The Royal Society and Teaching Creationism

 
Michael Reiss is a practicing priest in the Church of England. He is also director of education in The Royal Society. Reiss wrote an article about teaching creationism in schools. The complete article was posted on guardian.co.uk [Science lessons should tackle creationism and intelligent design].

This article is stirring up a lot of controversy because many people are interpreting it to be support for teaching creationism as a scientific viewpoint. That's not how I interpreted it. I thought Michael Reiss was saying the same thing I advocate. Here is the relevant part of the article so you can judge for yourself.

I feel that creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view. The implication of this is that the most a science teacher can normally hope to achieve is to ensure that students with creationist beliefs understand the scientific position. In the short term, this scientific world view is unlikely to supplant a creationist one.

So how might one teach evolution in science lessons, say to 14 to 16-year-olds? Many scientists, and some science educators, fear that consideration of creationism or intelligent design in a science classroom legitimises them.

For example, the excellent book Science, Evolution, and Creationism published by the US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, asserts: "The ideas offered by intelligent design creationists are not the products of scientific reasoning. Discussing these ideas in science classes would not be appropriate given their lack of scientific support."

I agree with the first sentence but disagree with the second. Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson. When I was taught physics at school, and taught it extremely well in my view, what I remember finding so exciting was that we could discuss almost anything providing we were prepared to defend our thinking in a way that admitted objective evidence and logical argument.

So when teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have (hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching) and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion. The word 'genuine' doesn't mean that creationism or intelligent design deserve equal time.

However, in certain classes, depending on the comfort of the teacher in dealing with such issues and the make-up of the student body, it can be appropriate to deal with the issue. If questions or issues about creationism and intelligent design arise during science lessons they can be used to illustrate a number of aspects of how science works.

The other approach is the one I call the "Ostrich" approach. It would ban all mention of creationism and refuse to even discuss any objections to evolution that students might have. This approach avoids the controversy altogether by claiming that creationism isn't science and therefore shouldn't be taught in science class.

That's just plain silly, in my opinion. We all know that creationist students have a lot of so-called "objections" to evolution and by ignoring them in evolution classes we are not doing our job. We need to face those "objections" and deal with them by explaining why they aren't scientific. If we don't do that, then we shouldn't be surprised when students accept the word of their pastor over that of their science teacher. You can be certain that their pastor doesn't limit his/her teaching to religion.

We agree that creationism isn't science. It's an attack on science and the best place to defend against such attacks is in a science class.

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[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net where you'll find plenty of discussion in the comments.]