I have had similar experiences. More telling, I had a student tell me
after taking my intro class where we deal with evolution, that we
biologists always SAY there's mountains of evidence that support
evolution, but we never actually SHOW it to the students.
At first I thought he was just tuning out, but I reviewed my lecture
notes and the textbook I was using, and he was right. I, and more sadly,
the text only gave brief descriptions of the evidence. So I'm not
surprised that people aren't convinced. One the one hand they have
religious authority figures bombarding them early and often with (what
they regard as) evidence against evolution, and on the other hand they
have us blandly asserting, perhaps only in one class they take in
college, that the evidence is on our side but offering little in the way
of specifics.
Since then, I have changed my teaching and spend 4 or 5 weeks just on
evidence. I can't prove that it's changed anyone's mind, but I'm
collecting data on that question. At least they can't say I didn't show
them evidence.
Charles
Charles W. Welden
Department of Biology
Southern Oregon University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(541) 552-6868 (voice)
(541) 552-6415 (fax)
>>> Edwin Cruz-Rivera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5/5/2007 11:22 AM
>>>
Hello all,
As cynical as this may sound, I tend to agree with the person who
said
that people will believe whatever they want, regardless of the
information
available. The problem here is perception, and perception is shaped
first
by parents and family. In the case of religious folks (a christian
majority
in this country), perception of, and attitudes towards, the origin of
species, earth and universe get reinforced by sermons, religion classes
in
school (sometimes), and Bible studies during the earlier years of
academic
formation - long before the first classes that discuss evolution
(school and
college) come along.
I have been following the postings in the list with great interest,
particularly because of a recent conversation with two biology students
at
my institution after class (yes, it is an anecdote). The graduate
student
claimed that he did not believe in dinosaurs, that, largely, fossils
were
the outcome of researchers assembling things the wrong way, and that
radioactive dating of strata or fossils was just the result of "fuzzy
math."
He did acknowledge the possibility of large fossil mammals (I believe
mainly
because it fits his religious perception of how old the Earth actually
is -
which, of course, is also a mistake because giant ground sloths and
mastodons did not occur just 6,000 years ago). The undergraduate (a
senior)
did believe fossils were real, but he also believed that Noah built an
ark
and placed all modern species in it, in pairs, and that there is
evidence of
the famous biblical flood. This reminds me of an old friend who got
his
Ph.D. in geology around the same time I did. He used to say that he
believed species could change through time but not in speciation, and
that
"there is no way humans could have evolved from monkeys."
The point is we are not dealing with the uneducated here or with
people
who did not have access to the right information. As I pointed out,
the
former were both biology majors who had already taken general
biologies,
genetics, ecology, cell biology, zoology, botany and other classes. It
would be hard to argue that all their professors skipped evolutionary
topics
in their classes or did collectively a really poor job of explaining
the
evidence. One of these students took my marine botany class and always
answered my evolutionary questions correctly. I design my essay
questions
so that they have to put things together from different lectures and
fields,
rather than going to "page 20 of the notebook" and read a precooked
answer.
It was disappointing to realize that he was simply using infomation
which
was never believed. Upon that kind of inertia, there is amazingly
little
any educator can do.
I am not arguing that we should throw our arms in the air and
forget to
do our job as educators the best we can. On the contrary, I am
claiming
that most of us do our jobs well, but we are dismally limited by
societal
structuring around religion. When you are young and cannot explain
most
phenomena around you, religion offers great comfort because there is no
need
to fill in any gaps in knowledge ("because god made it that way" is a
very
useful and cushy thought). This effectively kills critical thinking
because
faith is vastly treated as all you need. I will be the first one to
accept
that geography may modulate some of my perception. As a minority, I
can
testify some places are more accepting and open minded than others.
But as
a whole, I think it is easier for most people to believe that some god
created things, rather than attempt to understand the intricacies of a
big
bang, mass extinctions, or the evolution of species. So given both,
they
will chose the former. After all, natural selection (for example)is
not as
easy to explain as creation in 7 days.
I am proposing a new course in evolutionary biology with a
colleague in
my department and this will be the first time a class like that will be
taught at JSU. Just as in larval recruitment, we are simply hoping
that out
of the hundreds, at least one or two will make it - students who have
learned something new, in this case. Maybe the IJCR will provide an
excellent research tool by producing articles that can be
systematically
debunked in class by overwhelming data to the contrary.
Hasta luego,
Edwin
------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Edwin Cruz-Rivera
Assist. Prof./Director, Marine Sciences Program
Department of Biology
Jackson State University
JSU Box18540
Jackson, MS 39217
Tel: (601) 979-3461
Fax: (601) 979-5853
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"It is not the same to hear the devil as it is to see him coming your
way"
(Puerto Rican proverb)
