from our conversations: In Missouri evolution is taught and there are students that have been brain washed by their parents into thinking its devil speak. There aren’t many that cause issues and my wife can deal with them for the most part. All of this has NOTHING to do with the state of our children’s scientific education. The real problem is threefold.

    First, we have elected officials on the school board that have zero experience teaching or running a school. They are mostly local business people who are using this as a stepping stone for further political advancement. Yet they are in charge of almost all high level decisions regarding funding within a district. So, when the administration presents a budget to the board that cuts (of all things) teachers instead of a few highly paid, worthless administrators the board signs off on it and the only ones left hurting are the students who’s teacher to student ratio just went down. While one, redundant, administrator could fund 2-3 new teachers with their salary. Tell me how that makes sense…

    Second, parents. Really, come-on. Parents have handed over the responsibility of education to teachers 100%. If a student is failing or doing poorly…well clearly it’s the teachers fault. If a kid sits in class and does nothing, then turns in no homework (to be done at home…hence the name) and fails then an angry parent calls the teacher and says “what’s the problem”. Well, your child is a lazy piece of shit and you don’t monitor if they do their homework. But a teacher can’t say that, so instead they have to have a big meeting with the teachers and principals and come up with a ‘special’ plan to get the student back on track. All the while the student could care less and still somehow feel entitled to get a passing grade for the minimum amount of input. I’ve noticed a strange dynamic shift in how parents interact with school. For instance, when I was in high school if I screwed up and a teacher called my parents. I was in trouble. Period, groundings would in sue until the GPA went back up. Now if a teacher calls a parent then the parents first reaction is that the teacher is not doing enough to help the student. Never mind the parent taking any responsibility for their child’s education from home.

    Third, “No child left behind” is the worst piece of legislation regarding education to ever pass in this country. This is the main reason we are teaching to the test these days. Why, because it determines funding and is based on improved performance over time, so don’t start high or you’ll watch your funding shrink from year to year. It also forces teachers to dumb down every subject to the lowest common denominator. Teenagers that will never go to college, lack the desire to do so, and would probably fail there anyway are being pushed through the high school along with the other children that enjoy school, do well, and will be moving on to higher education. The children who lack the desire and drive to enter higher education should be moved to a tech school where they can learn a useful vocation and enter the workforce…productively, instead of getting out of high school barely able to read and with no marketable skill set. Let the teachers focus on students that care. I know this is going to catch flack from some people but, guess what, college is not for everyone and there’s nothing wrong with that.

52. From The War on Modern Science: a Short History of Fundamentalist Attacks on Evolution and Modernism, 1927. (George Webb, author of Evolution Controversy in America has noted the book as well, see http://bit.ly/hme41t.) The president of the Science League of America called it spot-on in 1927! Ouch:

    The deplorable fact must be recognized that in the United States today there exists, side by side, two opposing cultures, one or the other of which must eventually dominate our public institutions, political, legal, educational, and social. One one side we see arrayed the forces of progress and enlightenment, on the other, the forces of reaction, the apostles of traditionalism. There can be no compromise between these diametrically opposed armies. If the self-styled Fundamentalists can gain control over our state and national government–which is their avowed objective–much of the best that has been gained in American culture will be suppressed or banned and we shall be head backwards toward the pall of a new Dark Age.

    And so it has come to pass, is coming to pass, about a century after this was written.

    May all the future generations of all species forgive us.

    (posting from Texas, which has a big ol’ science-y space center too, at least for a little while longer)

53. I loved Bill Nye the Science Guy when I was a kid. I still do. We’ve all failed Bill Nye & should be ashamed of ourselves.

54. This article is about how children aren’t getting the science education they should. Bill Nye used evolution as an example of that. And because of that, the comment section turned into a debate about evolution vs. creation. You are all missing the point now. Science is so much more than just the subject of biology. It is really sad that instead of people thinking about ways to improve our childrens education, people are instead arguing over a simple example used to help clarify the real issue at hand. Science is not evil and it can coexist with peoples beliefs. Everyone needs to get over themselves and discuss the real problem. The education of our children and consequently, our future as a result.

55. I agree with Bill Nye. I also watched him growing up and he’s the one that got me interested in science (along with re-runs of Mr. Wizard). I hope to instill the same love of science in my children. And in response to the first comment…. science promotes critical thinking.

56. I would also support expanding the teaching of philosophy and critical thinking instead of science, except for one thing. The people who control our educational system do not know philosophy from a hole in the ground, and wouldn’t recognize critical thinking if it bit them. (I teach both, by the way.) Few, if any, top scientists say stupid things in public. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of “top” philosophers. As for critical thinking, I just heard of a professor who announced at the start of class “we’re going to use critical thinking to show that the presence of so much beauty in the world proves the existence of God.” As long as morons like this are allowed to teach nonsense like this as “critical thinking,” I will place my hopes in promoting science education.

    1. The people who control our educational system do not know philosophy from a hole in the ground

       It horrifies me to hear creationism described as a philosophy. It’s a dogma. Philosophy make you think more; dogma makes you think less.

    2. I love philosophy, but studying or teaching it requires a level of maturity and experience that middle- and high-school students and teachers, respectively, rarely possess. In that context “philosophy” can quickly degenerate into “Person X though this, person Y thought that, person Z…” which doesn’t help anyone think critically.

       Philosophy is a perfect example of why real learning has to happen slowly, not according to an imposed schedule of exams. In college I often took courses (n science and every other field) where, despite being able to learn enough to do well on exams, I often didn’t really feel I had an understanding of the material until it had been stewing in my brain for a year or more after the semester ended.

57. It’s a great tragedy that more people weren’t exposed to his timeless message…Science Rules.

58. I studied creationism/intelligent design in a philosophy of science course.

    I think it most certainly is philosophy of a sort, and is certainly a good topic for a philosophy course. After all, there are many thinkers on philosophy reading lists who used a form of ID as a philosophical argument for the existence of god.

    It most certainly is not an appropriate subject for any natural science course.

    Intelligent design is so intellectually weak that it collapses in on itself under the weight of philosophical inquiry. Not a single Christian used it as an argument for the existence of god by the end of the course.

    It is also, in my opinion, a good example of anthropomorphism. Instead of anthropomorphising animals (as I am often accused of doing because I argue that animals, quite obviously, have thoughts, feelings and emotions), ID anthropomorphises the whole fucking universe!

    At least animals have the biological hardware and empirically observed behaviour one would expect from a thinking, feeling being.

    I think that says something about the human animal. We liken ourselves to the cosmos even though we have very little in common with it, meanwhile we distance ourselves from creatures with whom we share nearly everything.

59. Galileo had the church as an enemy. Who’s our enemy, a few sleazy companies trying to hide emissions levels. Publish all data – they’ll go away.

60. Many of we who consider ourselves Christians don’t necessarily see this debate as an either/or issue, but both/and. While we cannot re-create the “Big Bang” (I thought to be considered scientific law something had to be repeatable), we cannot deny the evolution that takes place over time which we have observed. For me, my faith is big enough to see the hand of God in evolution. I think good science is not dependent on the resolution of this issue. I offer here the opinion of Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, on the issue of creation/evolution. Here is an article from CNN: http://articles.cnn.com/2007-04-03/us/collins.commentary_1_god-dna-revelation?_s=PM:US
    By writing this I don’t ask all to agree with my opinion, but merely to hear it, and see that not all who profess faith are idiots.
    I think one of the hardest things about American education is that every time we try to “improve” things, we saddle teachers with tons of paperwork, testing requirements, and dry curriculum. Like many have already stated, there is no room for the thrill of discovery or the freedom to explore our interests. Teachers are, by and large, doing the absolute best they can. There’s no one good answer, but finding ways to foster a love of science, and not killing it with years of mind-numbing busywork, would be priority for me. IMHO

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