SocraticGadfly: No wonder our school kids are science-ignorant

May 21, 2008

No wonder our school kids are science-ignorant

Our teachers aren’t teaching it.

One-quarter of public school science teachers teach either open creationism or stealth creationism, aka intelligent design, in their classrooms. And 50 percent of them, or one-eighth the total …
called creationism a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” and the same number said that “many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory.”

What’s the solution?
The study's authors note that courtroom victories — classroom creationism has consistently been struck down in U.S. courts — is apparently insufficient to guarantee an accurate depiction of evolution. Nor will rigorous state science standards, like those recently passed in Florida, do the trick. Instead they recommend teacher certification requiring the completion of an evolutionary biology course.

I totally, 302,875,106,592,253 percent agree. (That’s 13 to the 13th power; what could be more anti-superstitious than that?)

See here, at PLoS, for full survey of teachers.

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