Ignorance is a Choice

This quote pretty much speaks for itself.  You can easily find the answers to most questions.  If you can't find the answer on your own, you can find someone who knows the answer.  When you can't find someone who knows the answer, that is science.

Generally, though the average person doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Iran, the three branches of government, or even the difference between liberal and conservative.  The answers are out there.  You just have to go get them.

PSA: Suncreen Application

It is summer.  It is hot.  And it is time for sunburns.  In my classes, I talk a lot about skin (anatomy and biology) and about UV rays (physics).  This infographic from David McCandless and Information is Beautiful sums up what anyone should know about sunscreen.  It is important information, especially for me who has skin so white it almost shimmers in the sunlight.

The picture is quite long, but you will not be disappointed when you get to the end.  Enjoy!

Doonsbury Gets It Right!

This Doonsbury comic strip blew up on the blogosphere yesterday.  It is accurate and it is poignant.  The Louisiana legislature wants this situation to happen in their classrooms with their horrible and ironicly-named "academic freedom" bill.  To be sure, as creationists pack school boards around the country, they prefer science teachers to stick to a literal reading of Genesis.  If I were stuck in this position, I would teach Intelligent Design from the scientific point of view.  I would show why ID fails as science.

Enough with the commentary.  Enjoy the comic!

Miss America Question

This video mocks the infamous question from the Miss America Pageant a few weeks ago.  The judges asked the contestants, "Should evolution be taught in schools?"  This seems like a no-brainer to anyone with a clue.  YES we should teach the unifying theory of biology in a biology classroom.  Apparently only two of the contestants agreed.  But really, who cares what they think?  They are in a beauty pageant not defending a dissertation.

Even if all the contestants agreed with the simple idea of teaching science in a science classroom, the most distressing part is the question itself.  They asked if EVOLUTION should be taught in schools!  They did not ask if CREATIONISM should be taught in schools.  The judges framed the question to put more doubt into the science side of the debate.  YES evolution should be taught in schools.  Period.  Should creationism be taught in schools?  That question illuminates a ideological or pedagogical point that is actually debatable.

Anyways, enough ranting.  Here is the mockery: Should MATH be taught in schools?

The Story of America and Other Stuff

Here's a few stories for Independence Day:

Several political leaders have made prominent mistakes about US History lately.  Jimmy Kimmel offered Michele Bachmann's Story of America on his show mocking the historical inaccuracies people have given us.


On a sad note, 25% of Americans are not sure who we declared independence from.  Half aren't even sure what year.  Maybe we shouldn't make so much fun of the politicians.  Just kidding.  If you base your platform on the Revolutionary War Era, then you should know the history of the period.

For the historically inclined, the website provided some of the questions that our kids failed recently.  This was the study that used Santorum claim that American Ignorance was a liberal plot to destroy the US.

No matter what side you are on, enjoy this holiday for ALL Americans!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Fighting Racism in Biology Class

Nona Willis Aronowitz, of GOOD, relates a new study which suggests quality genetics education could help fight racism in the biology classroom.  Unfortunately, Aronowitz is less convinced.  Here are some basics.  We humans comprise the same species because of our similar genetics.  When asked, most people assume that two humans share only about 56%.  In reality, two humans share about 99.9% of the same DNA.  Needless to say, the 0.1% leads to a great amount of diversity but we are all essentially the same.  Many geneticists and social scientists have concluded that humans lack the genetic diversity to describe distinct races.

As a biology teacher, I spend a lot of time discussing the genetics of race.  I am fascinated by the evolution of human skin color and how race plays a role in our society.  I have used the PBS special, Race: The Power of an Illusion, to help make the point that we are one species and that race doesn't exist.  But, race still has a dramatic impact on how we perceive others.

I am hopeful that education and information can substantially disarm the ignorance of racism and bigotry.  If no single gene separates any two "races" of humans, then we can get past these misconceptions.  The traits that we characterize certain "races" can be found in many other populations.  Unfortunately, we maximize our minimal differences and confuse cultural with genetic difference.  Place a Palestinian and an Israeli in the same room and you could not tell the difference until we came to the topic of politics and religion.

Racism is based on an ignorance that can be erased through information and immersion.  Biology teachers don't need to be afraid of these topics and take a lead in fighting the biases in the classroom.

#TwitterClass

Check out this CNN report about a teacher who has embraced the idea of social networking in the classroom.  As educators, we want to relate to our students and find new ways to engage them.  Therefore if students actively use social media to connect to each other, then teachers should try to reach their students in this way.

Some teachers have extensive websites full of information, but neither students nor parents use the resource.  Maybe these teachers could put the same information into a Facebook page or group.  If teachers want to get students following current events, then have them use Twitter to summarize and link to articles.

Unfortunately, some school boards are preventing fresh, innovative teachers from fulfilling there obligations to inspire young learners by blocking teacher access from social media.  Teachers risk their jobs by befriending students or by merely posting on private accounts.  Yes, some teachers have engaged in inappropriate behaviors, but the good teachers just want to find ways to help your children learn.

As an example, we see this in the efforts of this teacher:

Santorum Blames Liberals for Low History Scores

Rick Santorum is running for president.  Like a previous candidate I have mentioned, he has said many stupid things.  If you don't know who he is, I beg of you NOT to google him.  You will not like the results (No seriously, don't do it).  Anyways, this stupid comment concerns education so I thought that I would mention it on here.



When talking about the recent study which found that US students don't actually know American history, Santorum used the opportunity to blame liberals.  He called the poor scores on a survey the results of a "conscious effort on the part of the left ... to desensitize America to what American values are."  In this he inserts two ways of blaming the left.

1. We purposefully teach your children the wrong information.  Apparently, liberals have a huge impact on the curriculum and use it to screw up education.  This assumes a conspiracy of all teachers (in this case, history teachers) to agree to an alternative history which may or may not have happened just so kids would do badly on a survey.  Actually that does seem to be happening, but from the other side.  Conservatives frequently reconstruct history to suit their ideological agenda.  Take for example the Texas Board of Education or Sarah Palin's recent Paul Revere statement.  David Barton makes lots of money creating history to pander to conservative Christians.
2. We want to impose our own anti-American values on your kids.  The real reason the evil liberals screw up education is to indoctrinate children with the ideas of equality, peace, and etc.  We must teach an alternative history to support our agenda for social purposes.  Actually, this is happening too.  Conservatives use their altered histories as excuse to institute their theocratic objectives.  According to their history, the United States was founded by Jesus for the True Christians.

I am sure that there are plenty of examples of liberals making mistakes about history, but I don't seem them attempting to make public policy based on their factual errors.  Truthfully, we are all to blame for our children's education.  Only offering lip service to making schools better, we make no effort to fund education or actually improve anything.  Education should be the issue that brings both sides together (just as it brought Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton).

Santorum took a cheap shot at his percieved enemy, the liberals, and opened the door for people to mock how members of his party have screwed up historical facts.  At some point we should be able to agree on reality, as historical and scientific facts don't have a partisan point of view.

Human Speciation

Species refers to a group of individuals that can reproduce and produce fertile offspring.  As populations of the same species become isolated from each other, their gene pools become different enough that their offspring would no longer be fertile.  I usually teach this by talking about several common examples:

Horse + Donkey = Mule

Lion + Tiger = Liger

Horse + Zebra = Zorse

We know that the organisms on the left are distinct species because the animals on the right are infertile.  Mules cannot make more mules.

Calamities of Nature have given me a new example of speciation in human populations:

Newton's Second Law Demo

Yesterday, I finished my last day at the school where I began my teaching career.  I am very thankful for the time spent and the friendships made.  Before I leaving for the day, another teacher wanted to know how I demonstrated Newton's Second Law.  So we made a video to show how I did it.

Basically, you have to remember that the acceleration due to gravity only affects the vertical component.  Gravity has no effect on the horizontal motion.  So if you drop a bullet and fire a bullet from the same height, they should hit the ground at the same time.  Since you can't bring a gun into the classroom, I decided to show this principle with a Nerf Dart Gun.

***Quick Note before the video: We shot this on an iPhone and I can't figure out how to get the dimensions.  Because of that, I look nothing like myself in the video.  Otherwise, I am pretty proud to get the results that we did with cheap kids' toys and a cell phone camera.

Enjoy!

The Constitution and Creationism

Lauri Lebo lets us know that David Barton has said something silly again.  Barton makes a name for himself by knowing the exact thoughts of each Founding Father and their intentions for the radical experiment in democracy known as The United States.  Conveniently, the Founding Fathers unanimously agreed with everything he believes ideologically and even theologically.  It seems strange considering that the drafting of the Declaration and the framing of Constitution took place under serious debate and compromise including men of various religions and political identities.  But then again, Barton has said "that Jesus opposed the minimum wage or that the bible takes a stand against net neutrality."


Now Barton has discovered that the Founding Fathers had discovered, decided and dismissed evolution and preferred that creationism be taught in our schools.  Check out the video:

So according to David Barton, the Founding Fathers discussed evolution about 70 years before Charles Darwin introduced the idea and described the mechanism of natural selection in his book, On the Origin of Species.  And they decided that creationism should be taught in our public schools which that predicted Horace Mann would begin in the 1830's.  

This would just be funny if so many people didn't listen to and agree with such babble.  Any person who gives this a quick thought would understand how ridiculous it is.  Barton shows us he does not understand history, religion, law or science.  Each of which he claims to be an expert for.  I wish that I could knowingly lie to people just to take their money.  History and science are so much easier when you can just make stuff up.

Night Blindness

Check out this cool picture!

As you leave the city, the beauty of the universe opens up to you.  More stars and more galaxies dot the black sky.  Here is one problem with all the city lights. We can't see the billions of stars up there. Nightblindness affects the curiosity and wonder children could have with astronomy. As more people move into cities, it may explain our growing disinterest in NASA and space exploration. 

I spent two weeks teaching about the universe this year and they were all fascinated. Maybe there is hope for the wonder and awe of the universe after all!

***BTW, the other problem with city lights has to do with sleep cycles.  The constant light doesn't let your brain rest the way it should.***

Mutlicultural Colors

A wide diversity of skin tones leaves a mark on the human race.  Recently, Crayola has released a "Multicultural" set of colors to allow more children to draw themselves.

Apparently, the people at Fox and Friends thought that this was a bad idea and couldn't understand the need for them.  One commenter said that burnt sienna was good enough for her as a kid and it should be good enough for everybody.  Seriously people.  How can people say these things with a straight face.  Crayola makes colors or all shades.  Now they have made colors that more accurately match the rainbow of skin colors.  Not every person is peach or burnt sienna.  Human diversity is a great thing.  I applaud Crayola for these new colors and yet another face palm for the anchors of Fox and Friends.

Rewriting the Textbooks

Cseeman / Flickr

Science changes constantly.  Everyday new discoveries overturn pet theories and hopeful hypotheses.  Thousands of journals catalogue ever-evolving life of scientific knowledge.  Unfortunately, textbooks fail to keep up with these fast paced developments sometimes lagging behind by decades.  The process of writing and approving classroom texts prevent our students from learning about cutting edge developments until they leave high school.  We make complex topics overly simple by omitting key details and overlooking the exceptions to our rules.

To honor the uncertainty in frontier science, New Scientist has published a series of articles about rewriting our textbooks.  The articles attack some fundamental truths in the K-12 classroom.  For instance, atomic weights are less predictable than the periodic table implies.  Reptiles don't really exist as an isolated group (the birds get mixed within them).  We don't really understand nuclear fission or hydrogen bonding.  And genes aren't always genes.

I always struggle figuring out how far I can take my students to the edge of known science.  Science exists because of what we don't know not what we have already figured out.  I enjoy introducing these type of ideas through various sources.  I have printed off articles from these science news sites, created a class blog, reprinted chapters from popular science books, showed TED talks, podcasts and science programs.  It is important to bring in new science into the classroom and let them see what we still have to learn.

South Park on Evolution

Always out to mock anyone and anything, South Park took on The Theory of Evolution.  In this case, they show a teacher who really doesn't accept evolution presenting the topic to the class.  As you can expect, his explanation leaves a lot of stuff out and would create more misconceptions among the students. Sadly, this kind of thing happens throughout the country. Though, I doubt that even the worst high school teachers would not use this kind of language.

Enjoy! (Warning: Language- it is South Park!)

We need our science teachers better prepared to present SCIENCE to our students.  As our country falls behind in science and math, we only need to look to the above example to figure out why.  Too many science teachers either outright reject modern science or feel uncomfortable teaching it because of ignorance or intimidation.  Until we can get past this problem, our children and future will continue to suffer through horrible explanations of science like the kids from South Park.

Creationist Parenting

I don't know what you think, but I think this is pretty accurate.  I once had a student who was convinced that men had one less rib and women.  And that that was evidence for the Adam and Eve story.  When I said we have the same number ribs, she would not believe me.  After reminding her of my biological and anatomical credentials, she relented.  So yes, I think this comic is a close approximation of what is happening.

JK

A Note of Critical Thinking

Supporters of Academic Freedom bills use the educational buzz words, "Critical Thinking".  They do this to present themselves as neutral participants, looking out for the best interests of the students.  However, critical thinking is one of the last things the neo-creationists want.

Educators love for kids to learn critical thinking skills.  We design lessons, activities and projects hoping to promote these skills in our students.  Students who can think critically will become well-rounded, independent citizens.  Specifically as science teachers, we foster critical thinking through problem-based learning activities and open-ended laboratory assignments.  We bring in the data from famous, historical discoveries or from student-completed experiments.  From there, we lead our students through scientific thinking teach them how to reach logical conclusions.  This is modern science teaching.

After losing every major legal battle, creationists have hit on a new strategy with critical thinking as a disguise.  Their new Academic Freedom bills advise teachers to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of "controversial" scientific theories.  The 2008 Louisiana Law specifically mentions evolution, abiogenesis, global warming and human cloning.  Interestingly, these proposals never specify the weaknesses that teachers should actually address.  These bills simply provide cover for bringing creationism or creationist materials into the classroom.

One clue to their dishonesty comes from the implications of their bills.  By specifying evolution, abiogenesis, and global warming, advocates imply that these are the only areas of science that require critical thinking skills.  Last time I check, every scientific discipline (and really every subject in school) provide opportunities for critical thinking, including but not limited to: the nature of science, ecology, cell biology, genetics, and classification.  Science itself requires the development of these skills, not just evolution.

Another clue comes from their focus.  By saying that teachers should teach the weaknesses of evolution they open the door to creationism and intelligent design.  But if they are intellectually honest, then they would want us to also teach the weaknesses of creationism.  They would want us to explain why Intelligent Design fails as a scientific theory.

Maybe I am wrong about their intentions (probably not).  If their bills actually promote critical thinking, then they should be aware that the skill will also be applied to Creationism/Intelligent Design.  If so, then maybe students would gain a deeper understanding of why evolution is the unifying theory of biology.  MAybe its not such a bad idea after all.

Comparing Teacher Pay and Teacher Work

We have had many debates in this country about education budgets and teacher pay.  Let's be honest.  It is not a pretty picture.  Actually, it is uglier than I really thought it was.  The following infographic compares the amount of time teachers put into their job and the salary they get out of it.  In the US, our teachers work more than teachers in other countries while receiving very little.  Take a look for yourself. For the record, Finland ranks first in the world in education.

From http://www.good.is/post/american-teachers-do-more-work-for-less-pay-than-their-international-peers/

Every budget comes out demanding more money be cut from education.  In some districts, teachers are taking pay cuts from salaries, supplements, and benefits while being asked to teach more classes with ever more students in the room.  Some teachers have not seen a pay raise in 3 years, even in the form of cost of living increases.  Something bad is happening.  If our leaders don't recognize the importance of education and paying teachers as an investment for the future, then they will be paying for jails and welfare for a long time to come.

Sad Video

This video pops up on the internets every once and a while.  It is either very scary or very sad.  These high school students have received a very poor education from their "science" teacher who doesn't seem to know very much about the topic he was hired to teach.  It is appalling that this could happen, be video taped, and the guy would still keep his job.

I vote that this is a sad video.  Enjoy?

Newton's Advice for Helping Teachers on Evolution

At Science and Religion Today, Steve Newton wrote an article about getting teachers to be more confident in teaching evolution in our schools.  His article comes in response to poll finding that 60% of teachers are "cautious" about teaching evolution.  Basically, they barely address the topic to avoid the hassles that come from students and parents.  As the programs and policy director of the Nation Center for Science Education, Newton has several suggestions for all of us who seek a more pro-science society.

1. Write letters to the editor in favor of evolution and science education to counter the advertisements and letters from the anti-science crowd.  Like this one that I wrote a few years ago.
2. Parents should let the teachers know that they prefer science to be taught in the science classroom.  The only parents we usually here from are the ones who complain.
3. Donate pro-science books, movies and other materials to schools.  Like any job, teaching requires specific tools to help your kids grow up in a scientifically literate society.
4. Future teachers need better evolution education to feel more confident in front of the class.  This begins the cycle.  A better educated, pro-science society promotes better students and better teachers.

Newton's list provides several great ideas.  I would also add better, more specific professional development seminars.  Let the 20% of teachers who are confident about evolution teach the other 80%. We could also hold community seminars to help educate the parents that either want to learn more about science and even those who are worried about their child's education (almost all of us).

A pro-science community needs communicators of science who are not afraid to talk about the important topics of modern science.