There is an important distinction between teaching science for the sake of teaching science, either pure or applied, and teaching science as a part of cultural literacy. To illustrate this difference, let us consider the nucleus of an atom. The nucleus has a positive charge which attracts negatively charged electrons. Should we let it be at that, or should we go into more detail regarding the make-up of an atomic nucleus.
According to Wikipedia, "Cultural literacy requires familiarity with a broad range of trivia and implies the use of that trivia in the creation of a communal language and collective knowledge. Cultural literacy stresses the knowledge of those pieces of information that content creators will assume the audience already possesses." Among the things we are expected to know for cultural literacy is the added detail that atomic nuclei are made up of positively charged protons and eclectically neutral neutrons. But for basic cultural literacy we are not expected to know about the strong nuclear force that holds a nucleus together. So for the sake of cultural literacy we must teach students about the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, but we do not need to address the question of what holds the nucleus together.
The situation is almost the exact opposite for real science education. For many purposes there is no obvious reason why we couldn't just tell students the nucleus is positively charged without getting into any more detail beyond simply noting that the positive charge of the nucleus is different for different chemical elements. But if we do want to talk about the nucleus as being made up of protons and neutron, we absolutely must address the question of what holds the nucleus together. The problem here is that with in any atomic nucleus that has more than one proton the electrically repulsion of the protons should tear the nucleus apart unless there was something else holding the nucleus together. Critical thinking in science demands that students ask why this does not happen, and ignoring the question encourages students not to do critical thinking. We could simply say there is another force that more than counterbalances this electrical repulsion and this force holds the nucleus together. It is not necessary to provide any kind of a detailed answer, but it is necessary to address the question.
Now let us shift our focus to biology. I recently saw a television program on one of the educational channels. A female chimp offered herself to one high ranking male after another without success, before mating with one of the lower ranking males. We were told that she did not have the characteristics of the more desirable females, and we are also told a silly story about how her mother had told her there would be days like this, when she would be turned down by one male after another. But the silly story was not just silly--it was very bad science. Chimps aren't people. Even if it might be reasonable for a human female to be turned down by a number of males, that is not something we would expect among animals. We would expect the males to mate with every possible female capable of having offspring. That is a behavior that should be strongly favored by natural selection, and so we would expect that behavior to be universal or at least very nearly universal.
Critical thinking demands that we ask the question: Why did male after male turn her down when we would expect males to mate with every possible female? I can think of only two possible answers. (1) The behavior may we see may actually be quite rare, but even rare behavior or other rare traits could be common in a small group of related individuals. So the first thing we should do is check to see if males rejecting females in this way is really normal chimp behavior, or simply normal for a very abnormal group of chimps. Assuming this is normal behavior for chimps, we are left with (2) Just as there had to be some attractive force to counterbalance the electrical repulsion of protons in a nucleus, so too there must be some selective advantage for the males who refuse to mate that will counterbalance the obvious disadvantage of missing out on an opportunity to have offspring. My guess is that high ranking males who mate with a low ranking female lose status with high ranking females--and the disadvantage involved in such a loss of status could be greater than the advantage involved in mating with a low ranking female. This could explain why the male behavior is not eliminated by natural selection. It would still be a challenge to explain how the system of female and male behavior came about in the first place, and it is far from obvious that the advantages of retaining status are greater than those a male would get from mating with a number of low ranking females. But at least there is some reasonable hope that something like this could make biological sense.
Sometimes when we read about evolution, we do encounter this type of careful reasoning. But that is the exception rather than the rule with regard to evolution as it is presented to the general public. More often what we will encounter is the type of thing we saw in the Christian clergy letter. According to the clergy, God gave us minds capable of critical thought. If we assume that to be true, what could be wrong with teaching evolution as one theory among many--and then allowing students to use their minds that are capable of critical thought to evaluate for themselves what they believe to be true?
In this context, I think it is useful to make brief mention of the Unitarian Universalist letter. That letter consists of a couple of introductory sentences, followed by a few sentences that are largely copied from the rabbis, and then a few concluding sentences copied from the Christians. I find the differences between the rabbis and the Unitarian Universalists to be quite interesting. The rabbis spoke of the principles of science, while the Unitarian Universalists made no mention of the principles of science, speaking only of the results of science: As Unitarian Universalists, we draw from many sources, including "Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life," and "Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit." They conclude with the same last line as the Christians asking that science remain science and religion remain religion--but by their own statement they certainly believe in mixing science into their religion. In any case, the science they embrace is the science of results or the science that is found in cultural literacy, rather than science as science which would be the principles of science which the rabbis name as an appropriate subject to be taught in the public schools.
The distinction between teaching science as science and teaching science as a part of cultural literacy is an important one when we look at evolution and public education. It would not make a very impressive argument to say we simply must teach evolution in the public schools, in spite of the strong objections of Fundamentalists, because our children need to understand why Douglas Adams refers to Arthur Dent as an ape descendant in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The only possible justification for saying that we must teach evolution as The Only Way would have to be an argument that this knowledge is really essential for people to have. And even if we want to teach evolution for an essentially religious reason such as a Unitarian Universalist desire to "warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit" we must pretend that we are doing it for purely scientific reasons.
Actually I rather like the idea of trying to avoid idolatries of the mind and spirit, but I don't see the results of science as being of much help in that regard--and I see reason as something that can just as easily lead us into such idolatries than to warn us against them. What we need to protect us from idolatries of the mind and spirit is humility. When science is taught as science, much of what we learn is humility. We should not be too quick to assume that what we believe to be true really is true. But when we learn science as part of cultural literacy, we often learn to be arrogant. We may learn to grossly exagerate the value of what we learn, and we may learn to close our ears and our eyes to any evidnce that we may be wrong. Basically, we may very well learn habits of the mind and spirit which could forever prevent us from ever being good scientists--and it is quite likely we learn these bad habits from teachers claiming to be acting in the best interests of science.
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