Is Evolution Legal?

Today's question asked if the following statement is true or false: "In Kansas, it is illegal to teach evolution without also teaching creationism", and students were pretty evenly divided on how they felt about it.

The statement, for the record, is completely false for reasons that I'll go into in a moment. But let me begin by saying I was surprised by the number of students who thought it was illegal to teach evolution PERIOD.

In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that state laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools to be unconstitutional as a violation of the establishment (what is commonly, but perhaps incorrectly referred to as the "separation of church and state").

In response to this ruling, states begin issuing "equal time" laws which stipulated that evolution would be taught, but equal instructional time must be given to teaching creationism. In 1982, these laws were declared unconstitutional by a federal court's ruling in McLean v. Arkansas. In 1987, the Supreme Court issued a similar ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard. With this ruling, the court not only declared it unconstitutional to require "Creation Science" to be taught alongside evolution, but also declared that teaching "creation science" undermined the provisions of a comprehensive science education.

In response to the Edwards decision, creationist groups began removing all references to God or the Bible from their materials. This movement culminated in "Intelligent Design", which was declared unconstitutional by a federal court judge in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling.

I guess the take home message from all of this is that:
1. It is unconstitutional to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public school science classes.
2. It is unconstitutional to require the teaching of creationism (in any form) in public school science classes.
3. This is true in Kansas, along with the rest of the United States.

It is important to keep in mind that these court cases are not made in judgement of any particular religious belief. They do not, or cannot, speak to the validity or truth on any one particular belief system over another. All they do is define, legally, what the bounds of science are, and therefor what can and can't be taught about the origins and diversity of life (including humans) in public school science classes.

Plan of Action ideas

For those of you who are writing a "plan of action" in order to retake the biology test, keep the following in mind:

1. Use the information from your test analysis worksheet to identify those areas where your test performance was week. This way, you can specifically address those weaknesses. There's no need to waste your time studying what you already know.
2. You will need to have some way of documenting your work. If you are re-reading textbook sections, you will need to be able to turn in something that "proves" you did that. If you don't hold yourself accountable to actually producing something tangible, then you aren't likely to follow through with actually doing it.
3. Try something different. Sure, it's always helpful to review notes and textbook passages, but don't be afraid to be creative when writing your "plan of action". Your brain tends to get bored from looking at the same stuff over and over again. By exposing it the same information in a new way, you'll increase the likelihood of remembering the information.
4. Set a goal for the retake test and subtract your score on the original test. This will tell you how many points you need to improve. For instance, if you scored 65% on the first test but want to get an 80% of the retest, then you need to improve your score by (80-65) 15 points. Since each question is worth 2 points, then you will need to answer 8 more questions correctly on the retest. Look at your test analysis graph to help you identify what topic(s) would most efficiently help you get those points.
5. Try one or more of the following as part of your plan of action:
-Research 5-10 websites that deal with the topic(s) you are reviewing. Summarize the content of each and how it relates to what you are studying.
-There are many other types of biology textbooks in the classroom. Read and summarize the section(s) from one or more of these that deal with your topic(s).
-Get copies of the reading guides for the section(s) from your teacher and complete them
-Re-do the chapter assessment or section assessment questions. Try to complete them
without looking at the original assignment. Don't just try to rush to get them done...use
them as a thoughtful review.
-Write your own sample test questions and then answer them. This would be especially
helpful to practice working genetics problems.
-Use one of the alternative textbook resources available in the classroom. The study guides,
reading guides, and assessments from other textbooks can be great reviews.

Try to remember here that that idea is not to "get it done", but to "get it right". Take this opportunity to use your test score to help yourself learn.

Mistermagette on Facebook

Mistermagette is now on Facebook! As part of my ongoing experiments with this here Internet thing, I've decided to play around with a virtual classroom environment on Facebook. "Mistermagette" is set up as a business, which will allow me to (hopefully) use the application to communicate with students without having to share personal profile information.

So check it out...be one of the first to become a "fan". Write on the wall. Start a discussion. Just don't do it at school!

Evolution Legislation

As the new legislative year gets underway, most of the discussion is about budgets and how to balance them. Lost in the economic talk, though, are the first two anti-evolution bills of 2009.

Oklahoma Senate Bill 320 would require state and local authorities to:

endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.

That doesn't sound too bad, if it was preceded with:

The Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects.

As one of my science heroes (you know you're a geek when you have science heroes) likes to point out, encouraging critical thinking and thoughtful questioning is a good thing in science class. In fact, the ability to ask questions and think critical about the natural world are extremely important tools for a scientist. However, when certain theories of science are singled out for special treatment, we start to run into problems. Probably the biggest is that the statement above gives the impression that scientific questions and evidence should only be explored, critical thinking skills should only be used, and differences of opinion should only be respected when discussing evolution, the origins of life, global warming, or human cloning. If you're studying something like, say, gravity, then there's no need to ask questions. If you're discussing the extinction of wildlife due to overhunting or habitat depletion, don't worry about recognizing or respecting that other people might have a different view than you do. And if you're learning about quantum mechanics, don't bother with looking for evidence.

I'll have more on this later. In the meantime, the amazing folks at the National Center for Science Education have an informative post on this piece of legislation.

Darwin Anniversaries

September 12th, 2009 will mark the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. This year also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famous and monumental book "On the Origin of Species". The year will obviously be marked by anniversary celebrations, including on this blog and in my classroom.

Scientific American magazine has started the year off by dedicating an entire issue to the subject of evolution. Topics include the evolution of the mind, the evolutionary history of humans, the video game "Spore", the creationism/evolution controversy, and the future of the human species. This should be good reading and provide a lot of material for discussion.

Neckties

Today I talked to my classes about the necktie I was wearing, which I received as a Christmas gift. The small purple designs on it were actually drawings of Giardia lambia, which is an intestinal parasite. If anyone out there is experiencing tie jealousy and would like to order their own infectious disease tie, you can do so from the Infectious Awareables website.

How Much DNA?

Here's a question for you: How much DNA is in a human cell? How much is in the whole human body? To figure this out, we need to do a little math.

One base pair of DNA is about .34 nm long (.00000000034 m). There are about 6 billion base pairs (6,000,000,000) in the human genome. By multiplying these two numbers, we can figure that there is about 2 meters of DNA in a single human cell. By multiplying this number by the 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) cells in the human body, we can figure that there is about 20 trillion (20,000,000,000,000) meters of DNA in the human body.

By dividing this very large number by 1000, we get 20 billion kilometers of DNA. (Remember, this is DNA at it's regular microscopic size. We haven't enlarged it at all.) For the sake of comparison, the distance from the Earth to the sun is 150 million (150,000,000) kilometers. This means that each of us is carrying around enough DNA in our bodies to stretch the the sun and back over 65 times!

Pretty cool, huh?

Biology Lab

Today in biology we set up a classic photosynthesis experiment. Bromothyl blue (BTB) is an indicator chemical that turns yellow in the presence of carbon dioxide. So we started with a beaker of (blue) BTB. Using a straw, each group blew into their beakers of BTB until it turned yellow. We figured out that the color change was due to the carbon dioxide in exhaled air reacting with the BTB. Each group then poured the (now yellow) solution into two separate test tubes, and added an aquatic plant to each.

Question: What will happen to the BTB? After some discussion we decided that the plants, through photosynthesis, will use up the carbon dioxide in the water and produce oxygen. This should result in the BTB color changing back to blue.

Question: How do we know that any color change results from the plant and not from something else? Through discussion, we figured out that oxygen in the air might affect our results, so we decided to seal up the test tubes with parafilm so that they'd be airtight. Now if the color changes, we know that it's from the plants sealed inside and not from the gases in the atmosphere.

Question: How can we make sure that photosynthesis is what produces oxygen, and not some other process in the plant? We thought about this for awhile, and decided that, by keeping one of the test tubes in the dark, we would prevent the plant inside from doing photosynthesis. So each group enclosed one of their two test tubes with aluminum foil to block out all light.

Our working hypothesis, then, is that if a plant is exposed to light, then it will absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen which will turn its BTB solution from yellow to blue.