How to Deal with Creationist Teachers: Case Study
A parent contacted CCFS recently, saying that his 4th grader at a charter school in Colorado had brought home a DVD supporting intelligent-design creationism as an alternative to evolution. The parent was waiting for an appointment with the principal of the school and sought our advice. One of our board members, Elle Lothlorien, was involved in a similar situation, which was resolved successfully. The bulk of our correspondence with the parent and of Ms. Lothlorien’s correspondence follows. All the names and places except those of CCFS board members have been changed. CCFS Reply. It seems to me that you are doing everything you can, except that perhaps you should approach the teacher before going over his or her head to the principal. One of our board members, Elle Lothlorien, has had a similar experience…. She has given me permission to forward her correspondence…. I am also cc-ing this reply to … the National Center for Science Education, both to keep him informed and in case he has any advice. You can find a wealth of material, including tips for dealing with school boards, at their Web site, www.ncseweb.org, under “Resources.” The decision of the court in the Pennsylvania case [which you asked about], strictly speaking, applies only to the district over which that court has jurisdiction. However, the decision was very closely reasoned, and it may well be very influential as a precedent. You may find an analysis of the decision on the blog Panda's Thumb, www.pandasthumb.org …. The contributors to PT think that the Discovery Institute is running scared and backing off its earlier demands to teach the supposed controversy; possibly all you will have to do is invoke Judge Jones's decision, if it gets beyond the classroom teacher. Elle Lothlorien’s Reply. I faced a very similar situation to yours in my daughter’s public school last year…. I agree wholeheartedly with Matt [Young]’s advice for you to “move up the chain of command” beginning with the teacher. Personally (and this is just me) I would convey your concerns to the teacher in an e-mail or letter, something that can be brought out if there is ever a need for a paper trail, especially if the teacher responds to you via e-mail or a letter of his/her own. Hopefully a letter or e-mail will remedy the problem. Like your school, the staff and teachers at my daughter’s public school were very conservative. The “evolution isn’t true, scientists are throwing it out” scenario capped a year of, as you put it, “other issues” that “seemed harmless enough.” Things like the art teacher telling the kids: “God created the world and everything in it” and a P.E. teacher passing out Christian literature at Back-to-School Night. You’re right, I believe, to make your feelings known about this now, before the climate has become intolerable. You probably won’t win any popularity contests with the staff, but you’ll be protecting your child’s Constitutional right to an education free from religious bias.
In my case, the letter I wrote to the science teacher did not remedy the problem. She felt she had done nothing wrong. I then moved up the chain of command to the school administrators (who were unsympathetic) to the program principal (whose response was ineffectual) to [the] Public Schools. In my case (and hopefully your situation will be resolved much more quickly), it was not until the same science teacher sent home (on the last day of school) four creationist books that I threatened to sue the school district. At the point, a liaison was appointed by the city to personally oversee the public school program in question. On a more positive note, I believe my situation has allowed me to learn more about creationism and intelligent design in public schools, and has helped me to become a better advocate for science education in Colorado. Whenever the threat of ID legislation in the Colorado House or Senate threatens to rear its ugly head, I e-mail the legislator in question copies of my e-mail exchanges with the offending teachers, exchanges that leave no doubt that proponents of ID and/or creationism in public schools are violating the boundary between church and state. I also agree that you should refer the teacher (and the school?) to Judge Jones’s strongly-worded decision in the Pennsylvania ID case and read it yourself if you have not done so…. It may help you organize your thoughts as you outline your objections to the creationist DVD that the teacher sent home…. Lothlorien’s E-mail to the Teacher. My daughter, Bella, is in your science class … on Fridays. Bella is a very enthusiastic science student, and enjoys your class immensely. I have been impressed with the enrichment work you’ve planned for the students. Bella’s eagerness every Friday to show me her dissection diagrams as well as her notes of class lectures tell me that she is clearly engrossed by your lessons. Today, however, I noticed something odd in her notes. On a page titled “Fossils,” she had written: “The theory of evolution is not true. They are throwing it out.” As a person who has done a great deal of degree work in human evolution and biological anthropology, I was taken aback by this statement. I asked Bella about it, and she said she was just writing down what you said in class. She went on to say that you had expressed your belief that evolution wasn’t true and that no real scientist would believe it. It is my hope that Bella simply misunderstood what was said on this topic, as I know of no other credible, scientifically tested theory of genetic variation and speciation other than the theory of evolution. I look forward to hearing from you on this important issue at your earliest convenience. Teacher’s Reply. I noticed Bellas demeanor change when I said this and I wondered what she was thinking at the time. What I actually said was a little different from what Bella said. It is never my intention to direct the children’s thinking in any direction when it comes to personal belief systems. What I did say was that when I worked with scientists at California School of
Technology [sic] and JPL (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), the main thinking amongst those scientists and the ones at the top levels of research and theory have concluded that the Theory of Evolution was not able to be proven. I did mention that these were top scientists and that they have all but thrown the theory out, I didn’t say it wasn’t true, I said that it was yet to be proven true by the leaders in the field. It is interesting because they didn’t quite know which direction they were headed in terms of which theory they embraced but I thought it was fascinating that these top level scientists had come to this conclusion, after so many years and years of work. Because I am aware of the feelings that can happen on this topic I let the class know that whatever they believed, in terms of the beginnings of the earth is their choice. I only want them to have a well rounded view of which way the course of research is going. I am also very aware of many of the children’s personal choices and belief systems … and I encourage individualized thinking. I’m sorry Bella took it so personally, and I hope she will understand that different scientists have different opinions and she should develop her opinion based on different research. I’m sure you want Bella to have as much information as she can when it comes to her educational pursuits. She is very bright and I can tell that you have been working very hard with her. Her enthusiasm will take her a long way and I enjoy having her in class. Lothlorien’s reply. Thank you for your e-mail, I read it with great interest. I’d imagine that Bella’s demeanor “changed” when you began discussing evolution because her mother has a background in biological variation and human evolution and her father is finishing a degree in biochemical engineering. Bella is constantly surrounded by science journals and scientific explanations of the natural world. Although she is too young to have learned all the “must-knows” of evolutionary theory: genetics, geology, chemistry, physics, biology, she has a basic foundational grasp of the theory. I’m sure this was the first time she’d ever heard a public school science teacher say evolution “was not able to be proven.” I am curious as to what you mean when you wrote, “It is never my intention to direct the children’s thinking in any direction when it comes to personal belief systems.” I don’t believe I ever brought up religion or belief systems of any sort in my e-mail. And, of course, evolution is not a “belief system” any more than is the theory of gravity or string theory. In fact, I don’t believe there is any room for “belief systems” of any kind in a science class. That’s why it’s a science class and not a philosophy or religion class. I am somewhat at a loss as to what to say about your experience at JPL and the California School of Technology, especially as to your assertion that “those scientists and the ones at the top levels of research and theory have concluded that the Theory of Evolution was not able to be proven.” To my knowledge, no scientific theory has ever been “proven.” The scientific method holds as a matter of course that all conclusions are tentative, and that nothing can ever be absolutely proven to a certainty. However, if a theory such as evolution continues to correctly explain new data, it is said to have a high degree of reliability. Such a theory is not a mere supposition or guess; it is
a hypothesis that has been verified by direct experimentation and which has demonstrated a high degree of predictive ability. Of course, scientific theories can be definitively DISPROVEN. However, although there has been credible scientific debate over various aspects of the theory of evolution (i.e., darwinian gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium), so far the scientific data in the last one hundred and twenty years has shown that the theory of evolution has a high degree of reliability. In that time, no other SCIENTIFIC theory has been presented that could better explain scientific observations and data better than the theory of evolution. Certainly there have been many religious theories such as creationism or intelligent design that have attempted to provide an alternative to the theory of evolution, but these are not scientific theories since they all ultimately rely on a Creator (whether it be the Christian god Yahweh or the Hindu god Vishnu), a hypothesis that can never be disproved. Since no experiment can ever be designed to test the existence of such a Creator, these theories are not falsifiable and therefore are not science. I would be grateful if you would provide me with a list of the scientists and researchers you worked with and the peer-reviewed scientific journals in which they’ve published their research findings disproving evolution so I can read about their hypotheses, experimental designs, data and conclusions for myself. Or perhaps they did not do research themselves, but were referring to journal articles they had read detailing the work of other scientists. If that’s the case, I would be very appreciative if you could give me the information about those journal articles to which they were referring when they “concluded that the Theory of Evolution was not able to be proven.” You wrote: “It is interesting because they didn’t quite know which direction they were headed in terms of which theory they embraced.” I don’t quite understand this as it makes it sound like there are dozens of theories to choose from, all equally supported by scientific evidence. I would be interested to hear more about these alternative theories that have been written about in scientific peer-reviewed journals. You wrote: “Because I am aware of the feelings that can happen on this topic I let the class know that whatever they believed, in terms of the beginnings of the earth is their choice.” It is true that parents can teach their children anything they want about the origins of life at home or in Sunday school. However, public school science teachers do not have a choice about what to teach in science class. They must teach science. As for your desire to inform students about “which way the course of research is going,” I can’t see that you provided your students with anything other than anecdotal information in regard to debunking the theory of evolution. “I spoke to top scientists at JPL and it’s their opinion that…” is not science. These scientists must first begin with a review of all the current literature and then offer a testable hypothesis that could disprove the theory of evolution or a piece of the evolutionary model. They must then offer their data and conclusions to be peer-reviewed by other scientists who must be able to reproduce their experiment and come to the same conclusion.
My husband I have no problem with the “personal choices and belief systems” of the parents and children at [the school]. We also encourage individualized thinking. When belief systems are presented as science, however, we do have a problem. We understand that many, if not most, of the parents and children who attend the school are Christians, perhaps even fundamentalist Christians. However, scientific theories are not decided by a show of hands of laypersons. For instance, a person could make a convincing Scriptural argument that the earth is flat and many parents could believe the same and wish their children to believe the same. Even if the majority of parents and children in a school believed the flat earth idea, this does not mean that this idea should be allowed to be taught in science class since the idea has been scientifically disproved again and again over the centuries. Likewise, whatever the religious views of the majority of people at [the school], the only scientific theory that can be taught in science class regarding the origins of life is the theory of evolution. I must correct you on one point: Bella did not take anything “personally.” Bella, like most 4th graders, has not learned enough about genetics, biology, chemistry, physics, or geology to be able to judge scientific hypotheses and theories for herself. It will be many years before she’ll have the scientific knowledge to critically analyze any theory as complicated as the theory of evolution. When a student hears a teacher she admires state something that is contrary to the scientific theories she has heard her parents speak of, it is natural that she would be somewhat distressed. I’d imagine that students who have creationist parents are distressed when they learn about the theory of evolution in science class. However, science must be taught. Whether or not students choose to accept the theories of the spherical earth or of evolution outside of class is not the business of science teachers. Their job is to simply teach scientific theories as they are best understood at the time. Although it is true that scientists, like all other human beings “have different opinions,” it is not equally true that every opinion of every scientist should be taught as incontrovertible fact. There are some scientists who are of the opinion that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. I’m sure you could find a scientist who doesn’t believe the earth is round. A scientist’s “opinion” of a theory is not the same as that scientist offering a testable hypothesis that refutes the theory that is then published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and withstands over time the repeated tests of other scientists in the field. You are obviously an enthusiastic and talented teacher with a great deal of knowledge to offer the students in your class. Bella enjoys your class more than any other. In no way do I want our dialogue on this issue to affect either her respect for you as a teacher or your enjoyment of her in class. Bella knows nothing of the contents of either of my e-mails to you or your responses. She only knows that we are in disagreement over the appropriateness of what was said on Friday. She has been told that she is to listen respectfully in each class, and that in no way should this affect her love for the class or her affection for the teacher. In other words: this is a grownup discussion! I look forward to hearing from you again on this very important issue.