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Mercury, November/December 1996 Table of Contents

(c) 1996 Astronomical Society of the Pacific

At first, Sandi Hines of Calvert City, Ky. thought it was a joke. One day in mid-August, her son came home from school with a strange story. "I asked my son how his day went," she told the Louisville Courier-Journal, "and he told me, 'They took our science books.'"

School superintendent Kenneth Shadowen had gotten wind of a shocking fact: The fifth- and sixth-grade science textbook, Discovery Works published by Simon & Schuster, devoted two pages to the Big Bang, and nothing to Genesis.

"We're not going to teach one theory and not teach another theory," Shadowen told the Courier-Journal. He ordered kids to turn their books back in, and school personnel glued the two pages shut.

Fifteen years ago, at the high water mark of antievolutionists' influence in state legislatures, the American Astronomical Society unanimously adopted a resolution opposing the teaching of creationism. Now, according to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in El Cerrito, Calif., the tide is rising again. In classrooms across the country, teachers are skipping evolution because biblical literalists have made it too hot to handle. This is not just a battle for the biologists; it also demands the renewed attention of astronomers and astronomy educators.

Teach the process of science

Presented without evidence or reasoning, as it was in the textbook passage that inspired Shadowen to take his brave action, the Big Bang comes across as just another article of revealed truth [see "Banging Your Head on the Big Bang," September/October, p. 8]. So why not also promote Genesis, turtles with worlds on their backs, and the planting of Mother Corn?

When K-12 texts do discuss the "scientific method," they tend to present it as a mechanical progression from "hypothesis" to "theory" to "law" -- terms that invariably cause confusion. "If we can bring people to understand how these terms are used, then we wouldn't have problems like we're having in many parts of the country now, such as laws to force teachers to teach evolution as `theory,"' Scott said.

One effect of such misunderstandings is that people overreact when they hear about scientists "questioning" or being "perplexed." The smart alecks must have failed! This backlash is worse among college students, told since birth to take adults at their word; and it affects all subjects that involve critical thinking.

"Students seem to consider doubt a sign of immaturity which does not trouble adults," Glenn Everett, an English professor at the University of Tennessee in Martin, wrote in an Internet discussion on teaching Darwin. "My refusal to indicate a right answer to questions raised by our texts is met either with impatience or with the inference that anybody's opinion is just as good as anybody else's."

Resist the tyranny of the one

School boards, textbook publishers, and television networks are remarkably sensitive to the argument that every idea and objection deserves equal consideration. The misgivings of a single parent have been enough to shut down an entire lesson on evolution. If the same principle were applied to science, we'd still be listening to Caveman Joe complain about the downsides of this new discovery of "fire." Some people, it seems, object to evolution in thought as well as in biology.

To support rational-minded teachers, parents, and school officials, Scott's center coordinates a grassroots network of concerned citizens (see http://www.natcenscied.org or call (800) 290-6006).

Use the 'e'-word

Evolution, in the broad sense of the development of new forms through natural processes, is a unifying concept in science. It can also be a unifying concept in science education.

"There's far less resistance to evolution in astronomy than to evolution in biology," Scott said. Stellar evolution, galactic evolution, orbital evolution: These don't sound so threatening as self-replicating molecules and the rise of man. If people can get used to uttering "evolution" in astronomy, Scott said, they may be less reluctant to use the word in biology.

Reconcile religion and science

In a letter to the Oakland Tribune in August, Jim Hasak of Alameda, Calif. called the claims of past life on Mars "preposterous." "Logic and the scientific method," he wrote, "are once [again] being steamrolled by evolutionists' trying to prove there is no God."

As San Francisco rabbi Ted Alexander put it, most clergy accept the Big Bang as well as the Big Banger. But most laypeople still sense a contradiction between faith and reason -- and, given a choice, they choose faith. It is ironic. People who say they dislike modern science say they want to maintain the mystery in the world. Yet their mystery-fetish denies the impulse that mystery provokes: to explore it.

Plenty of scientists have found that love of mystery unites reason and faith [see "A Non-Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems," November/December 1995, p. 12]. When Jay White, astronomer and Mercury columnist, started teaching at Middle Tennessee State University, a student asked whether he was atheist. White said no. The two began a dialogue on astronomy and religion which continues three and a half years later. "In helping them talk about it," White said, "it helps me, too."