Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism
slate.com
slate.com
Regulation of schools is the job of state governments in the United States by default. Political forces in the state legislature in Texas make it hard to fix this problem solely by state legislation, because the Responsive Ed curriculum does represent the point of view of some highly motivated and politically active Texas voters. The article author points out that federal constitutional principles ban teaching religious doctrine in the guise of teaching school curriculum content, so that is one possible response to the skewed curriculum in these charter schools. Another, too little considered in most articles about school choice in general, is simply for other schools to boldly proclaim that their curriculum is better, and explain why it is better. The Responsive Ed schools surely find agreement among some parents shopping for schools in Texas, but they would also be embarrassed to have to defend point by point all of the ridiculous things they say in their curriculum. In particular, it would be good for other schools to specifically mention the many lines of evidence for macroevolution[1] as they promote their curriculums. Comparative advertising is still an under-used tool for promoting school reform, even in states like mine with pervasive public school open enrollment.
I think John Stuart Mill got the policy balance correct more than a century ago, when school attendance was not compulsory in Britain nor in most parts of the United States: "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."
John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)
In public schools one at least knows what the teachers are teaching. Home-schooled kids are not protected from anything ranging from creationist crap to domestic violence (you as a teacher can spot if a pupil turns up beaten every other day).
Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?
Edit: for all those who down-vote, I'm writing this from a German point of view. Here, nearly every non-state/church-schooling effort has been plagued with massive problems: inadequate knowledge of teachers, sexual harrassment, violence scandals. Name the problem, you've had it.
Citation badly needed.
I have a family member in Texas with a home schooled child. They attend group teaching sessions, sit in on other classes, and use the many reference books that are provided for home school teachers. Home schooled does not mean "taught only what the parent wants to teach", nor does it mean "taught only what the parent knows". There's a legal definition surrounding home schooling.
What are the consequences of not meeting these standards?
Yep, not much better than the stereotypical conservative politician in that regard.
Please slow down and use some "common sense" and reasoning before allowing your emotional ranting about how other people (religious folks in this case) lack reasoning and logic.
* Inability of Junior to survive outdoors (or indoors) for any length of time without assistance?
Can you provide some of these studies? I've never seen one that was written by someone who understood why its important to control for race/financial status/etc, which makes them fairly meaningless.
This entire discussion is an awful bag of anecdotes, with this "common sense" thing right at the bottom of the pack.
Let's base our discussion on actual facts and statistics, shall we?
If homeschooling is worse, the statistics will bear this out. If the statistics don't bear it out, then it's not worse. This "don't bother to look for facts, just think about it" business is reprehensible.
For one, a quick look at Wikipedia gives list of references indicating the opposite -- homeschooled studends tend to sligtly outpeform school-schooled students [1] [2].
For another, there's been plenty of stories in press, and specifically on HN, indicating that giving students a lot of freedom in picking both subjects and methodology yields better results than highly uniform, mass schooling.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Homeschooling_and... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Test_results
There is no one proper pedagogy. Teachers use a lot of different methods, as do parents, whether they have an education background, a science background, or are just using well-reviewed curricula.
The ability to give a child a customized, one-on-one education is an advantage over the classroom model. The parents have time because one parent does not work or does not work very much; they are a full-time educator and put in a lot of work to be good at it.
Regarding your earlier remark about abuse: abuse does not really happen. The safest place for a child is in a home with intact parents, and most homeschooling families are intact.
I mean this kindly when I say you are completely ignorant of what homeschooling is like. I encourage you to acquaint yourself with actual homeschoolers. There are probably several communities in your area and you would be invited to observe some of the co-operative activities and talk to the parents.
I'm not sure why it's a reason to avoid home schooling. Schools are not great at spotting and reporting abuse.
For a source on the uneven distribution of abuse by family members, I would suggest to start with this HHS report: [1]
"Children living with their married biological parents universally had the lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories. Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner had more than 8 times the rate of maltreatment overall, over 10 times the rate of abuse, and nearly 8 times the rate of neglect."
[0] http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/NCANationalStatisti...
[1] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_...
>You as a parent have neither the time
This part is true. Even if it weren't, I probably wouldn't pursue home-schooling my children. Neither proves the point that no person/family is up to the task.
> nor the knowledge of all the various subjects
I may be deluding myself, but I feel confident that I have mastered all of the elements of "basic high school curriculum." I expect that is true for many people. As far as any of that goes, home-schooling does not necessarily require that one person does all of the instruction, nor that the curriculum is confined to that which is within the bounds of what the parent(s) knows. In fact the parent(s) could outsource nearly all of the instruction, and merely act in a supervisory role.
There are certain things you pick when you go to school, just by being among other people.
However, the point I take issue with is the "knowledge" thing. Considering we have standardized tests, parent commenter was talking out their ass.
For the record, I've seen a lot more naive, odd, or strange people who did go to public school.
These were all extremely common things in the school district where I grew up, which is why my parents, (and the parents of many others in the area) chose to homeschool their children. I never learned those things by "just being among other people" and I think I'm better for it. (My state-required yearly standardized testing scores growing up, that I started college at 16, and the leadership positions in social organizations I’ve held most of my life seem to bear this out.)
Being "around people" is not exclusive to public school kids, nor is it some sort of magical indicator for life success. In addition, homeschooling isn’t exclusively the domain of religious zealotry and terrible people. There are plenty of us who you've met who are perefectly "normal", and may even lack some of the usual bad habits. Please update your stereotype database. :-)
There are certain things you pick when you study liberal arts, just by being among other English majors.
If one were to read your post cynically, they would see that you were advocating everyone be forced into a worse education (often provably so, especially at many public schools) so that we could make sure the parents didn't teach them anything you disagree with and beat them up.
Nonetheless, I am glad that public education is compulsory here.
Forcing all children to go to the same schools is essential if you want children to have equal opportunities in life.
1. It gives the children coming from disfunctional households a chance to escape and a chance to be helped.
2. It guarantees that the child recieves an education that has a certain basic level in a broad range of subjects, independently of what the parents find relevant or interesting. I bet there are quite a few parents or future parents on this site who think that teaching children about art or literature is a waste of time. There are also people out there who think the same about history or math.
3. Children recieve an education from people that are associated with education. Not only will uncomfortable subjects such as the Holocaust (very central to education in Germany) or sexual education be covered, but they will also be taught by teachers whose relation to the children is free of all the emotional baggage of the relation between children and their parents.
4. Children need to socialize with other children
5. In public school, children "see" the part of society that their parents would like to ignore, be it out of ideological reasons or out of conveniende. If you are a person who leads a good life, free of the problems that plague the society you live in, you are very likely to either shield your children, or unknowingly only expose them to the bubble in which you live. Both things are bad for the children and even worse for society as a whole.
Regarding your last point: There should normally be enough time out of school to improve on the education that the children receive in the fields that you deem more important. It might well be that through public education we lose some outcome in one potential "megabrain" or two, but the overall gain for society that comes from improvement "at the bottom" IMO far outweighs that. Also, the smart kids usually find a way to dig into what interests them, even if you can push them along only a little.
However, one thing I would point out is that your country (Germany) is much more culturally homogeneous than the United States. For example, I don't think there is a significant portion of the population who are religious fundamentalists and don't believe the theory of evolution. So it's much easier to come up with a standardized list of basic information that everyone can agree is worth teaching all children, without getting into endless political and legal wrangles like those that occur in the US over what material should be taught in public schools.
1. A chance but a good one? What promise do you have that bad families want to keep their children home anyway? Even making that choice suggests a lot of love for their children-it is a sacrifice after all.
2. How? Students in the US routinely score poorly and the system continues, teachers aren't fired, nothing changes really.
3. Why is this necessarily a good thing? Just having a degree doesn't make you qualified to do anything useful. I've interviewed enough software engineers with degrees from great schools who can't seem to program at all to say this is true.
4. On what basis? Also shouldn't parents be more aware of than you?
5. Parents can expose their children to that in any number of ways.
I don't homeschool but these arguments are naive at best. My guess is that in Germany the average school is better than in the US but freedom means people potentially make choices that you don't like. That's part of the package.
... Permit me to express a measure of doubt on a variety of levels. The overall desirability, the extent to which that can work, the hubris involved, et cetera...
I believe that people should be free to have those thoughts, but I also think they're detrimental to moving society forwards, which is how I read the OP's comment, it just uses a more absolute phrasing.
I think I have a good case that they're a far more direct threat as well, as well. I could even make the case that it's a fundamental contradiction, maybe even a lie, to pursue a "free" society by suppressing freedom. :P
But they're not an unmitigated blessing whose opinions should supplant those of parents in all cases either. So I think that it's really good that people have the option to send their children somewhere that isn't a public school system (including a private school or homeschool, possibly even with vouchers). That's a simple, useful check on its power -- and explicitly seeking to remove that check with the goal of changing the way children think is Kinda Creepy or worse. We don't need no thought control...
I know you haven't; that's why I took the trouble to point out the implications of taking freedom of thought to its logical conclusion. Most people (including you, it appears) don't like that conclusion; but that necessarily implies that freedom of thought must have limitations. Any system of public schooling must violate freedom of thought in some respects.
Personally, I would be fine with abolishing the existing system of public schooling altogether, and replacing it with something like this: take the money that used to be spent on public schools and divide up among parents as vouchers. The parents can use the vouchers to send their kids to private schools, religious schools, whatever, or they can use them to acquire the resources to enable home schooling. (For example, the voucher money could eliminate the need for both parents to work, so one of them could stay home to home school the children.) But I don't see any realistic chance of a system like this happening in the US.
Also, to be fair, there are arguments on the other side as well. For example, someone upthread pointed out that public schools can help to equalize opportunities for children whose parents simply don't care about whether they get a good education.
Somehow I managed to graduated university with high honors (sister is in civil engineering on a full-boat scholarship, top of her class, brother got a full boat as well.)
Lastly, my other younger sister (14 years old) is going to be a sophomore next year, is currently teaching herself Python/Ruby, and takes senior-level math.
Homeschooling was the best thing that happened to me: I learned to love learning.
We were not homeschooled for religious reasons. It was purely a choice made by the family during a time when we were traveling after both parents retired. We each had the option at anytime to jump back into the public education system after we moved to Austin, but we opted to continue homeschooling instead.
Would I recommend it for everyone? No. Homeschooling should be dealt with on a case by case basis.
In high school, I played varsity soccer, and ran track at nearby public school, so I knew most of the kids there.
I also worked often, and met quite a few people that way.
If I could change anything about my social activities, it would be to live closer to where things actually happened. Growing up in the middle of nowhere in Maine gets boring :)
you voted for bush didnt you
This is balanced by the governments right to the quality of education a child is receiving and potentially serve a school attendance order.
Case in point: I was given Christian-themed workbooks and presented anti-evolution texts. Today, I don't belong in either camp. However, who knows how I would have turned out if not for unfettered Internet access and a degree of laxness in the indoctrination efforts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research
I'm still anti-homeschooling, but I have to accept that these students do better... probably benefiting from having one-on-one personalized education from the parents while public school students are mostly lectured and ignored by teachers working with 30-plus students.
What is your reasoning for being anti-homeschooling then?
If you believe that the political biases, rote memorization, rigorous examination, strict discipline, regimentation and social control that comes with public schooling is superior to the intellectual freedom of homeschooling and alternative education, you are deluded.
In fact, a structured homeschooling curriculum outweighs public schooling: http://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html
People will be biased, but for open-minded families, it's an excellent bet.
Then you underestimate just how apt children are at learning and absorbing information if given their own pace and room to heighten their interests. It's better to be well versed in a few fields and know minutiae about others, rather than merely know minutiae about many fields.
Please read the works of John Holt, John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Illich for further information.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1989/3/16/homeschoolers-ar...
My nieces were/are homeschooled. Unlike their peers, they aren't ignorant, pregnant and don't have to run a gauntlet of savages in the public schools in their area. In addition to getting a much better education, they are better equipped to handle modern life. From financial wellness, to physical fitness, social integration to self dependence, they are score in the top decile.
I was homeschooled all the way through high school, and while I may not be the founder of Dropbox, I scored pretty high on the SATs and do very well for myself. So, [citation needed.]
While students in a public school are vying for the attention of a teacher amongst a group of 20 other students, I had the almost exclusive attention of a teacher very invested in my success for more than a decade. I'm not saying it's perfect, but there can be distinct advantages.
I agree in principle, but what if Christian religious ideals were compulsorily taught in Texas public schools?
>Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?
I am an instructor at a small College in Texas, and I have had a few home-schooled students (and perhaps there were some that I did not recognize). After my experience with them I can say the following: One performed significantly better than public school students in at least one subject (math in one memorable case). Most performed worse or seemed deficient in at least one subject. All seemed to lack social skills to some degree. As an example, the student who was so good at math had no idea of the existence of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. There were other gaps in his knowledge of recent history, but that one stuck out the most to me.
But more interestingly, I have absolutely no recollection of being taught about the civil rights movement in school. Certainly I have learned about it, but if I learned anything about it in school, I don't remember it.
Seymour Papert asked a rhetorical question in his book The Children's Machine:
On my reckoning, the fraction of human knowledge that is in the [school] curriculum is well under a millionth and diminishing fast. I simply cannot escape from the question: Why that millionth in particular?
A school, especially a charter school, teaching an agenda that parents don't oppose is one of those things. Just like wages, unemployment or gas prices, there are larger, more primordial forces directing these things.
So what's the point of this article? A naive answer would be "pure exposition." But surely there's an agenda to focus on these institutions, and all it will do is further divide a country where each half thinks the other is evil.
Furthermore, to the extent that we tolerate this nonsense we will continue to miseducate a whole generation who will have no tools with which to escape from their family of community's broken belief systems. And this means we will continue to be divided.
Incidentally, my observation is that it is inaccurate to characterize the country as one 'where each half things the other is evil.' More accurate, I believe, is 'where one half thinks the other is evil, and the other half thinks the other is lamentably poorly educated with a medieval world view.'
Understanding we don't understand how the universe works takes a lot of brain power, so someone somewhere just has to have faith why that statement is true. Unfortunately this also opens up the possibility of someone who, for whatever reason, wants others to have faith that a supreme being created us 6,000 years ago out of thin air. By that same logic, one other individual could state we need to have faith a supreme being created all of this just this morning at 6:34AM EST, just like you see it here and stuck us all in it with our existing memories.
I was raised in a fairly religious household, but thankfully I also had time to think outside the box. If I had to label myself as practicing anything nowadays, it'd be Buddhism. It's much more applicable for me because it maps well into what I believe about the nature of the universe. That's not to say it's a completely accurate representation, but it serves me well enough.
In my experience, the opposite is true (in the UK, at least).
Consider the condom issue.
Election results alone bear out the fact that Austin is still one of the few Democratic strongholds in Texas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Texas#Current_situa...
Did you read the rest of that paragraph? The cities tend to vote Democratic in state elections whereas the rural areas overwhelmingly vote Republican, and Texas has a lot of rural space. I'll also point out that the largest city in the U.S. to elect an openly gay mayor (reelected twice) is Houston, which I found entertaining because of the two Democratic candidates, she was the more 'conservative'. Austin isn't as 'weird' as it thinks it is.
I have never lived in any of the other major cities in Texas, so I certainly don't understand the full dynamics of their politics. I do understand that at the heart of the major cities they tend to be more liberal, which is expected of just about any major city. However, as an Austinite I can say it feels like the liberal bleeds more into the suburbs here than in the other major cities. This may be because of Austin's relatively small size or just bad anecdotal evidence. Take that as you will and I hope I didn't rustle too many jimmies.
While this school receives public funding, it operates largely as a private school, with curriculum chosen by its own board. There are certain mandates that they must fulfill, and a general plan which must be approved by the state education board in their initial charter. In order to rescind their charter, the board would need to determine that their curriculum does not meet the plan outlined in their charter or that the students are not be prepared adequately for college. It appears from the information in the article that the science of evolution is taught and the students would, presumably, be able to answer test questions regarding it. They just aren't asked to believe it is fact.
Unfortunately, text books conserve non facts for very interesting reasons. Some good examples are at http://www.textbookleague.org/
Let X = 0.999… Then 10X = 9.999…
10X - X = 9.999… - 0.999… = 9 = 9X Therefore X = 1.
Being able to do the subtraction infinitely is a little hand-wavy, but should suffice as a demo for middle and high schoolers.
More formal proofs involve limits that one wouldn't normally encounter until a course in real analysis.
Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...
http://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/the-scientist-and-his-...
So in response to people clamoring for creationism in the classroom, he suggests this:
"So what should be taught in schools regarding evolution? As I wrote, I am not a proponent of Intelligent Design for the reasons I state above: I can not prove it using my tools of chemistry to which I am bound in the chemistry classroom; the same tools to which I commensurately bind my evolutionist colleagues. But I think that a better approach might include more teaching about evolution, namely coverage of legitimate scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinism and disputes about the origin of the first life. That would be more balanced."
Yes, I agree. I didn't mean that religion should be taught, I'd rather a course that teaches about religion.
Not suggesting that every pupil taught creationism will respond in this way - many are probably pre-programmed by the religious affiliations to believe it anyway - but the intellectual health of the pupil body is not a lost cause.
You sound like you weren't heavily ingrained into the dogma to begin with, and had a tendency to autodidact, which helps kill off the rest and make your own conclusions. Yet most people don't and they take whatever they're formally taught for granted, or selectively choose to believe whatever fits their ideological predispositions.
Many of these kids will be stuck with lifelong delusions. Their parents may mold them to a certain path, but their schooling will solidify it completely.
Even still, this is a very abhorrent thing to do.
"Hey kid, everything you know about history, geography, geology and natural science is a lie! Read up on the facts and realize you've been living in a matrix all this time!"
I mean, people with perseverance can totally get through it and then in retrospect have a laugh at the bullshit they were taught, but even with this in mind at best the whole thing is a major inconvenience.
Constantly learn more. Re-evaluate your knowledge in the light of new facts. Find the places where pieces don't fit and investigate further. This is the only sane and rational policy on knowledge one can have for them-self.
Heck even when teaching someone "correct" things, it is impossible to avoid this. There have to be abstractions and almost-but-not-quite generalizations. There is so much knowledge in the world that you have to build a general foundation to bootstrap better understanding. People are pattern machines, so patterns need to be presented, for easier consumption, then revised later.
It helps that I am a developer - analytical and algorithmic thinking is a great start point. Learning some statistics helps - you can see through a lot of nonsense if you can get at the source data.
I'm not defending the teaching of creationism at all, but it might be worthwhile to look at the whole curriculum with a critical eye rather than concentrating on biology.
How do you figure? These people eventually enter the workforce. Maybe they become politicians, and base their political direction on misinformation. Even if they remain in the private sector, someone that is the product of a misguided education will lack the tools necessary to impact society in an informed way, and will have an artificial ceiling on their potential due to lack of knowledge. Education has a massive impact on the world around those who are educated. Considering knowledge to be an isolated, personal thing isn't remotely accurate.
Whenever the evolution vs. creationism debate comes up in the context of a presidential election, some people argue that it doesn't matter whether the POTUS understands biology. But as I wrote, a lack of an understanding of biology isn't the problem; the problem is a disregard for empirical evidence. If a presidential candidate has no regard for empirical evidence in the context of biology, they likely have no regard for empirical evidence in the context of other subjects, including important subjects such as health economics. That's the problem.
So while you're correct that a person can lack an understanding of biology and still be successful, a successful person who has little regard for empirical evidence is a threat to civilization.
I'm afraid that I have to disagree. If a significant number of my neighbors' children are taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that blacks deserve scorn as penance for Cain's sin, and that the rapture's arrival is to be expected nigh on any moment now; that is a problem for myself, my children, and everyone in my community. People who believe those things support public policy that is incompatible with the type of place that I want to live.
And, while it doesn't seem to have caused the UK's culture to crumble (and indeed it doesn't seem to have done much of a favor to Christianity's influence in the UK), you don't think it's a little batshit to have a national law mandating that schools teach the primacy of Christianity among all religions practiced in the UK?
When I was in my teens, I resented the fact that I went to religious assemblies at school and couldn't opt out. Now I'm older and look back on these assemblies, they taught moral lessons that could be applicable regardless of your opinion of the supernatural.
It's depressing that such a primal culture of anti-intellectualism and deceit like this is thriving in the Deep South, but given the deeply ingrained religious paleoconservative culture, it's unavoidable and only likely.
It does however teach one that formal schooling cannot be trusted and should not be used as an accurate descriptor of intelligence and knowledge. The parents who support this have ideological agendas. If these institutions didn't exist, they would stick to homeschooling, as many of them already do.
It's a shame, too. Homeschooling is a viable alternative to the mess of public schooling, but too many people pursue it for wrong reasons.
In a way I agree, because it's kind of like free speech.
On the other hand, shouldn't a society be responsible for protecting children? Schools teach children, after all. It's different from somebody voluntarily picking a topic to learn about.
Seems to me children being taught Creationism might be seriously disadvantaged.
Then again, by what standard? For example, what if being immersed in some cult brings total happiness, even if it looks insane from the outside? Should it be disallowed to raise kids as devote cult members?
I can guarantee you the kids who did the creationism only track were not 'disadvantaged' compared to 99% of kids in public school who were taught evolution.
Actually the topic is a can of worms, we could go on about the purpose of school. I suspect teaching critical thinking is not what schools really want - they want to provide the industry with willing workers. In that context creationists perhaps aren't worse off much, but that doesn't mean much.
I wish that were the case. To give one example, housecats are so vastly different than monkeys that initial observation wouldn't necessarily point toward a single primitive mammal ancestor. The theory of evolution gets so expansive when you consider billions of years that it's easier to believe in intelligent design.
In a clever twist, many creationists have started claiming that they accept micro-evolution (e.g. the idea that bird beaks would change over generations like Darwin observed) while denying that macro-evolution happens. Thus they can account for the high-school-science-class information that most people get while still clinging to creationism as the overarching truth.
But the basic underlying assumptions of Evolution are self-evident. Just assume that you have something that makes copies of itself but does so imperfectly. This means that mutations may form during the copying process. Selection will then act to favor those mutation which are beneficial, and disfavors those mutations which are fatal or detrimental. These basic ideas of how evolution works, which apply to all objects that make (imperfect) copies of themselves, is almost self-evident.
Sure it's a devil's advocate argument, but that's the issue. Saying something that sounds reasonable to an uneducated person will leave that person believing it's true, because it certainly sounds plausible. If you don't also teach the scientific method and critical thinking, you're not teaching.
First there is the concept of gradual change over time in a population of self-replicating entities subject to selective pressure and heritable variation.
Second, there is the theory that all life on Earth descended from a single common ancestor that lived billions of years ago, and the current scale of biodiversity comes entirely from the application of the first concept over the intervening time.
The first is nearly obvious. The second is definitely not.
Actually, the single common ancestor part is now, since we have DNA evidence.
DNA evidence requires some pretty advanced science to obtain. The basics of evolution have been known for millennia (that's how you breed plants/animals for specific traits, after all) but DNA evidence for evolution as the source of present-day biodiversity is quite recent.
Also, humans have only been breeding plants and animals for ten thousand years or so; would the consequences of self-replicating entities having heritable traits have been "obvious" to a Cro-Magnon 30,000 years ago? They were just as intelligent as we are (at least that's what the data on brain size indicates), but they didn't have our background knowledge.
Finally, saying it "just takes some thought" is vague: how much thought? How much compared to the knowledge and cognitive ability of the average lay person? If you randomly selected lay people and asked them to (1) briefly explain the consequences of self-replicating entities, and (2) briefly explain what having similar DNA means, giving them time to think about each question, which question would they, on average, do better on?
Creationism is not valid science, obviously. But that's because it isn't science at all. It is a religious belief, which is by definition non-scientific.
Here is where the science side gets things wrong. Creationism is a NON-scientific belief, not an ANTI-scientific belief. It's not anti-intellectual or stupid or backward either. It's a choice to believe in the supernatural. Lots of people, even non-religious people, believe things on grounds other than science. Science is an excellent way of explaining the world, but it isn't the only way. People have the right to inform their beliefs with a source other than science.
Here is where the creationism side gets things wrong. Same basic principle, creationism is not a scientific belief. Christians, even those who accept evolution, believe a lot of things which are clearly not scientifically sound. Bodily resurrection from the dead is perhaps the most obvious and most fundamental. It's absurd to accept the resurrection of a deity without seeking scientific evidence and then try to make scientific evidence support creationism. Even if you convince someone that creationism is scientific, you aren't going to convince them that a deity being bodily resurrected from the dead is scientific. Given that Jesus' resurrection is the fundamental belief of Christianity, it's silly to make such a big deal of something that is comparatively non-important.
So my suggestion, teach evolution in science class without mentioning creationism at all. But require at least one class in religion/philosophy so students understand that there are other ways of understanding the world. I'm not saying to teach the beliefs of any particular religion, just to explain some of the ways other than science that people have historically and continue today to understand their world.
The overwhelming majority of people on Earth today are at least nominally religious. Schools shouldn't teach students to be religious, but they should teach them to understand religion... and not just as a cute, prehistoric way of explaining things that science now has exclusive domain over. Religious beliefs, as non-scientific beliefs, are non-falsifiable. Students need to understand this. Modern science does not falsify religious beliefs. It provides an alternative based on empirical evidence. But there is no requirement that everyone on Earth only accept things based on empirical evidence. It may seem odd to you to deliberately choose to believe something which isn't based on empirical evidence, but many people do (knowingly at that) and that is their right. Students should understand that science is not a tool for disproving religion, it is a tool for explaining the world in a different way than religion does.
You'd get laughed out of the left wing political sphere if you went around saying that.
Of course creationism itself isn't anti-scientific, but the majority of people who deeply believe it do have anti-scientific agendas.
Is it stupid and backward? I'm not going to conclusively comment on this, but you seem to think that just because it's a choice, it has to be legitimate. No, it can be a wrong choice.
Schools shouldn't teach students to be religious, but they should teach them to understand religion... and not just as a cute, prehistoric way of explaining things that science now has exclusive domain over. Religious beliefs, as non-scientific beliefs, are non-falsifiable. Students need to understand this. Modern science does not falsify religious beliefs. It provides an alternative based on empirical evidence. But there is no requirement that everyone on Earth only accept things based on empirical evidence. It may seem odd to you to deliberately choose to believe something which isn't based on empirical evidence, but many people do (knowingly at that) and that is their right.
Argumentum ad populum. Just because a lot of people resort to superstition to explain natural events does not mean it is legitimate or correct.
The right to believe in unsubstantiated claims doesn't shield you from criticism on the illegitimacy of your claims.
You are free to criticize the legitimacy of religious beliefs, but science will not help you. Science cannot disprove what it does not accept or examine (namely, supernatural events). Science simply says that a natural explanation exists. Whether that explanation is "true", science cannot say. If gravity is really caused by an invisible flying spaghetti monster pulling everything with his noodly appendages, science will never see it. It cannot. Science refuses supernatural explanations.
I am not saying that popularity makes supernatural beliefs correct. I'm saying it makes them important. The concept that science is one way, but not the only way, people choose to understand the world is important. Whether science is "true", no one can say. Untestable, supernatural phenomena are just that: untestable. It could be that the flying spaghetti monster really controls everything in universe. All we can know is that if he/she/it does, he/she/it does it in such a way that natural explanations still work. There's no way to actually test the theory of a supernatural spaghetti monster. The distinction is subtle, but I think it's important.
We're dealing with faulty analysis software (our brains), one with documented bugs and all kinds of premature optimizations. We have to account for that.
A developer can convince his teammates, QA, management, and even the customer that a given bug is a feature. When that "feature" causes the plane guided by that software to go crashing into a mountain, however, we can't declare the mountain a "moral hazard" or "something beyond the understanding of requirements gathering". Instead, we fix the bug to account for the mountain, tell the developer to stop making that mistake, and try again.
We're not going to convert the whole world to atheism tomorrow, so being able to understand why Buddhists don't drink alcohol or why Muslims say "إن شاء الله" when using the future tense will probably only help you co-exist. A little understanding goes a long way, whether you agree with their beliefs or not.
Of course it can't. Classic example: I can't prove the entire universe isn't just a brain in a vat.
However, we have to draw some lines and reasonable expectations. If a belief cannot be tested and has no evidence backing it, we discount it until we find supporting evidence for it.
Science can't say something is absolutely and undeniably true, but it can say that something is true beyond a reasonable doubt. You're setting very philosophically pretentious standards about truth here.
Science is certainly not the only way. Yet it has consistently shown itself to be the most reliable and effective way.
In fact, the scientific method is such a fundamental way of reasoning that if a supernatural realm is ever discovered, it will be likely thanks to the scientific method, even though science by default discounts supernatural explanations.
Science has unearthed a lot of observable, tested and verified counterexplanations to supposedly supernatural occurrences, which no one has been able to refute other than setting higher and vaguer standards.
Ultimately, the burden of the proof lies on the person making the large claims. If they cannot back them, by default we exclude their claims until conclusive evidence is found to support otherwise. Just because there are alternate ways of interpreting the world does not mean they are legitimate or that they should be given respect or credence automatically.
We can trace the very sense of "I am me" to the brain, as seen when it and other anthropocentric systems fail, which leaves the idea of a "soul" in doubt.
We can ask "why" something exists instead of nothing, but advances in quantum physics suggests that "nothing" lacks a correlate at that level. If we want to ask "why" the quantum foam exists, in turn, the non-scientific inquirer must explain how this potential for infinite regress is anything more than a shortcoming of language.
If any "big" questions exist that physics or neuroscience can't explain, let us know. If not, the burden lies with the non-scientific explanations to offer more complete, repeatable, and actionable insights.
Ethics. Morality. Art. History. Politics. Philosophy.
On that same point, I've never encountered a claim for "subjective" that amounted to more than "the decision requires information not consciously available to the specific individuals in the example."
There's a subtle distinction I'm trying to make between "true" and "scientifically proven". Equating the two requires a belief that what science discovers is absolute truth, but that meta-claim cannot be analyzed by the underlying tool of science.
One can easily conceive of example theories which are not scientifically testable. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the universe was supernaturally created out of nothing. Not 6000 years ago, but at UNIX timestamp 0. But everyone was created with memories. Objects were created in motion. Everything is exactly as we see it, with cause and effect stretching back for countless million years, but it actually was just all created looking that way. As absurd as this sounds, it isn't scientifically falsifiable. It can't be disproven.
Assuming the above scenario is true, it is still scientifically proven that the universe is unfathomably old. The natural, empirical explanation does not change. It simply becomes false while remaining scientifically valid. The science is still sound. (And assuming the universe was not in fact created at UNIX timestamp 0, the belief that it was is still false even if it isn't disprovable.)
The rationalist believes that the findings of science are absolute truth. That if the universe appears billions of years old, it's because it is billions of years old. But whether observation is proof of absolute truth is not a testable question in science. Science can't assert absolute truth in that way. It can only assert a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect. And just because everything has a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect doesn't mean those are explanations are true. We simply have no way of knowing whether the entire universe was created at UNIX timestamp 0 with everything exactly as it should have been to make it appear billions of years old.
Choosing to believe in the supernatural IS fundamentally anti-science. That's what the word "supernatural" means.
Creationism isn't fundamentally anti-scientific, but it teaching it as science is definitely anti-scientific. "Creationism" is usually, in this context, used as shorthand for "creationism taught as science", because that's the only kind of creationism that matters (in this context).
As a result with hava a wide stream of various absurdities comming from "the left" (gender people claiming that there are no differences between boys and girls) and from "the right" (creationism) are propagated instead of radiculed and thrown away. The same with Homeopathy and countless other things.
Another interesting thing is what happened with protestant churches. Once they were seen as progressive and modern (in Calvin, Luther times). Now they are either bunch of annoying old bishop-ladies ignored by everyone, who think that having gay priests is the most important thing on the World (Church of England) or radiculous morons who claim that earth was created 6000 years ago.
BTW it's somehow incorrect to call them Christians. They do not follow tradition and intellectual heritage of Roman Catholic Church. I guess that Thomas of Aquin and other great Christian philosophers are rolling in their graves seeing such widespread grow of stupidity among people who call themselves Christians.
No True Scotsman, lad!
The Roman Catholic Church were not the first and "true" Christians. The Gnostics were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Gnosticism
Movements and cultures naturally stratify and disband. Just as postmodern, radical, anarchist and separatist feminists are just as legitimate as more traditional feminists (no matter how much they might try to claim the contrary), the same way all these Christian denominations are Christians like all others.
Fuck off. Christianity split multiple times, not just Roman Catholic and Protestant, but also the Early Christian church into the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Catholic (more commonly called the Eastern Orthodox church) churches. Claiming that because someone doesn't follow the Roman Catholic church they can't possibly be a Christian is ridiculous. The Roman Catholic church elevated the Bishop of Rome above the other bishops, something that wasn't done in the Early Christian church, and still isn't done in the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Eastern Orthodox churches are closer to "traditional Christianity" than the Roman Catholic church.
Learn you some Christian history if you're going to try to argue about it. And I say this as someone who doesn't affiliate with any religion.
Way to just parrot nonsense though!
BTW. I am a science person. I think creationism is trash, but I am OK with other people to believe creationism or whatever. I know there are billions year ahead of human evolution and cultural evolution. I don't expect to see all these changes in one night. I don't believe use government to impose cultural change to its citizens is a right thing to do!
As for the "public" school thing. That's simply because people do not have a choice. The dominance of public school in pre-college education destroyed the education market and made private schools hard to exist. That's why many religious people want to change the so called "public" schools, which is the only place they can send their children to. I do not blame them. This is just a minor collateral damage of the centralized education system. There are many much worth things in public education.
Public money? Come on, that's also their money. Where do you think those money come from?