Sunday, January 01, 2006
Denouncing Liberals Is Alive and Well
The anti-evolution stance of the Kansas State School Board reminds me of the harassment of teachers that went on in Germany during the Nazi take-over: any teacher that denied the party line that Jews were sub-human was denounced, often by that teacher’s students.
The Nazis, and totalitarian states like China, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany—they all depended on people denouncing other people to the police. So did the Inquisition. Our own government is encouraging us to do the same thing.
We live in dangerous times.
It's no fun being a biology teacher in Kansas
`Popular Science' says the job ranks right up there with human lab rat and manure inspector. What do the teachers think?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-051229teacher-story,1,7983099.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=chi-news-hed
By Lisa Anderson
Tribune national correspondent
Published December 29, 2005, 8:03 PM CST
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- Hours after students merrily departed for the long winter break, lights still blazed in Ken Bingman's biology lab at Blue Valley West High School here.
The bright TV lights belonged to the crew from "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee," a children's news magazine show on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Nick News was just the latest in a long line of those seeking the veteran biology teacher's take on the country's most spectacular recurring science squabble: the Kansas State Board of Education's on-again-off-again relationship with Charles Darwin and his theory of biological evolution.
For the moment, that tenuous and tempestuous engagement is off again. And Kansas biology teachers like Bingman once more are caught in the middle of a raging culture war.
On Nov. 8, the board adopted state science standards containing the harshest criticism of evolution in the nation. The standards pointedly cast doubt on Darwin's theory that all life on Earth shares common ancestry and developed through the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection. Repugnant to many religious conservatives, modern evolutionary theory is considered by the vast majority of scientists as a cornerstone of modern biology that has withstood rigorous testing over time.
In an even bolder step that drew international derision, the board redefined science as a discipline not limited to observations in the natural world and opened the door to supernatural explanations. While unspecified, these might include the biblical account of creation in Genesis and intelligent design, or ID, which presents itself as a scientific theory positing that some complexities of the natural world are best attributed to an unnamed and unseen designer. Most ID proponents believe the designer is God; most scientists believe ID is creationism in a lab coat.
***
For example, Bingman said, over the years he probably had students who disagreed with evolution; typically 10 percent of his students are creationists. But "those students really weren't vocal...Now, it's in your face, I mean, it's in your face.
"Not only do they say that intelligent design is right, they even talk about your politics and call you a liberal and those kinds of things, which I think inappropriate in a classroom," he said.
Assigned to discuss five solid pieces of evidence for evolution, one 14-year-old student wrote: "Although there is more than one viewpoint on the issue of how we all got here, Mr. Bingman is forcing [us into] believing his views by teaching us one-sided education. This is much as how the liberal media is forcing the public into disowning the war and Pres. Bush's policies. Despite my viewpoints I am forced to write about the theory of evolution."
Said Bingman, "I've never had anything like that before in 43 years of teaching. It's one instance, but it's symptomatic of what we're seeing in some young people."
***
Over the last 20 years, polls also consistently find that almost half of all Americans believe God created humans in their current form within the last 10,000 years. For a biology teacher in a small-town school, Bingman said the anti-evolution pressure could be enormous. "Because you teach all the sciences perhaps, or most of the sciences. Your wife may in fact be a teacher in the school...and there can be all sorts of harassment, not only to you, but to your wife and worst of all to your students or to your own children who are students in the school."
Such harassment of teachers and their families occurred in Dover, the rural Pennsylania school district whose board-mandated inclusion of ID in biology classes was struck down on Dec. 20 in a decision by federal District Court Judge John Jones III.
***
lbanderson@tribune.com
The Nazis, and totalitarian states like China, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany—they all depended on people denouncing other people to the police. So did the Inquisition. Our own government is encouraging us to do the same thing.
We live in dangerous times.
It's no fun being a biology teacher in Kansas
`Popular Science' says the job ranks right up there with human lab rat and manure inspector. What do the teachers think?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-051229teacher-story,1,7983099.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=chi-news-hed
By Lisa Anderson
Tribune national correspondent
Published December 29, 2005, 8:03 PM CST
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- Hours after students merrily departed for the long winter break, lights still blazed in Ken Bingman's biology lab at Blue Valley West High School here.
The bright TV lights belonged to the crew from "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee," a children's news magazine show on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Nick News was just the latest in a long line of those seeking the veteran biology teacher's take on the country's most spectacular recurring science squabble: the Kansas State Board of Education's on-again-off-again relationship with Charles Darwin and his theory of biological evolution.
For the moment, that tenuous and tempestuous engagement is off again. And Kansas biology teachers like Bingman once more are caught in the middle of a raging culture war.
On Nov. 8, the board adopted state science standards containing the harshest criticism of evolution in the nation. The standards pointedly cast doubt on Darwin's theory that all life on Earth shares common ancestry and developed through the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection. Repugnant to many religious conservatives, modern evolutionary theory is considered by the vast majority of scientists as a cornerstone of modern biology that has withstood rigorous testing over time.
In an even bolder step that drew international derision, the board redefined science as a discipline not limited to observations in the natural world and opened the door to supernatural explanations. While unspecified, these might include the biblical account of creation in Genesis and intelligent design, or ID, which presents itself as a scientific theory positing that some complexities of the natural world are best attributed to an unnamed and unseen designer. Most ID proponents believe the designer is God; most scientists believe ID is creationism in a lab coat.
***
For example, Bingman said, over the years he probably had students who disagreed with evolution; typically 10 percent of his students are creationists. But "those students really weren't vocal...Now, it's in your face, I mean, it's in your face.
"Not only do they say that intelligent design is right, they even talk about your politics and call you a liberal and those kinds of things, which I think inappropriate in a classroom," he said.
Assigned to discuss five solid pieces of evidence for evolution, one 14-year-old student wrote: "Although there is more than one viewpoint on the issue of how we all got here, Mr. Bingman is forcing [us into] believing his views by teaching us one-sided education. This is much as how the liberal media is forcing the public into disowning the war and Pres. Bush's policies. Despite my viewpoints I am forced to write about the theory of evolution."
Said Bingman, "I've never had anything like that before in 43 years of teaching. It's one instance, but it's symptomatic of what we're seeing in some young people."
***
Over the last 20 years, polls also consistently find that almost half of all Americans believe God created humans in their current form within the last 10,000 years. For a biology teacher in a small-town school, Bingman said the anti-evolution pressure could be enormous. "Because you teach all the sciences perhaps, or most of the sciences. Your wife may in fact be a teacher in the school...and there can be all sorts of harassment, not only to you, but to your wife and worst of all to your students or to your own children who are students in the school."
Such harassment of teachers and their families occurred in Dover, the rural Pennsylania school district whose board-mandated inclusion of ID in biology classes was struck down on Dec. 20 in a decision by federal District Court Judge John Jones III.
***
lbanderson@tribune.com
