http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ionism-britons
So what's going on? I thought this sort of stuff was dead over here. What's your take on this?
Need to look at the EXACT question asked. As stated it was:
If the only answers allowed were YES or NO I would have answering such a daft question.(Britons agreed with the view:)
"Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."
I think Chaggle has the answer on this one. I know we are not supposed to be intuitive on this forum but since I am a renowned Maverick .... intuitively, I don't think that's can be right. The United States is an entirely different matter. There was a TV programme I saw the other week called "Evolution is a lie"!
There's an interesting thread going on about climate change
Perhaps this is the answer
Yeah, that was my first thought.Originally Posted by Bunny
Should be
SorryIf the only answers allowed were YES or NO I would have difficulty answering such a daft question.(but I think Bunny somehow got my point - maybe through intuition?)
Can the Guardian be heading the way of the Mail & Express? It looks to me like a question deliberately phrased to confuse and almost guaranteed to produce a headline-worthy but utterly meaningless result. I'd hate to think that the Guardian had sunk to such depths, but what other conclusion can we reach?
If they'd asked "Should non-scientific religious ideas like Creationism and Intelligent Design be taught in science lessons?", I'm certain that the result would have been very different.
Also, even someone thinking that ID should be mentioned to some extent doesn't necessarily mean much time should be spent on it, or it should be taught as being of equal merit, or that it shouldn't be mentioned in a historic context, the way phlogiston theory might be taught in chemistry.
Without knowing what people are thinking when they answer the question, the question is fairly pointless*, as well as being open to a wide range of interpretation.
(*except maybe as a way of getting free publicity)
I read your mind
The survey appears to have been conducted at the behest of the British Council to coincide with their celebrations of Darwin's life. The grauniad may be absolved from responsibility for the choice of question.
However they are fully responsible for focusing on one small part of the British Council Press release
http://www.britishcouncil.org/new/Pr...ion-materials/
This give details of how to obtain a copy of the survey results if anybody is still interested.
That certainly puts a different perspective on things but, as you say, it still doesn't reflect well on the Grauniad.
If I could determine what was taught in science, I would try to provide an historical perpective. So at the start of a course on evolution, I would want to cover (briefly) what people believed before the 19th century (including mentioning other creation myths than the Biblical one), and why these religious-based ideas gradually fell apart under the sustained barrage of discoveries by geologists and palaeontologists before Darwin provided the killer insight into how all living things developed. I would briefly mention the existence of ID as the last hold-out of religious believers desperately rejecting what science has been showing over the past couple of centuries. Then I'd move on....
Exploring why people believe in creationism and ID might be a good topic for psychology lessons
I can remember my first biology lesson at secondary school, aged 11 (that's 42 years ago!). Genesis and creationism was touched on for no more than two minutes then we moved on. That's OK. I suppose it could be said that creationism was taught in a science lesson though.....
"...together with other possible perspectives..."
A bias here is that they are grouping ID, Creationism and Evolution [by natural selection?] as scientific.
If we apply this to the generic science class, the people who answered "YES" would presumptuously agree that we should teach the "theory" of tooth-fairies as an explanation for teeth vanishing from pillows, but then I might be misunderstanding this :p
My biggest fear is that whilst we live in a small world, all neighbours with each other, that schools like this can actually contribute to a dangerous division between our youngsters when we should focus on what makes us the same. After all racial / religious assaults are on the up in the UK.
I see no harm in presenting the possibility of an intelligent design into their minds so that as they grow up they can mature and make up their own mind. We know however that a childīs mind is designed to learn and absorb far more information as fact than when they are older
I believe that this is a combination of a loaded question together with a worrying number of deeply uneducated people.
The question was clearly loaded. It does not ask that both models be taught equally. It does not ask that they be taught on the same level of factuality. It just asks if they should both be taught. I see no real conclusion that can be drawn from this survey and see it as worthless.
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