Several scientists are claiming that they were misled about a new intelligent design film, the New York Times reported. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says that he was asked to be interviewed for a film about the intersection of faith and science to be titled "Crossroads." Instead, the film, which will be released next year, is now titled, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," and is about academia’s alleged intolerance and suppression of those who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes. "At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front," Dawkins said.
Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she is willing to appear in films in which people’s views are different from hers. "I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t," she said.
But a producer of the film denied that there was any deception about what the film was about, and said the film’s name change was just a marketing decision.
If the filmmakers were a bit deceptive, is that OK, given that Michael Moore does that? Or would that go against the religious views the film promotes?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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174 Comments
It does not seem that intentionally misleading someone to do something that later would cast them in a potentially unfavorable light would fit with the (presumably) Christian morals and ideals held by most creationists.
Anthropologists are easily tricked.
Wave an artifact in front of them and they go all starry-eyed.
I do wonder why, if these people really believe in ID, do they feel the need to be so deceptive about it? Why not be honest about it, unless it’s all a scam from the get go?
Dawkins has a policy of not conducting interviews with creationists because creationists are inherently dishonest. So the creationists who interviewed him portrayed themselves as something different as creationists. Eventually he found out after hearing some of their leading questions. As expected the dishonest creationists used the footage as anti-science propaganda.
Kansas,Religious people are easily tricked- just tell ‘em it’s in the bible and they won’t even bother to go look it up!
Would this guy’s answers been any different if he knew othewise?
who knows, but he probably would not have done the interview.
What is the scientific evidence for creationism? That all science disciplines dont support creationism isn’t because of some vast science conspiracy its because creationism lacks any evidence. Science doesn’t support astrology, Mysticism, or telling the future by sqeezing the goats testilices either.
Why not? Is there some reason he won’t do interviews with creationists? Can he not back up everything he says with science? People gave Strobel such a hard time for writing his books and only interviewing people who supposedly thought the same way as him… is that because the so called real scientists would not talk to him. Technically (in Strobel’s case) he started out as an athiest so he was talking to the other side.
Perhaps a bit off topic but it makes a point.
what are “testilices”
There is also no evidence of “nothing.”
But yet, we have a word for it.
“what are “testilices”"
A series of plays written in ancient Greece. It was about hanging around, doing nothing.
Deception?
Piltdown manThe Scopes “trial” (pure theatre, the “defenedent” agreed to break the law, deliberately, to give the ACLU a case.)The “moth” story (pure fabrication, there have always been two different moths in that area, and for purposes of that film, they PINNED the white moths to the blackened tree trunks, because they would not go there on their own.)
Hey, I think Darwin has a point.
I accept Evolution as a tool that God used in His Creation plan.
I think Darwin and Evolution do a great job of organizing the species.
However, the superiority that the Evolutionists exhibit is not called for.
NO other branch of science is as prone to fakery and hoaxes as evolution.
Econ – does one financial hoax discredit ALL financial advisors?
NO other profession is as prone to fraud and thievery as financial planning.
the scopes trial wasn’t just so the ACLU would have a case the town fathers wanted something to attract publicly and $$ to a town
Econ- that is a …unique view of history.
When it comes to outright hoaxes like Plitdown man, who was it who discovered the hoax? Was it religious authorities? Some bible thumbing, goose stepping tele-vangelist? No, it was SCIENCTISTS! Scienctists looked at the data and exposed the hoax.
Your presentation of the Plitdown man as a hoax by “evolutionists” implies it was done to support a theory that cannot be supported. The FACT is that the hoax was the work of people who wanted to be famous. Facts matter.
But if you want to talk about dishonesty, why talk about Ted Haggard or other religious leaders who turn out to be total frauds?
Not defending the tactic of lying in order to get interviews, if indeed that is what happened (and the statements are apparantly contradictory on that), whether Moore does it or not, but Fleet raises a valid question:
“Would this guy’s answers been any different if he knew otherwise?”
Presumably, the answer is no, the facts are what they are (from the scientists point of view). If so, what is the problem?
Now, if the film messes with the editing to misconstrue or take out of clear context the scientists’ words, that is indeed another matter, but at least at first reading that doesn’t appear to be the case.
So, ignorant Bible-thumping creationists made a monkey out of an unsuspecting, naive evolutionist?Seems like a coloring of the facts, to me.And, NO, I don’t believe a 3-1/2-foot-tall ape was my great-grandmother. I’m just not that naive.
Should be an interesting film. I’m a Ben Stein fan.
And it’s about time the somewhat paranoid behavior of the scientific community toward ID gets exposure.
I accept Evolution as a tool that God used in His Creation plan.Posted by: Econ101 | September 27, 2007 at 02:19 PM
Econ, I agree completely.
This may be a first.
BenWhat do you want from me?I am just asking for the scientific community to show some humility.Science never has all the answers.Science never will.I hate it that science and faith are cast as enemies, by radicals on both sides.It does not have to be that way.
XXXI just marked in on my calendar.Thanks!
Poor poor Paul, you know you shouldn’t step into the scientific realm because you just continue to look foolish. The methodology of the original pepper moth study was flawed but the conclusions were accurate as later studies have revealed.
Cook, L. M., 2003. The rise and fall of the carbonaria form of the peppered moth. Quarterly Review of Biology 78(4): 399-417.Grant, Bruce S., 1999. Fine tuning the peppered moth paradigm. Evolution 53(3): 980-984.
As for the Piltdown man that was created for entertainment purposes since the intent was a hoax. Once it was allowed to be investigated by scientists it was revealed as a fraud.
As for the documentary it’s pathetic that the creationists keep whining. Perhaps if they did real science instead of the hackjobs they do then they might get published. Just because they are creationists does not entitle them to special treatment. They have to do proper science like everyone else. Instead of doing science they use lawyers, politicians and actors to promote creationism, while science relies on scientists.
If the “big bang” theory is true (and I do lean that way), something (god) had to get it all started.We went from nothing to something. The question is, is this god one who cares about us or not. One who can save us or not. Eternal life or not. I think it’s not, but something put it there to get started.
It’s kindof like this….if Fox news called me up and said they want to interview me, no way. Because I know they’ll twist whatever I have to say, or paraphrase, or talk over me or whatever.
This person probably does not wish her words to be twisted like they do.
I have a new theory, its called, Critical Engineering. This world was engineered and created by demonic knomes in 1 second. About 9.73 katrinallion years ago, to this hour. The demonic knomes came from a far away galaxy called starbucks, they came to this area of space and decided to build a new world out of space poop, a place where things are free and destined to do deeds for the demonic knomes. The knomes are growing angry with us, people have quit believing in the knomes. This infuriates them, so the knomes have decided to destroy the earld. The only thing that can stop the knomes, are the combustible Elves that live in the belly of the earth producing molten honey that keeps the earth alive.
I have a few scientists that are backing me up with irrefutable evidence.
“This person probably does not wish her words to be twisted like they do.”
I see no charge that words have been twisted.
Something from the NYT article that failed to make it into this header.
“Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.”
I’m willing for Religion and Science to co-exist, as soon as people quit trying to push something as ridiculous like ID off as science. ID is a religous belief not science. Science is a theory that can be tested. ID cannot be tested, it is just a religious theory, it’s not even a scientific theory. I can say something as ridiculous like, invisable sharks swim in space, and that holds more water than intelligent design does.
I think Thomas Jefferson said it best. A belief in God is strictly between the individual person and God.
Meaning that the Legislative branch should be seperated from Religion.
It should be the same for science also.
If the ID people want to continue their quest. They should call it alternative science, and butt the hell out of the real world science.
“They should call it alternative science,…”
They can call it whatever they want, but it can’t be taught (in the goverment skools) as science. It should be taught as Comparitive Religion.Did we come from American Indian buffalo poop or spring from the head of Hera of some such.
Religion is not science and vice versa..I miss the Flying Spagetti Monster..my pirate clothes are collecting dust.
“evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes.”
This makes me want to see the film. Someone’s found evidence of the supernatural? Pretty sweet.
However, I have a hunch that this “evidence” is nothing more than poking holes in evolutionary theory that have been beaten to death already. I’ll see it anyway.
“And, NO, I don’t believe a 3-1/2-foot-tall ape was my great-grandmother. I’m just not that naive.”
Hee. It’s ok to believe that, as long as you’re not trying to push it into the science classroom.
From the article:”As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are “not within the scope or abilities of science.””
WHY WHY WHY is this so offensive to people? How is this difficult to understand? ID is not science, and it can’t ever be science because it offers no empirical evidence.
That doesn’t mean ID or religion is wrong, just that it doesn’t belong in this field.
“Lucee! I’m home!”
:)
It took 30 years for the scientific community to convince itself that “piltdown man” was a hoax:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
I suggest that the “scientists” on this Blog stop using evolution to disprove faith.
That would go a long way towards ending this ridiculous argument.
If you BELIEVE what you say, that science and religious faith must be kept seperate, then practice what you preach.
Science can’t prove OR disprove God.
— So QUIT antagonizing those people of faith that can’t seem to accept faith and evolution.
You are WRONG on the peppered moth history, too, Doug:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/peppered_moth_evolution_kit/
Econ101, I think the story of the Piltdown Man is interesting just for the conspiracy around it.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a neighbor of the man who promoted the Piltdown man. It was often rumored that Doyle contributed to the scheme at the very least by complicit conspiracy or by actually helping design the hoax.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the author of the “Sherlock Holmes” series of writings.
— So QUIT antagonizing those people of faith that can’t seem to accept faith and evolution.Posted by: Econ101 | September 27, 2007 at 06:50 PM
Why? What are they going to do, outlaw science?
More Peppered Moth cooking:
http://www.exchangedlife.com/Creation/pepper.shtml
Pedant
Tax dollars should NOT be spent on any activity that tries to DISPROVE faith.
It is not the job of science to disprove God. Taxpayers have a right to believe as they wish without being antagonized by taxpayer financed, and rather arrogant atheists running down their beliefs.
KansasI think he was also an opium addict.Must have been on a hell of trip when they thought of putting an orang and human skull together!
See http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/expelled_comes_to_the_ny_times.php for the POV of one of the scientists interviewed under false pretenses.
Paul – I have never claimed that we are infallible. My response was to your claim that we perpetrte hoaxes.
As noted above, the Piltdown hoax was EXPOSED by scientists.
You attempt at guilt by association would be the same as me saying you are a fraud because some other financial planner was a fraud.
Even my best friend whom is a strict Creationist is disgusted by the actions and the deceit used by some whom also believe in Creationism. For him the use of Intelligent design as a back door to get Creation in science classes. Is shameful and unbecoming of the Christian community, he firmly believes that creationism can stand on its own legs.
You can teach ID in school, so long as you can teach evolution in church!
God created the earth in 7 days.God knows everything you do at all times.If you believe then when you die you will go to heaven and live there forever walking on streets of gold and fly in the clouds.Give God 10% of everything you earn pre-tax.Jesus turned water into wine.Moses parted the red sea.What else is there to know.
Paul, I figured you’d show how clueless on the subject. You neglected to even reference any of the studies which I referenced on later moth studies. As usual you are out of your league, a perfect example is that you linked to an article by creationist Carl Weiland. If you are going to use a personal webpage and an article by an anti-science creationist then I know I won’t strain a neuron dealing with you today.
I hope that this film addresses the conflict inherent between science and religion when it comes to origins.
Science instructors are mandated to teach our children that Darwinian evolution is a fact when, of course, it is only science’s best guess. It has holes in it you could drive a truck through. Yet, they jealously guard any imposition of teaching our kids the problems with the theory. As if it were something sacred and unchangable. Like a religion.
So, essentially my child is taught that what he learned from me regarding his God-breathed origin is false. They do it without any proof and they do it with state sponsorship.
So what is at the intersection of science and religion? It’s called intelligent design. And it’s the future.
We can’t define the purpose of life unless we make it up.
Either that or certify the Bible, which can not be done, so that’s Religion { creationism }.
Science may inadvertently offer a meaningful explanation for the meaning of life by proving itself along the way.
Religion offers Intelligent Design { which won’t cooperate by continuing to evolve } in an attempt to stymie a perceived threat from science against their authoritarian power. All that to try to protect this self proclaimed power by discrediting science { As Religion must revisit their dogma every time science discredits it }.
All that boils down to this:
You’ll never understand much about anything unless you first understand the nature of power.
But before anything worthwhile happens, we’ll need to evolve into something smarter than we are now.
Ed Friedemann
Dougrelax would you?
There are plenty of us out here who are comfortable believing in both Creationism AND Evolution.
You would much prefer that we were all atheists.
I make you angry precisely because you want to challenge my faith and you can’t.
I have never attempted to challenge your theory. That was not my intent at all.
Faith is always trying to get its foot in the door of science. Science does not do this to faith.
No Paul, I just challenge your bad science.
“I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
# “I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
# “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
And last, but not least, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
All Einstein quotes.
Creationists do fine, until they are asked to answer why Genesis 1, and Genesis 2 are in nearly total disagreement. That is why it cannot be treated as science.
God created… humanity debated… and so it should be!
Tara you asked “WHY WHY WHY is this so offensive to people? How is this difficult to understand? ID is not science, and it can’t ever be science because it offers no empirical evidence.”
I agree with you but keep in mind it is necessarily people are offend that ID is not science but rather that Darwinism is masquerading around as science.
Dawkins and others who willingly gloat about Darwinism show their great distaste for anything or anything that questions the status quo. The freely make fun and insult creationists, which they do because they know mainstream does not pay attention. Yet when mainstream attention gets drawn to their ignorant and petty comments they get upset. In short, the only reason some are upset is because it shows how weak and irrelevant most of the critics offer.
Patriot — “As noted above, the Piltdown hoax was EXPOSED by scientists.”
You do realize there are hundreds even thousands of scientists who accept creationism and reject darwinism…your comment seems to imply scientist=evolutionist….feel free to correct me if I misunderstood your comment
Elephant -
“ID is a religous belief not science. Science is a theory that can be tested”:
Science is a theory???? Come again, you are deeply confused. Please define science
Whatever, I meant Science has theories that can be tested under the scientific method. ID cannot be tested.
Testicles is the expunged book of the Bible about sex.
And, NO, I don’t believe a 3-1/2-foot-tall ape was my great-grandmother. I’m just not that naive.
Yet you share 95 percent of the monkey’s DNA. I suggest the next time you get a staff infection, you insist on being treated with penicillin.
Steven Hawkins (the great cosmologist who played himself in a Star Trek episode) put it well when he said that science tries to address the “HOW?” but that the “WHY?” must be left to philosophy and theology.
What lit the fuse to the Big Bang? (Or should I say Who?)
Let’s not forget that science proposes a lot of theories that get disseminated as truth and are then abandowned.
A good example would be Tyrannosaurus rex. For several decades, museums mounted all T Rexes standing up in what we might call “a chicken position” for its torso, and a long tail on the ground. Moreover, museums of natural history showed this in murals, and school textbooks reprinted them. But then anatomists determined that this posture was infeasible, rather T rex really had to hold its body and tail horizontal.
The standard historical theory on T rex’s eating habits was that it was an apex predator. Tyrannosaurus rex means “tyrant lizard king”. Now, leading-expert Jack Horner posits they were carrion-eating scavengers. A clean-up species, not a top-predator species.
Was T rex mainly aquatic? That would comport well with a very large head, and a very large tail.
The evolutionary process of science, including initial theories being proposed from unsubstantiated notions, revision as more facts come to light, and not unoften eventual repudation of original theories, should be taught in all science classes.
For example, physicists today are exploring “dark matter” and concluding that some of it must be a new form of matter not previously recognized, and “dark energy” that has antigravitational effects which are causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Unfortunately, school “science” isn’t science. It’s memorize and regurgitate “facts”. Don’t worry if they later prove wrong. Kids are being graded on their ability and willingness to swallow and parrot dogma. That’s anti-science teaching.
Raising ID in classrooms is actually a scientific process: consider alternatives, debate, THINK.
Some would argue, “We can’t have school science ruined by fundamentalist ideology.” Wake up. School science is already ruined. This is because teachers colleges and graduate education schools are run by anti-math / anti-science people. If you think that really talented math and science students choose to study under anti-math/anti-science teachers, you’re NOT THINKING.
Schools refuse to pay differentials to attract math-and-science-knowledgeable teachers. The ideology of all teachers of a given number of years teaching in a district being paid equal salaries has a nice, collective-democratic fuzzy warm feel to it.
But don’t kid yourselves: it is also an ardently anti-math /anti-science sentiment. It takes more brains and a lot more work to earn a chemistry degree or a math degree than to earn a social studies degree. When the district offers a starting social studies teacher the same salary as a starting chemistry or math teacher, the district is denying the value of the hundreds of additional hours the latter teacher has put in during college, to master the subject. This is blatant disdainment, and sheer ignorance, of science and math.
It’s not me saying this. It’s a 70% drop registered by our nation’s universities in American-educated students earning math, physical science and engineering degrees over the past 40 years. Jobs in these fields pay well. But American kids just aren’t prepared for them. The international math and science tests show kids from other countries running circles around our students.
“You do realize there are hundreds even thousands of scientists who accept creationism and reject darwinism.”
Do they reject Mendelism, Newtownism, and Hubblism as well? What’s with these silly creationist terms?
DougExplain the Hoeckle Hoax:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecH5SKxL9wk
Yes well…
Gravity is technically only a theory. Sometimes? There are those who I quietly or not so quietly wish would test the theory from a high place :)
Can’t we all just agree there is absolutely no faith required to believe in the self creation and self organization of matter into ever more complex configurations?
First off Paul you should get your information from a credible source, not the discredited Discovery Institute that admitted they have no scientific evidence for creationism.
Second you should actually try to explain what you are talking about. Natural Selection theory is not founded upon Haeckel’s theories. Despite the inaccuracies of his drawing the similarities of embryos are real as has been demonstrated by the use of photography. The fact that species are related to each other are confirmed by genetics and DNA.
So what’s your point? That science has progressed in the past 100 years or that creationists haven’t cracked open a book since the 19th century?
I’d criticize creationist scientific studies but none have been published yet and no alternative theories to the theory of natural selection have survived scientific review.
There’s a whole new theory of creation proposed by advocates of Superstring Theory, called The Cosmic Clap Theory (as opposed to the Big Bang). I find myself liking it on purely esthetic grounds.
It relates, interestingly enough to the creation myth propounded by J.R.R. Tolkein in his book “The Silmarilion” in that the universe and everything in it is made, at a very basic level, of music.
The fact that species are related to each other are confirmed by genetics and DNA. Posted by: Doug | September 28, 2007 at 11:58 AM
I’m afraid that is an inaccurate statement.
Care to back that up Kansas?
Not sayin’ I disagree with you, MPS, when you state “It takes more brains and a lot more work to earn a chemistry degree or a math degree than to earn a social studies degree.”
But let’s say you’ve proposed this idea to your local school board – composed entirely of folks with *zero* math/science backgrounds.
How would you (a) use evidence to back up your contention and (b) do so without engendering extreme bias?
For instance . . . on the GRE, there are substantial differences between the scores of those who’re seeking graduate studies in education and those intending to get an MS/MA/PhD in other fields. (Please, spare us your diatribe on that issue for once, okay? I’m just citing a possible source of information.) Do you know of any data that shows similar discrepancies between math/science graduates and other graduates?
Take a college level biology course Doug, I don’t have the time or interest on educating you on basic genetics.
I’ll just say that common chemical components and their variations don’t determine species on Phylogenetic classification because there is enough ancient DNA to determine what it is and certainly not relationship.
Taxonomy is still argued about and there are many opinion on how species in general should be classified.
Lot of classifications are made by morphology,locomotion and appearance etc.
What you are talking about is Phylogenetic nomenclature which is genetics. There is an insufficient or completely missing entries into the database of ancient DNA to make any assessment. So, they go back to taxonomy type classification.
Establishing species is more of setting up a knowledge base so scientists can classify organisms and establish certain parameters about those organisms that can be used for identification and further study.
It doesn’t mean there is any relationship established, it’s a way to put knowledge of different organism into a set so they can be logically studied.
It’s like saying, all spoons are metal. Which of course is not true. They have similar morphology, but may be made of wood, plastic, metal, bone and other materials.
A classification system does just that, it classifies. It does not establish relationship by genetics especially when there is insufficient data to do so.
Also, having similarity in chemical properties still doesn’t mean that there is a link because in a common ancestor.
We go back to the spoon. A spoon can have a plastic handle and a metal eating surface. It is still a spoon, but it is only related to other spoons because of morphology and function. It would not be related by chemical properties to a wooden spoon, but only in what was previously mentioned – shape and function.
It’s like the Chimp and Human. Both have similar morphology, locomotion and chemical constituents (DNA.) However, in the world of chemistry having 92-96 percent common chemical properties doesn’t establish a species relationship. It only establishes common chemical constituents.
It is nit picking, but if you wish to be scientific about it, one has to be cautious on using classification systems as proof that there is a relationship established.
“because there is enough ancient DNA”
should read as
because there is not enough ancient DNA
Kansas, to put it kindly, you don’t know what you are talking about. DNA is not merely a constituant like a metal, it is a sequence that can be mapped out and read. Identical sequences in similar creatures that reproduce indicate shared histories. These sequences exist in great abundance between humans and chimps. Such similarities indicate a shared reproductive history.
The existance of ancient DNA is, by the way, irrelevant to what Doug said. DNA sequences are compared primarily between living creatures, but there are reproductive DNA “fossils” that are shared by similar organisms.
Kansas, are there any species which do not include the four nucleotide bases in their DNA? Are there any living species without DNA? The fact is that all species have DNA with the same nucleotide basis but merely differ in the sequences.
They teach this sort of stuff in basic biology. So pay attention next time.
THIS is why Dawkins refuses to engage these people:
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/amun_ra/
Why he (and Gould) had a point, Niall Shanks disagrees: He thinks we need to find any way we can to get through to these people, because it’s too important.
He convinced me.
P.S. The money quote from Dawkins:
“Winning is not what the creationists realistically aspire to. For them, it is sufficient that the debate happens at all.”
So your saying Doug, that plants and animal species are related. They do share common nucleo bases.
All life on this planet is related, however distantly. It’s called “common origin.”
I guess profound ignorance of evolution basics is a requirement for some.
Okay, nevermind. That was gratutious.
I guess profound ignorance of evolution basics is a requirement for some.
Posted by: Rage | September 28, 2007 at 03:05 PM
I’ve taken biology, microbiology, zoology and biochemistry Rage.
I have yet to see conclusive proof that evolution from primordial ooze to modern man exists with any plausible explanation.
Perhaps you can enlighten me on exactly how this happened.
Which species of ape was our ancestor? Where is that missing link?
Tell me how an early fern evolved into a lizard.
Inquiring minds want to know.
“Tell me how an early fern evolved into a lizard.”
I took back my gratutious insult, as you were actually addressing what Doug said.
Now I feel like taking THAT back.
Tell me, oh wise one, where you heard that ferns are in the ancestral lineage of lizards?
“gratuitous”
Tell me, oh wise one, where you heard that ferns are in the ancestral lineage of lizards?
Posted by: Rage | September 28, 2007 at 03:13 PM
I haven’t heard that, it was a gratuitous remark. :)
I thought you may have figured out how life involved as it has today.
I’ve heard different versions from experienced PhD Professors in College. Which one is true?
What made this primordial ooze evolve into humans and how long did it take?
How come there are chimps around? Why didn’t they evolve? I mean, after all they’ve found some very, very old chimp bones and they didn’t evolve.
Was it some magical unseen die being thrown in the great gambling hall of science?
How did this all come about in such an orderly manner?
If the earth was formed in chaos, why did it all of sudden get orderly? :)
P.S. This paper discusses the early emergence of bilaterian animals. I just found it, but I bet it’s an interesting read.
http://earthscience.ucr.edu/people/droser/Jensen_et_2005.pdf
“If the earth was formed in chaos, why did it all of sudden get orderly?”
The assumptions inherent in that question are false. Thus negating any need for answer.
“How come there are chimps around?”
Why shouldn’t there be?
“Why didn’t they evolve?”
They did.
Aye interesting Rage, I scanned it.
But the question remains about all species being related. The paper address bilateria which suggest symmetry in development. This is a taxonomic classification based on morphology and not nucleo base adaptation.
What about the jellyfish which is radial? It is not bilaterian. What went wrong there?
The writer(s) of the paper stated “there is no widely accepted trace fossil record from sediments olderthan about 560–555 Ma.”
What happened before then, when the primordial ooze was the only game in town?
How did these symmetrically based fossils involve into upright bipedal homo sapiens? Where is that missing link between species?
How come we still have nematodes if there is evolution?
Why hasn’t the cockroach evolved into something more intelligent or why hasn’t it developed acid secreting glands to eat into canned goods? :)
“Why hasn’t the cockroach evolved into something more intelligent or why hasn’t it developed acid secreting glands to eat into canned goods? :)”
I have to leave, but that’s easy:(1) no specific trait is GUARANTEED to evolve and (2) canned goods are VERY new development.
BTW–here in AZ we have HUGE cockroaches–but there are few of them, no doubt due to the strain of maintaining bodies that big.
“If the earth was formed in chaos, why did it all of sudden get orderly?”
The assumptions inherent in that question are false. Thus negating any need for answer.
Posted by: Steven Davis | September 28, 2007 at 03:25 PM
Saying something is false and explaining why it is false is a challenge you are unable to accept then Steven Davis? :)
BTW–here in AZ we have HUGE cockroaches–but there are few of them, no doubt due to the strain of maintaining bodies that big.
Posted by: Rage | September 28, 2007 at 03:38 PM
Then you need better border control. :D
DougWe all understand one thing on this Blog:In DOUG’s mind, ANYONE who disagrees with Doug had no credibility.Therefore, you are simply a foil, a way to make debating points on this Blog.Nobody on this Blog expects you to subject yourself to “Blog peer review”—You are simply so much smarter than the rest of us!However, YOU and those like you are a big reason the evolution/creation silly arguments go on and on.YOU misuse evolution to try and disprove the existance of God.That is just as “unscientific” as anything the most radical creationists have done.
“If the earth was formed in chaos, why did it all of sudden get orderly?”
The assumptions inherent in that question are false. Thus negating any need for answer.
Posted by: Steven Davis | September 28, 2007 at 03:25 PM
Saying something is false and explaining why it is false is a challenge you are unable to accept then Steven Davis? :)
Kansas,You mean you are not intimidated by such an intelligent way to say: “I don’t have the slightest explanation so lets not go there.”?
Creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive. Evolution is by definition mindless, purposeless, and Godless, therefore no divine direction or authority can be admitted into this flawed, false theory, if even bad science can call it a theory.Meanwhile, God still rules every aspect of the universe He created.(John 1:3-5)
GREAT post MPS, nice points all around
“It is nit picking, but if you wish to be scientific about it, one has to be cautious on using classification systems as proof that there is a relationship established.”
Great post KS, one does have to be careful on the inferences drawn
Doug – “The fact is that all species have DNA with the same nucleotide basis but merely differ in the sequences.”
This is like saying all who have bank accounts have X number of dollars in there, merely in different sequences….that merely is HUGE!!!!
Dougs post
Mine: “You do realize there are hundreds even thousands of scientists who accept creationism and reject darwinism.”
Doug: “Do they reject Mendelism, Newtownism, and Hubblism as well? What’s with these silly creationist terms?”
LOL, what silly creationist term are you referring about? Darwinism? You do realize this term is used by evolutionists…..right? What “silly creationist term” are you referring to Doug
I see there are faithful evolutionists in the blogisphere who claim they’re on solid scientific (rather than philosophic or religious) ground in their myriad protestations.
Thinking, open minded scientists beg to differ.
For a daily examination of “science news” from a truly scientific perspective, don’t be afraid to visit; http://creationsafaris.com/news for the most up to date analysis.
parkayIt is entirely possible to believe in God and consider evolution as part of God’s plan.
The Bible in a written version of what was once an “oral tradition” to illiterate people.
People who did not understand microscopic particles in general, let alone DNA.
To say that we were formed from “dust” is about as complicated as the Bible could get.
The Bible never claims that it is the source of all truth. The Bible rarely even refers to itself, since the Bible is actually a creation of St. Jerome, of the Catholic Church, who combined several different, actual “books” and had them “Cannonized” by the Catholic Church.
You misuse the Bible.
I defend you when others misuse science, but you are wrong now, making brash statements about what other Christians are allowed to believe.
Parkay, are you SURE God is HE??
And if God is so good at telling people What and How to believe, then why are there so many discrepancies in that Book??
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are as far as I need go on the Creationist agenda… And check out the Science books used in Catholic schools some time… Might shock you, yes shock I say!! LOL
ChasActually, Genesis is pretty darn close, if you look at the order of the species, and if you look at the idea that there was first NOTHING.And, again, “dust” or “humus” — decayed oranic matter is dust.I don’t understand why some consider it blashempy to consider that we had common ancestors with monkeys, but it is perfectly OK to consider that we came from decayed animals and plants! That is what “dust” is!How in the world could you explain complex ideas to the illiterate?The Bible is not intended as a way to explain life.The Bible is a guide to how best to live our lives.
Econ – on your last comments we agree.
A funny thing about the Genesis 7 days – from a Jewish scientist at MIT. One thing he noted is that it does not refer to the “first day” but “Day One.” His point was that not only did the universe begin but also that time began.
He then went into a rether complicated derivatio including time compression near the speed of light. His point is that the days can be hundreds of millions or billions of years long; also that Day one was longer then the second day was longer than the third day etc. As the Big Bang proceeds things slow down a bit and relativistic effects lessen.
He then went from that to the scientific version of the history of the Universe – from the void and darkness to where we are today. It was a fascinating read. And eerily parallel to Genesis.
And, as you note, when we consider that the various books that make up the librar we cann the Bible were written by people it becomes all the more fascinating.
By the way – parkay, do you eat pork? Shellfish? Cheeseburgers? They are ALL forbidden in Leviticus.
Levites had cheeseburgers Ben?
Here I thought it was lamb chops day and night.
nunyer,
thanks for your comments. GRE is one metric, and it IS important. My home-schooled son is a grad student at Columbia University, so let me put some data out on that institution. At Columbia’s Teachers College, which has had more influence in public education than any other institution, the GRE general test quant score average for graduate program entrants was 621 in 2002 according to U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools”. In the engineering school it was 764.
At Stanford, the respective GRE quant averages were 646 education, 781 engineering. BTW, both of these engineering grad schools have more Asian and Asian-American students than white American students.
At KU, the GRE quant average for grad program entrants is 546.
You can go to KSU’s and KU’s websites and examine secondary-certificate program requirements. What they show is that math and science education is curtailed. Why? Because it is impossible to combine math and science courses, AND education courses in a bachelor’s program, without something having to be given up. What’s given up is advanced, beyond-survey courses, that the math and science “nerds” strongly desire to take. So they forego the college of education courses to take advanced science and math courses. And consequentially they cannot be licensed to teach math and science in our high schools, even though they deeply understand math and science.
Let’s look at KU School of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Chair.
B.A. History, Susquehanna UniversityPh.D. Higher Education, Pennsylvania State University
Dean:
B.A. History/ Political Science, SUNY AlbanyPh.D. Administrative, Institutional and Policy Studies in Education, U Chicago.
Let’s look at Professors, the highest academic, non-administrative rank achievable:
B.A. (field not specified) University of RochesterPh.D. Education, Stanford
A.B. History, Fordham UniversityPh.D. Education / Policy Studies History, U Wisconsin (Madison)
B.A. Psychology and Communications, StanfordPh.D. Higher Education, Claremont Graduate School (California)
How much math and physical science do you see represented here in the top tiers? I’m not seeing any.
Let’s look at the KU Curriculum and Teaching faculty.
Chair:
B.S. Sociology, Arizona State University [ASU]B.A. Elementary Education, ASUPh.D., Curriculum and Instruction, ASU
Professors:
B.A. English, History University of KansasPh.D. Education, Stanford
I’m not listing names, because I’m not trying to accuse individuals. But here’s the link, if you want to confirm my data. http://soe.ku.edu/
It’s a SYSTEM here. These leaders didn’t name themselves to their positions, they were CHOSEN BY OTHERS.
Let’s look at Emporia State’s Teachers College, Kansas’s first institution devoted specifically to training teachers”
Dean, Teachers College:B.M., B.M.E., B.A. Music, music education, psychology, St. Mary CollegePh.D. Special Education. Educational Psychology and Research, University of Kansas
Associate Dean: No education data reported.
Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences:B.A. Music education, Arkansas State UniversityPh.D. (field unspecified) University of North Texas
Professors:B.A. not givenPh.D. reading, University of North Texas
School leadership: declines to reveal degrees.
B.S. Education Biology and Physical Education, Emporia State Teachers CollegePh.D. Elementary Science Education, U Texas-Austin
B.S., Elementary Education, Dickinson State University, North DakotaPh.D. Curriculum and Instruction, Kansas State University
Let’s consider Wichita State University, located in a city whose linchpin industrry, aviation is totally dependent on applied physics and engineering:
Chair, School of Education:B.S. Elementary EducationPh.D. Curriclum and Instruction
Professors:B.M.E. Music educationPh.D. Curriclum and Instruction. Early childhood
B.S. Ed, Elementary EducatiionPh.D Elementary Education/Reading
There are college of education professors who have chosen to not reveal their subject degrees, They’ve created their own “I don’t need to disclose my degrees” unaccountability. I’m just showing the highest-tier univesity teachers who elected to report.
Among those who have chosen to report, I’m not seeing any math or science degrees, because of the faculties’ reportage, not because I am skewing data.
Levites had cheeseburgers Ben?
Yes, in a sense. Mixing milk and meat. Prohidited. Read your Torah.
“At Columbia’s Teachers College, which has had more influence in public education than any other institution”
Who says Columbia has had the most influence Doc? Show some data to prove that assertion or desist in the assumptions.
BenGod loved His people.
Prior to antibiotics and preservatives, the idea of keeping food groups seperate made sense.
So, too, the ban on pork.
Apophis, have you ever heard of a “teachers college”? Yes or no? Where do you think that nom came from? John Dewey at Columbia decided to remove “normal school” from the lexicon by launching Teachers College to give teacher-training a more professional patina. Show me a titled “normal school” after 1930. Teachers College provided KU’s and ESU’s teacher-training deans nearly a century ago.
Didn’t you receive lectures in the history of American public eduction? Apparently not. Have you ever seen a not-yellow school bus? Have you? Why aren’t they white, blue, red or brown in some places? Because Teachers College thought yellow was perfect. Show me a school bus anywhere that isn’t yellow.
“How come we still have nematodes if there is evolution?”
Isn’t that like asking why we still have Europeans if there are Americans? Evolution isn’t linear, there is no set goal. If you took a basic biology course you would have known this. But if you think you are superior to a fish lets see who can breathe underwater longer.
Show me a school bus anywhere that isn’t yellow.
Posted by: MPS | September 28, 2007 at 11:26 PM
In Germany they use Mercedes buses, silver metallic gray with various kinds of striping down the sides.
Quite comfortable too as they use the same model plan as the tour buses in Germany.
Isn’t that like asking why we still have Europeans if there are Americans? Evolution isn’t linear, there is no set goal. If you took a basic biology course you would have known this. But if you think you are superior to a fish lets see who can breathe underwater longer.
Posted by: Doug | September 28, 2007 at 11:27 PM
With that analogy you can get a stale beer at the Low Life Tavern.
I’ve already taken college biology, zoology, microbiology and biochemistry. Thank you very much. :)
“How come we still have nematodes if there is evolution?”
Isn’t that like asking why we still have Europeans if there are Americans? Evolution isn’t linear, there is no set goal. If you took a basic biology course you would have known this. But if you think you are superior to a fish lets see who can breathe underwater longer.
Hmmm, I don’t know why that double posted. Anyway Kansas, you may have taken the classes but your questions reveal that you didn’t pay much attention. Caucasians appeared after the human population split off from the African population but that doesn’t mean we are more highly evolved, it just means we developed some different traits in our niche. The nematodes developed over 80,000 different species in their own niches. For someone as educated as yourself I wonder why you even bring such a question up.
This is all very scary. If there is a divine designer, then why, if regard to planet Earth, did this designer take several billion years of Precambrian time to finally figure out how to design life that that exceeds the form of single celled organisms. Let’s face it, the record shows that this is the record until 600 Ma or 7/8’s of the earth’s history. Was he/she trying to get it right elsewhere in the universe on getting life past the blue/green algae form?
Are there millions of parallel universes assigned to millions of “divine” student creators as part of some multidimensional graduate class in cosmic progression? If so, this student assigned to our realm is not going to receive a passing grade.
Hey, Obi . . . that wasn’t the mindless drivel we usally get around here.
Thanks.
And please, post more and post often.
*****
Real students of evolution know that there are seemingly infinite examples of “intelligent design” that aren’t intelligent at all and are exactly what one would expect from evolution–
remnants of leg bones in whales for instance or the human appendix which clearly had some function at some time in our evolutionary past, but now just causes problems if it gets impacted and infected.
These are examples of UNintelligent design and consistent with evolution.
I agree with you, but I’m only trying to address this from a larger perspctive, CapnAmerica. I previously thought about citing the human appendix as a problem concerning our “design”. How many humans did this kill before modern medical practice? Not to mention Black Death, smallpox, or what is to follow, ebola, HIV, etc.
But Capn,
Where is the remnant of the pelvis for the whale?
truthfully DOC, it’s been awhile since I took those “History of Education classes you refer to. In the here and now, that information is totally irrelevent to me.
All you want to do is to trash teachers and the system. It’s like YOU think you can do better. If you know so much, why aren’t you the Secretary of education, or at least the Commissioner of Education for the state? Could it be that you have NO qualifications to do so?
Again…………….PUT UP OR SHUT UP. Volunteer some time in an inner city classroom and tutor some “at-risk” students, under existing conditions. I would suggest maybe J Marshall Middle School as a start or maybe even Mead. Stop braying about how YOU think the system needs to be changed and step up and share your alleged expertise in the REAL world.
In response, I expect another of those lengthy MPS diatribes.
“Cheese Bus” — this is what my friends in Pennsylvania call school buses, don’t think I ever heard the phrase here.They are not exactly yellow, are they?
Econ – agreed. (We gotta quit doing this! ;^) In fact, if you read all the laws in Leviticus they make a lot of sense for that time. And I can easily see a learned man decising that there was no way he could explain to people ‘why’ so instead just said ‘because God commands it.’
Sort of like our ‘because I said so’ with our kids.
I have a ‘lwter-written-down’ oral history of one of my family members who went west to the CA gold rush as well as a lot of other adventures. While I am reasonably sure it is basically true I am also willing to bet that things got a bit ‘embellished’ along the way. The early Books were orally passed down long before they were written.
If the filmmakers were a bit deceptive, is that OK, given that Michael Moore does that?
Hey that’s a bold little statement ya slipped in there Phil.
A statement like that requires an example or two which you did not provide. You need to get with Rhonda and discuss covering that exposed right wing!
Dad used to say, “You don’t know how lucky you are, we had to walk to school in the rain and snow, and it was uphill, BOTH ways!”
The point was still true: we WERE lucky compared to what he lived through.
However, if the purpose of a story is to teach a lesson, it does not have to be word for word historically accurate.
If we did that with all of our docudramas, they would be boring and way too long.
The Bible is a work of art. Artistic license is accepted. The lessons it teaches are timeless, and that is the entire point.
Michael Moore does use deceptive figures.
Like those without health care -
48 percent
He neglects to report that over half are illegal immigrants in that 48 percent.
Mr. Moore fails to report that several million single young people and income earners over 80,000 do not have health care because the opt out and choose not to buy a health care plan.
Convenient to leave out important things when one wants to use Health Scare tactics.
Nice try Kansas for nowMoore didn’t sandbag anyone into appearing in his movies. And don’t bring up Charlie Heston. He was fair with him. It is not Moore’s fault that Hesston was going senile and would embarrass himself.
Nice diversion J R.
I didn’t mention anything about sandbagging.
I pointed out that Moore uses deceptive statistics and never reveals the truth behind them.
It would be like me saying, 1,000,000 Americans will die next year.
Without qualifying it by finishing the sentence “from natural causes.”
It’s deceptive and dishonest.
JR – “Moore didn’t sandbag anyone into appearing in his movies.”
That he purposely mislead data and facts does not bother you?
Dougie, no responses….come on you seem to want to pick on KS, so why not this wolverine
the bush apologist, taliban “christian” wolverine is in the room. Another piece of repuke scum.
I see the language of the middle school environment has rubbed off on Apophis.
Perhaps Apophis is going through empathetic puberty? :)
“Dougie, no responses….come on you seem to want to pick on KS, so why not this wolverine”
What does Michael Moore have to do with the subject? Perhaps I’ll respond once you start to make sense.
the troll attempts to insult me.
You are another piece of repuke scum kansas-…khan-JM and a dozen other nics.
What does Michael Moore have to do with the subject? Perhaps I’ll respond once you start to make sense.
Posted by: Doug | September 29, 2007 at 01:52 PM
I was responding to J R’s comment on Michael Moore. Read much?============================
the troll attempts to insult me.
You are another piece of repuke scum kansas-…khan-JM and a dozen other nics.
Posted by: Apophis | September 29, 2007 at 02:11 PM
Just throwing the same mud you throw at others right back at you.
“Michael Moore does use deceptive figures.
Like those without health care -
48 percent
He neglects to report that over half are illegal immigrants in that 48 percent.”
Posted by: Kansas | September 29, 2007 at 11:40 AM
Kansas, post your source showing that Moore said that “48 percent” are “without health care”.
Kansas does not seem to understand the difference between “health care” and “health insurance”.
The uninsured can still get some “health care”, in the E.R. etc. — and that causes the costs for the insured group to rise.
And Kansas… the population of the U.S. is not around 100 million.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/checkup/“SiCKO: There are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually reported that 54.5 million people were uninsured for at least part of the year. Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 2006. Centers for Disease Control. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur200706.pdf
* The amount of uninsured is rising every year, as premiums continue to skyrocket and wages stagnate.”
The truth hurts doesn’t it troll boy?
The truth hurts doesn’t it troll boy?
Posted by: Apophis | September 29, 2007 at 02:25 PM
Only when it’s told by truthful people which is rare on this blog and you are not included in that number. :)
and by THAT statement, YOU are claiming to be truthful?
Get a life troll-boy……….
“I was responding to J R’s comment on Michael Moore. Read much?”
I guess I just can’t keep the different identities that you use straight. Try sticking with one and maybe you won’t be called a troll so much.
I guess I just can’t keep the different identities that you use straight. Try sticking with one and maybe you won’t be called a troll so much.
Posted by: Doug | September 29, 2007 at 02:35 PM
If you have suspicion I am posting as someone else, write Phillip Brownlee.
I’m on the list with the Capn as those who volunteered to be outted if I post under any other “nick” than this.
Challenge it and find out your accusations are without merit and it will remove yet another excuse from the Liberal boxes of “why Libs can’t discuss topics without ad hominem.”
Go easy on Kansas… he seems to believe that 48 million Americans = 48 “percent” of the U.S. population.
That’s toooooooooooooooo good cosmos!
Yeah, it was a mistake, I meant 48 million rather than 48 percent. The results showing that Michael Moore using deceptive statistics still holds true, regardless of my unit assignment. And of course Health Insurance instead of Health Care.
Glad you figured it out.
Moore still uses Health Scare tactics by omitting statistics and that’s no exaggeration.
cosmos hasn’t figured out that permanent ignore means just that, permanently.
There is nothing “deceptive” about the nearly 50 million Americans not having health insurance.
There is no way to force those uninsured to buy health insurance — and they are causing premiums to rise, causing even more to become uninsured.
I’ve already taken college biology, zoology, microbiology and biochemistry. Thank you very much. :)
Posted by: Kansas | September 28, 2007 at 11:31 PM
=========================
It would seem that Kansas, according to his many posts of his educational odyssey, has taken nearly every course in the College Catalog!! But it just never shows up that much!!
And what is the degree he claims to have?? I seem to have forgotten that…
When you’re overseas and bored Chas, you have plenty of time to take college courses. :)
“And what is the degree he claims to have?? I seem to have forgotten that… ”
Posted by: Chas.
It might be Industrial Hygiene?
“the bush apologist, taliban “christian” wolverine is in the room. Another piece of repuke scum.”
Apophis, with all due respect, rein it in. You make yourself look very bad with these sorts of comments. kswolverine seems to focus his/her comments on evolution/creation topics. I have seen few if any postings that indicate kswolverine’s politics otherwise, and certainly nothing that merits the conclusions you jump to. And no, not all creationists are Christian conservatives. Mark Schooley is a perfect example of someone whose postings by no means fall along consistent politically conservative views. When you post jump to conclusion crap like this, and it IS crap, you do the same sort of thing that Schooley is doing to you, coming to baseless conclusions that are in no way justified (by the way, Schooley’s treatment of you on this blog has been utterly disgraceful).
cosmos-”easy on Kansas… he seems to believe that 48 million Americans = 48 “percent” of the U.S. population.”
Kansas-”Yeah, it was a mistake, I meant 48 million rather than 48 percent. The results showing that Michael Moore using deceptive statistics still holds true, regardless of my unit assignment. And of course Health Insurance instead of Health Care.
Glad you figured it out.”
Followed by:
Kansas-”cosmos hasn’t figured out that permanent ignore means just that, permanently.”
Cerebral inertia. Astonishing.
sorry you feel that way ksagnostic……
I, however, do not find wolverine’s posts thoughtful in any way. Over the time I’ve been here, his/her posts are consistent. Consistent as in right wing, “holier than thou christian” and just totally insufferable. I give back what I get. I’ve never really been one to care much about what other people think, but I will respect your comment.
On a final note, thank you for seeing Schooley for what he is. I tend to enjoy pushing his buttons. He is an elitist in general, not especially a right-winger. He’s all talk, because he will never put his money where his mouth is.
Apophis hates public education. He doesn’t even realize it, unless he, like all-too-many teachers, tells his own kids, “Do something else with your lives,” which if he has, would be a very telling message.
When a system’s core design causes it to fail, and its managers insist on maintaining the core design, with minor adjustments, the managers are actually engendering the system’s disintegration.
Apophis is a teachers union leader. He has a very medieval, combative , joust – loving personality.
What is a union? It’s a mass of people organized to fight the bosses, i.e. the “elite”, to accept abuse, but at least get something for being abused.
Apophis could have fought for a maximum of 80 students per middle school and high school teacher.
He could have engaged the public with arguments such as:
“We professional teachers do not want to use multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-a-missing-word, single sentence-answer tests. We refuse to use these tests because these formats prevent critical thinking. They encourage last-minute cramming, so students memorize simplistic information just before tests, and then after the tests are taken, their brains ditch the information. This is wrong.”
“If we have too many students, we cannot compose and grade expository tests, in which students must organize ideas and facts, and present a complex set of arguments. These tests require consistent study every week.”
Instead of pursuing this pathway, which would have been professional, Apophis and his kind said, “Okay, we’ll let teaching per se degenerate, with far too many students per teacher to allow the teachers to instill critical thinking and expression skills, so long as the district pays us more money than we’ve been getting.”
I’m out to destroy public education? No, Apophis is. He had a pathway choice, and chose one that devalued children, for a few pieces of silver. I wasn’t there. I had nothing to do with this degeneration. There were some teachers there who argued for not letting education be corrupted, and if it meant making less money, they were willing to accept this trade-off. But they were outvoted.
If Apophis had made his stand on upholding educational quality, he could have cultivated public support. Instead, he incurred public skepticism and all-too-often cynicism by accepting educational degradation, so long as it provided him with higher financial compensation. WRONG PATHWAY CHOICE.
In responding to nunyer, I failed to post KSU’s College of Education professors’ degrees. Here are ones that are listed:
Professor and Dean, College of EducationB.A. History and Literature, Stanford UniversityPh.D. Educational Psychology, University of Oregon
Professor, Associate Dean, Office of the DeanB.S. Home Economics (Vocational Home Economics Teaching Option)Kansas State UniversityEd.D. Higher Education University of Kansas
Professor, Assistant Dean, Chair of Elementary EducationElementary EducationB.S. Secondary Education, Buffalo State CollegePh.D. Curriculum and Instruction, and Teacher Education, Ohio State University
Professor, Chair Secondary EducationB.S. Biology/Biology Education. University of Nebraska-LincolnPh.D. Science Education, Indiana University
Professor and Chair Educational LeadershipB.A. English and Modern Languages , Friends UniversityEd.D. Educational Finance/Law Oklahoma State University
Professor, Director, Center for Rural Education and Small SchoolsB.S. Sociology and Elementary Education, Western Michigan UniversityPh.D. Educational Psychology, University of Oregon
Professor and Director of the Adult Education Doctoral Program Educational LeadershipB.S.Ed. Industrial Education, Northern Illinois University
Ed.D. Adult and Continuing Education, Northern Illinois University
Professor, Educational LeadershipB.A. English / History, University of NebraskaEd.D. Secondary Education, Administration, University of Nebraska
Professor, Special Education, Counseling and Student AffairsB.A., Secondary Education, University of Nebraska LincolnPh.D. Educational Psychology, NU Lincoln
Professor, Special Education, Counseling and Student AffairsB.A. Social Science, Colorado State CollegePh.D. Counselor Education, University of Wyoming
Professor, Elementary EducationB.M.E. Music Education, Baylor University 1968Ph.D. Music Education, University of Texas
Professor, Secondary EducationB.A. History, Oklahoma State UniversityEd.D. Curriculum and Instruction with areas in reading social science, OSU
Professor Special Education, Counseling and Student AffairsB.S.Ed. Mathematics, Southeast Missouri State UniversityPh.D. Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri
Professor Educational LeadershipB.S. Teacher Education/Biological Sciences, Ohio State UniversityPh.D. Adult Education, University of Wisconsin
Professor Educational LeadershipB.A. Family & Child Development, Kansas State UniversityPh.D. Higher Education Administration/Student Services, KSU1983
Professor, Office of the DeanB.A. Education and History, Wichita State UniversityPh.D. Urban Education, Kansas State University
Professor, Senior Scholar, Leadership Studies, Educational LeadershipB.S. Political Science/Pre-Law, Wittenberg UniversityM.Div. Philosophy/History/Theology, Wittenberg UniversityPh.D. Educational Administration/Leadership, University of Michigan
Professor, Elementary EducationB.A. Biology, University of California-Santa CruzPh.D. Science Education/Curriculum and InstructionKansas State University
Professor, Secondary EducationB.A. English and Psychology, Wichita State UniversityPh.D. Education, University of Southern California
Professor Special Education, Counseling and Student AffairsB.S. Psychology, Fort Hays State UniversityPh.D. Special Education, University of Kansas
Professor Secondary EducationB.S. Biology/Chemistry University of KansasPh.D. Environmental Studies/Science Education, Pennsylvania State University
We find the following degree fields represented, and numbers of degrees held, by KSU College of Education’s leadership tier:
Psychology / sociology / other social sciences whose subject matter is not taught to K-12 children 10
Social science and Humanities that are taught to K-12 children 10
Natural sciences 5: Biology 4 , Chemistry 1, Physics 0
Mathematics 0 (Note one professor has a teachers college B.S.Ed., which is to say an education degree with a mathematics focus, not a research university’s or liberal arts college’s mathematics degree conferred by mathematicians.)
KSU College of Education professors holding doctorates in:Psychology/ counseling 5English Literature 0History 0Government 0Biology 0
Chemistry 0Physics 0Mathematics 0
Of 20 KSU College of Education professors 14 are male, 6 female. But of 186 total faculty 48 are male, and 138 female. So, at the top tier, 30% are female, while in the subordinate-level faculty, 74% are female. That’s really modern-progressive, eh? Oops, guess not.
Nearly three out of for Wichita teachers are women. But the United Teachers of Wichita top leadership is three out of four male, including the president, vice president, and money-managing treasurer. That’s really modern-progressive, eh? The good old boys club rules: women workers fill the bottom rungs, men take the top ones.
Apophis has “challenged” me to volunteer-assist in classrooms and tutor at-risk kids. That’s like “challenging” somebody to throw rocks at cop cars and not get arrested. These are “you will fail” proposals. I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night, so I reject them. Then Apophis condemns me for not riding the failure wagon. I offered him a $2000 grant to study geology this summer. He turned this down. His proposal, which wouldn’t cost him anything, of note, was guaranteed to fail, not because I can’t teach, but because I can’t succeed in a failure-driven system. My proposal would have given Apophis a chance to see some cool geology, and get some refreshment and inspiration. And I was willing to pay him out of my own pocket. But, he’s driven by a failure impetus.
I “get” his proposals. I can fully appreciate that they make sense, to people who submitted their own college lives, when they were adolescents/emerging adults, to “soshies” to mold them.
I put myself under the educating authority of mathematicians and natural/physical scientists, followed by medical scientists. Everyone is shaped by the persons he or she chooses to receive mentorship from, who in the case of, college education, decide what courses a young person must take in order to earn a degree.
If we want to teach kids math and science well, society must transform colleges of education, and place people in top positions in these colleges who LOVE MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE. Should they be the ONLY education leaders? No, but these math-and-science-passionate people must be given autonomous authority to design and oversee math-and-science teacher-degree and licensing pathways. A single KSU professor who has a bachelor’s degree in education, mathematics specialization, a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, whose working focus is special education is not going to be a 21st century K-12 mathematics transformation leader.
On the other hand, give a dozen KSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Mathematics professors complete authority to design a comprehensive secondary mathematics teacher degree program, and have the university president tell the dean of the COE, “Don’t fight this, just cooperate, or I’ll get another dean,” and do the same at KU, ESU, FHSU, PSU and WSU, and amazing things will happen.
Also pass a statute that pays graduates of CLAS mathematician-designed teacher-training programs a $10,000 annual pay increment for those who have a 3.0-3.49 GPA in their mathematics courses, $20,000 for a 3.5-3.79 GPA, and $30,000 for a 3.8+ GPA. They can join the teachers union and receive the regular pay scale, AND the special state-authorized increments.
Then pass a statute that empowers the CLAS mathematician professors, working with the program-graduate teachers to establish the teachers’ working conditions, for example, a maximum of 80 students each day. TRUST THEIR JUDGMENT.
Pay annual $250 per-student bonuses to teachers, for every student who passes AP Calculus AB, IB Higher Mathematics, or AP Statistics exams administered by the College Board and IBO (AP 3, IB 4-5 scores). Pay $500 per student who scores high-passing (4 AP, 6 IB score). Pay $1000 per student who scores highest-passing (5 AP, 7 IB). Pay 150% of this scale for students taking AP Calculus BC exams.
How do you achieve this if your elementary-ed-degreed district superintendent or your building principal says, “We don’t need advanced math courses in this school”? You take the decision-making power out of their hands. If a young, smart, idealistic teacher says, “I think we can do AP Calculus here, and I know some 11th graders who can do it,” you pass a statute that gives these teachers empowerment to overrule the superintendent and building principal, and teach what courses they believe they can teach well.
This is teacher professionalism.
Quite revealing MPS.
I had no idea and I’m sure the public had no idea that the teachers teacher our teachers have no science or mathematics degrees.
That is very sad and tragic for our kids.
er bad night for typing :)
“teachers teacher our teachers have no science or mathematics”
should read as
“teachers TEACHING our teachers have no science or mathematic degrees.”
MPS: “Let’s not forget that science proposes a lot of theories that get disseminated as truth and are then abandoned.”Disseminated as truth? More like presented as the best state of knowledge at the time. After all, it was scientists in the same field who figured out that the Tyrannosaurus was a more functional biped when its tail functioned as a counterbalance for the head end over its hips. As for Horner’s theory about T. rex being a scavenger, we will see. Certainly there will be some exploration of the scavenger verses the predator hypotheses. The point is, right now from what I can tell dinosaur paleontologists have hardly come to a consensus about whether Tyrannosaurus rex was primarily a predator or a scavenger, thus, regardless of Horner’s own considerable qualifications, I myself will reserve judgment.
MPS: “The evolutionary process of science, including initial theories being proposed from unsubstantiated notions, revision as more facts come to light, and not unoften eventual repudation of original theories, should be taught in all science classes.”
Agreed to a point, but that is not all that should be taught. Any science course should also teach the best state of the knowledge in the field discussed. Also, repudiation is too strong of a word in most cases. Repudiation should not be confused with revisions of theories, which happens far more often.
MPS: “Unfortunately, school “science” isn’t science. It’s memorize and regurgitate “facts”. Don’t worry if they later prove wrong. Kids are being graded on their ability and willingness to swallow and parrot dogma. That’s anti-science teaching.Raising ID in classrooms is actually a scientific process: consider alternatives, debate, THINK.”
As I have said before, I respect your personal accomplishments as a scientist and a doctor. However, that does not make you the expert on science education you seem to presume yourself to be. I would agree that science education is not in good shape (indeed, the Discover magazine cover story is on just this topic). However, your assessment of what is wrong with science education appears to be nothing more than you making assumptions based on your rather arrogant self assessment, and your presumptions about science teachers in general. Science education should of course involve education and experience in the scientific method. However, it should also involve presenting information as understood by the best practitioners in the fields studied. I have read your criticisms of evolution, which were not actually scientific in nature whatsoever. What you have done instead is launch completely unsupported (as well as irrelevant) assumptions about the personal natures of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins and your degrading and baseless assumptions about what Apophis does as a science teacher. That is, you have not offered any support for ID, you have launched personal attacks. You have in no way whatsoever practiced what you preach. You’ve gone on at great length about the lack of qualifications of science teachers and now professors of education in the sciences. And yet as I have continually pointed out to you, and you have ignored, is the overwhelming consensus among practitioners in the sciences in which evolutionary theories would be applied, and presumably any presumably competing theories, for evolution (the idea of common ancestry). The very people who have the qualifications that you harp on about support evolution overwhelmingly. It is not even remotely close. Furthermore, there is enormous evidence that those who push ID, not to mention creationism, are motivated primarily by religious and philosophical concerns, not by scientific misgivings. As I have continually said, you have ignored the elephant in the room.
Your attacks on the qualifications of Apophis and others in public education are irrelevant because they are not the only source of opposition to teaching ID in schools. The source of the opposition comes from the scientists in the relevant fields who do not want to see their work, and the state of knowledge in their fields, misrepresented. And indeed, given your own arguments about the lack of qualifications among science teachers, the last thing these people should be doing is going against what the best practioners of the fields agree on.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&page=25
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the_list_2_16_2003.asp
Here is the reality, Dr. Schooley. The reality is that you would almost certainly find a higher proportion among the education instructors and the science teachers who support teaching ID than among the very people who would be most qualified, in your view, to teach the sciences, particularly the biological sciences in which that applies. That you yourself appear to be an exception to that rule is irrelevant. The National Academy of Sciences does not support you. The majority of Nobel Laureates do not support you. The vast majority of paleontologists, geneticists, molecular biologists, etc. do not support you.
Tell you what, e-mail Jack Horner and tell him that you think that raising ID in the classrooms is a scientific process, and tell us what he says. Then e-mail his colleagues who disagree with him about whether T. rex was a scavenger and tell us what he says.
Because so far, you’ve got nothing but red herrings. By the way, your blog exchanges with Apophis give you no special insight into his teaching, what he has done for public education, or his qualifications. And questioning these things, which you DID do in the context of attacking him on the evolution/ID “controversy”, has no relevance to that controversy anyway, for the reasons I have eludicated above.
I should have said:
“Then e-mail his colleagues who disagree with him about whether T. rex was a scavenger and tell us what they say.
Nice rant there doc schooley………..
Again, I do not have to defend myself, my qualifications or my professionalism to YOU.
What may contributors to this blog may or may not realize is that MPS is not a taxpayer residing in USD 259. He has never had children in Wichita schools. He is not even a native of Kansas. Instead, he is a Californian who comes here to constantly criticize and degrade.
He THINKS he knows what is best for us.
That sentiment comes through quite clearly no matter what thread he posts on; “He THINKS he knows what is best for us”. People here just aren’t intelligent enough to take care of business to him. He has an “MD”, so he knows much more than we do.
I guess the part that really does bother me is his complete obsession with me. Maybe it’s because I’m an educator. Most probably it’s because I stand up for myself and my profession. I’ve been told those are leadership qualities. Go figure.
“However, your assessment of what is wrong with science education appears to be NOTHING MORE THAN YOU MAKING ASSUMPTIONS BASED ON YOUR RATHER ARROGANT SELF ASSESSMENT, and your presumptions about science teachers in general.”
I regret the CAPITALIZED segment of this comment. Dr. Schooley does bring up some interesting thoughts about science education. My statement about “nothing more than arrogant self assessment” is exactly the sort of presumption I criticized Dr. Schooley for in my post, and for that I apologize. However, I do stand by the uncapitalized part of this statement.
They may interesting thoughts, but hmps puts all science teachers in one category. That isn’t just wrong, it is asinine.
What’s interesting is that the domain name expelledthemovie.com was registered on March 1th, PZ Myers was contacted about an interview in April. And Dawkins too was contacted around that time I believe.
So why did they decide to do the interviews from Rampant Films claiming the movie was going to be called Crossroads when expelledthemovie.com was already registered? It seems they just used Rampant Films and the seemingly made-up movie Crossroads to fraudulently obtain the interviews. So this wasn’t just a misunderstanding or a name-change but more like a well thought out plan to deceive.
Also I believe the dangers are quote mining and manipulation of the video. This has been used with great effect creating a propaganda video before:http://www.skeptics.com.au/articles/dawkins.htmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKryi3605g
Here’s the tool I used to investigate when the domain names were registered:http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
Thank goodness electrons are recyclable; mps’ replies would have wasted a significant tree.
Yes, wasted.
MPS, I asked “But let’s say you’ve proposed this idea [that a pay bonus should be given to math/science teachers] to your local school board – composed entirely of folks with *zero* math/science backgrounds.
How would you (a) use evidence to back up your contention and (b) do so without engendering extreme bias?”
You went off on a tangent about education faculty at state institutions.
Do you plan to answer the question?
Dougie who said anything about Michael Moore?
My posts you have yet to respond:
“LOL, what silly creationist term are you referring about? Darwinism? You do realize this term is used by evolutionists…..right? What “silly creationist term” are you referring to Doug
Doug – “The fact is that all species have DNA with the same nucleotide basis but merely differ in the sequences.”
This is like saying all who have bank accounts have X number of dollars in there, merely in different sequences….that merely is HUGE!!!!
Thanks for the debating points. As a homeowner living in the Andover district, I do pay more to Andover schools than to Wichita schools. I don’t deny this fact. But as a state and federal taxpayer, I nevertheless contribute financially to USD 259, unless USD 259 isn’t taking any supplementary payments from Topeka, nor Title I money anymore.
I also pay for operations and student education costs at WSU, KU and KSU, including remedial education costs incurred by USD 259 and many other Kansas districts’ not doing their high-school-education jobs.
I’m having to pay costs for NCLB, because until the Bush administration decided to impose performance-measurement accountability for Title I funding, USD 259, along with thousands of other districts, didn’t take the initiative of setting higher academic standards to comport with a changing American economy. (More on this below)
I pay for Wichita police who don’t do much in my area of town, but who are kept busy deterring and responding to crimes committed by people whom USD 259 hasn’t educated well. I pay for myriad social services provided by the county and state to former USD 259 students whose shortage of education makes them dependent on government.
I hate to periodically raise the same facts–they are tiresome for me to reiterate–but as long as Apophis periodically repeats the same adolescent “he’s not in our tribe” propaganda, he forces me to refute his fallacious assertions.
His point that my kids didn’t attend public school here is true. So what does ths mean? It means I am a pure contributor, providing money to our local schools, as well as WSU, solely for OTHER FAMILIES’ benefit. Which, as a small aside, is true for thousands of other area residents who pay property taxes to support our schools, but send their children to private schools and colleges.
Have I ever said, “I don’t think I should pay taxes for a service that my family doesn’t use?” No, I haven’t, as any close tracker of my posts for more than a year will acknowledge. I’m NOT anti-public education. I WOULD like to see the money I contribute used intelligently for the benefit of my local area’s children who use public schools. The days of an economy that functioned with only 25-30% of young people going to college, with middle-class incomes being achievable by people who only had high school diplomas, are gone. We must redesign K-12 education to send 60-70% of kids to higher education.
In essence we must send to college something like half the kids whose parents didn’t go to college. We know these parents are typically unable to help their kids achieve this goal, because college per se is completely outside the parents’ realm of knowledge and experience, so they have no idea what they should be doing. Schools are going to have to take on an academic-preparation mission whose difficulty dwarfs that of the past.
On ksagnostic’s or anyone else’s support of Apophis’ science teaching, this support is vacuous. Why? Because there is no evidence that Apophis is a science teacher. Apophis isn’t a real name. It’s a pseudonym. Apophis has never identified the school in which he teaches. He’s never specified his universities attended, and the degrees these universities have conferred upon him.
Long-time readers know that I posted my name and CV here many months ago. More recent readers will see “Doc” and “Schooley” in Apophis’s and others’ posts. Readers know my identity because I voluntarily divulged it, when Apophis alerted readers that my self-claims of having a biochemistry degree and being a doctor could be total fictions. Good point. So I provided the evidence to prove my claim, that anyone could quickly verify.
That was not a risk-free proposition, but I decided to accept the negative consequences of identifying myself, in order to establish credibility according to the terms demanded by Apophis.
When I pushed Apophis to reciprocate, he demurred. Therefore his former point that my claimed professional status, as a pseudonymous blogger, was not credible, was a valid argument , so I “outed” myself . Alas that very argument–which was originally Apophis’s own idea– has ever since discredited his own self-claims to be a science teacher, an award-winning science teacher, a science teacher beloved by parents and children. His unsubstantiated claims and a buck will get you a cup of McDonald’s coffee.
Apophis has a wonderful privilege to post here, and I’d be the last person to try to curtail it. Have I ever called for his posts to be removed? I’ve emailed Phil and Randy about a number of things. Asking/ demanding that WEBlog block Apophis has not been one of them, and it never will be. Why? Because I WANT TO SUPPORT his privilege to post here. If he chooses to rant, curse, throw temper tantrums, and use non-sequiturs as his main debating methods, that’s fine, because gives me the opportunity to respond with reason and researched facts.
Occasionally, I’ll get my facts wrong. Not very often. But when I do, and somebody points this out, I say, “You’re right. Thank you for correcting and enlightening me.”
On ID, I’m not crusading for it to be taught. I am passionately devoted to the principle of fundamentally changing mathematics and science education.
Teaching ID is not on my high-priority list. Teaching Leon Lederman’s “Physics First” is. I didn’t major in physics. There were students who ran circles around me in physics. My forte was biology. But I appreciate modern biology’s physics and chemical foundations. And a cornerstone of all modern sciences is mathematics, because all modern sciences perform measurements, quantitative analysis, and mathematics-dependent modeling.
Consider Jack Horner, the world’s leading expert on T rex. He is convinced that T rex was a terrestrial vulture, because T rex’s short-femur to long tibia ratio is not compatible with a running animal. Using CAT scans, he has determined that T rex has a huge olfactory bulb, that is proportionate to vultures’. Would he support ID teaching? Let’s assume not. Would he support better math and physics teaching? I’m going to hazard a guess that he would. Actually, it’s not a long-shot-probability surmise. Mr. Horner could not perform CAT scanning on his specimens without applied physics and mathematics.
Kansas,
on our teachers’ teachers, the secondary teachers-to-be receive academic-course instruction by CLAS faculty. I didn’t mean to create a misimpression. However, the COE leaders dictate what CLAS courses our state’s future K-12 teachers take, and there is no question that academic coursework for them, taught by CLAS faculty, is overweighted in general overview / survey courses. To the CLAS-major student these courses are “preliminaries”. In math and science, the classes have 100+ students (sometimes 500 or more). The profs spew out prepared lectures. Except for students who make a commitment to go to office hours frequently, there is no opportunity for students to get to know their CLAS professors personally. Moreover, in these classes, the profs don’t have an opportunity to describe their own current research work, and “connect the dots” of say, introductory organic chemistry, to the professors’ own O Chem current real-world applications.
It’s not until you get to the small seminars and attend afternoon lectures for faculty and grad students, and do senior capstone research projects, and get invited to department parties, and take grad courses, that students become engaged in real conversations with faculty, and experience the ongoing discovery process of science.
When you do undergraduate research, you get your own building key, whose purpose is to enable and encourage you to spend evenings and weekends at the lab. In my university, if you had a 3.5+ GPA, you received a special library card that gave you access to the “stacks”, which were a treasure trove of knowledge created for faculty and grad students’ use. If you were a serious undergrad, who studied hard, and put studying ahead of partying, you got access to this wonderful resource.
I remember to this day running into a dozen or so other students putting in “extra hours” in the lab. We had gone beyond, “Here is the three-hour lab assignment; if you don’t finish, that’s too bad,” or maybe “the TA will give you an extra half-hour, if he/she doesn’t have another commitment,” to, “We’re culturing our own cells, they have their own cycles, and their optimal harvesting time is Sunday.” So you plan to work on Sunday. Or there’s a glitch in your reverse-phase high pressure chromatography run, and your option is to say, “This thing took me four hours, I’m done,” and report to your research advisor, “It didn’t work,” or else you put in another four hours to get it to work. Or maybe eight hours. Or twelve. This is science.
You have a Saturday morning run that doesn’t work. You try to figure out a solution, it doesn’t work. It’s 5 PM. You’re willing to try again, but your stymied. So you call your prof. If he’s home, he’ll help you. It’s his project, and he wants it to succeed. He gives you guidance, you try a third run, and IT WORKS! This is science.
We were working with an “immortal” cell line, cultivated from a malignant cancer. If you culture normal tissues, the cells replicate a number of cycles and quit. We were working with cells whose original tissue was 20 years old (they’re still replicating today, more than 50 years after original culture). Our project was to determine if a type of RNA, called transfer RNA was mutated, or else to conclusively prove it was not, in a nationwide effort to determine the basis of cell-line immortality. The evidence when I joined was pointing to t-RNA not being abnormal. That’s not the most fun kind of project. You want to be on a project that finds the cause of something important, not to be on one that says, “the cause isn’t here.” But even causative-agent-elimination research is science.
Not one of the junior/senior students whom I saw working like this was planning to teach high school science. That was unfortunate. I mean, it was great that we future Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s were granted “entre”, but it is sad that future high school teachers were denied it. They never got to really understand science. If you don’t understand science, you cannot teach science.
Before this, I was fortunate, and had a suitable personality to do a summer job for a plant pathologist at a USDA crops research facility. It started out with heavy-lifting menial work, for example, transporting plant-container crocks from greenhouses to an autoclave, using a kids red wagon, and sterilizing the crocks. But I worked hard and fast, and devised efficiency methods. As a result, my assigned daily work was done by noon. So, through a process that I can’t recall exactly, I was first given some research-monograph reading assignments, then my boss sent me over to the transmission electron microscope facility director, and I got to do EM preps, and look at them under the scope. 200,000x magnification. Far out! The director asked me to identify organelles, and I did. She never let me operate the controls—darn!– but she said, “These are very good preps”. I knew they were good, without her commendation, because they looked just like the textbook micrographs I had been assigned earlier to peruse. That’s really fun science.
Later, I worked in a lab with a scanning electron microscope. I never got to use it, but the head tech had these really cool half-mirrored sunglasses. He coated them himself with a layer of gold atoms, using a vacuum/ metal vapor specimen-prep chamber. He said, “I can make you a pair, if you bring me some sunglasses.” That’s really fun science. Partially paid for by the U.S. Government, no less.
There a multitude of options for public education to utilize. In my studied opinion, for the part of high school that serves a college-preparatory function, we should return to the original model of hiring high school teachers who have CLAS academic-subject degrees. They can be given 6 months of classroom-administration training by COEs. They should be paid sufficiently to attract very subject knowledgeable, and able teachers. I personally think this should be applied to college-track-training teachers in middle schools, but at the high school level, for shaping kids to get ready for college, it’s without question, the RIGHT WAY to go.
We need to have alternate-channel teacher licensing. In San Diego, a retired nuclear submarine captain is teaching public high-school physics. A nuclear sub is a PHYSICS MACHINE. This retired naval officer knows how to teach cool science. He earned an M.A.T to gain full teaching licensure, but was doing fine before this. In my oldest son’s private school, a retired Occidental College history professor taught AP US History. My son got a “5″ and so did a handful of his classmates. Everybody scored “3″ or higher college-creditable scores.
Retired WSU faculty came up with a gifted 6-12 grade math-and-science charter school proposal. Torpedoed by USD 259. The proposing parties were PUBLIC educators. The “lower” public educators skewered the “higher” public educators, and “put them in their place”. I’m not criticizing “lower” public educators. I’m criticizing their condemn-kids-to-failure-pathway ethos, their turf-protecting territorialitity, and their refusal to even think about connecting the dots between “lower” education and “higher” education.
MPS……………………..I could care less if you really think I am an educator of not. I also do not care if you think I should disclose the universites that granted my Bachelors and Masters degree. That is a right I have, just like you have the right to make the claims about yourself that you openly make. Your claims may be valid, but they still do not make you an expert in the field of education. Call my posts “rants, tantrums. non-sequitars”……..whatever, you still have little of substance to bring to the table when it comes to Wichita schools. Go accost the Andover schools. I’ll bet Mark evans would love to let you vent. Call Linda Hope (a USD 259 Principal), she’s on your BOE. Maybe they want to listen to you, I don’t.
It is doubtful that you will ever get your way……………why?…………..maybe because the education experts don’t think YOUR ideas are in the best interest of the majority of our children.
In response to Apophis, I have spent 26 years in education institutions. I have studiously observed hundreds of teachers. I studied under them as a child, and worked with them as an adult.
In home-educating my children, my mission was to give them a rigorous college preparation that would qualify them for universities that required excellent study habits to be developed before they went to university, because these universities had a rapid pace of instruction, serious study was required to keep up with the pace, and the administration and faculty didn’t want to lose students. With a mission to achieve diversity, and support LD students, they provided intensive personal help to students who struggled, but most students were recruited under the expectation they would hit the pad running.
My kids and their cohorts appreciated what was being given to them. They realized they had an obligation to work hard in order to continue enjoying the gift. Of note, a 4-year graduation rate of 91% and a 5-year rate of 95% tells me that the vast majority of the students were happy to be where they were, and they were willing to work hard to stay there.
One of my kids is taking a seminar in superstring and M-theory under Brian Greene. As I said earlier, I knew people who were “naturals” in physics. I wasn’t. But I knew enough physics to put my son, through home education, on a really neat pathway, where he has gotten to study under the “naturals”, and decide on his own how far he wants to go in the field.
Am I an expert in education? In some areas, yes I am. For example, I am intimately familiar with most-difficult-level university education. I have expert knowledge in preparing young people for it.
What I know is actually applicable to a broad range of children. You first want to make learning enjoyable. You want to frame effort and productivity as enjoyable, desirable experiences. You want to let children discover their own special interests, and then you set up things so that they can spend more time pursuing them, rather than giving them a preset scheme of timed classes in 6 standard subject areas per day. How does the latter meet any given individual child’s needs? It doesn’t. The education establishment has conflated most children’s (in recent decades a declining number) to ADAPT to and SURVIVE an uninspiring, often boring, energy-sapping, critical-thinking-skills-impairing, industrial mass-processing scheme, with the false proposition that this scheme satisfies most children’s needs.
You want to children to achieve very high proficiency, in whatever subjects they study. What purpose do you think is served when kids fear tests, cram for them, then forget most of what they have putatively been taught?
You want children to be able to assemble ideas and facts, and cogently express them. I am an expert in multiple-choice tests. I trained my sons to earn high SAT and ACT scores. I was an expert in them in high school, figuring out how to solve several SAT algebra questions quickly without using conventional algebra. I later learned that the test designers intentionally created some questions to reward people who devised their own fast algorithms that were not found in textbooks, nor taught in class.
As a multiple-choice-test expert, it is my judgment that multiple-choice tests have no place in evaluating students in a classroom setting. Why? Multiple-choice tests evaluate sight-recognition knowledge. It is feasible to cram for exams, and recall seeing information one has recently read, when it is presented on multiple-choice tests. For expository testing, cramming does not work. It is necessary to study consistently on a daily basis. Multiple-choice-testing per se encourages study procrastination. Schools are promoting this corruption. It is antithetical to college preparation. It is antithetical to employers’ needs for young people who have good work habits.
You want to give young people access to knowledge resources. I’ve examined teacher-edition and student-edition math textbooks. The teacher-edition books have information that could strongly benefit students, but it is omitted in the student-edition books. This is a corruption, whose purpose is to ostensibly to contain costs, but it incurs teacher-dependency, rather than enabling students to become self-learners. Also, books are dispensed at the beginning of the year, and collected at the end of the year. Private schools, outside of Kansas, sell books, some of which are irrelevant after a class has been taken, but others are useful references, which serious students hold onto. Frankly, taking books away is anti-knowledge-building.
Hard-backed books are expensive. Computerized “textbooks” can be manufactured cheaply. So every textbook should be available in electronic form, and this would enable them to contain much more information than hard-backed books, and computers should be given to all students whose parents cannot afford them.
I moved my kids to college math and science textbooks as quickly as I could. One “tool” they included was odd-numbered-exercise solutions manuals, which exposited multi-statement solutions, that my kids learned greatly from. Mathematics and science have their own languages. Knowing math and science is knowing their languages.
A few years ago, a company called hotmath.com began providing odd-numbered solutions to high school math textbook exercises. Unlike print solutions manuals, it queried students, and gave them hints, in a step-by-step manner, giving students some information, and encouraging them to think things through. For any given problem, a student might take the first hint given and solve the problem, or see the first step, then another hint, and work the problem thereafter, or, eventually just read the entire solution. The publishers accepted hotmath.com. The textbook authors thought it was great. Many public school teachers were involved in writing the solutions and hints.
The Eagle’s education writer Josh Funk queried local math teachers, and their opinions were negative. Without realizing it, they demonstrated a highly counterproductive and benighted “turf protection” attitude. No matter. Back then, hotmath.com covered about a dozen math textbooks. Today, it covers nearly all of them. The college student solutions manual concept, that first came out more than 15 years ago, is very useful for high school college-preparatory mathematics, particularly when it has been improved upon. It is sad that local math teachers, including a couple chairs, IIRC, didn’t understand optimal mathematics instruction: instead of endorsing hotmath, they did the opposite.
What do most kids want in relation to school? To get out of it. What do most teachers want, in relation to school? To get out of it. The average age of retirement in teaching is the youngest of any white collar profession. That’s really sad commentary.
Perhaps Apophis can explain to readers how busing kids 60-90 minutes a day is educationally productive and beneficial for the children. In farm country, it is unavoidable. But in a city, there is a choice. Forced suburban/urban busing is a wrong choice.
“In response to Apophis, I have spent 26 years in education institutions.”
How much of that was your own undergraduate degree, and medical school?
Just curious.
. . .and another insomniac night.
How tired?
Tired enough for totally irrelevant trivia.
Guess who posted the very first comment on WE Blog?
Here we go again…………….mps goes on and on and on and on…………
NOW, he’s a “multiple choice test expert”……………what a joke!
Who cares?
I would venture to say every educator know that a M/C test, by itself, is not a fair test of knowledge of a concept.
Don’t put words in my mouth about busing either……….where did that non sequitor come from anyway?
Have you noticed how he goes on and and on and on and on…………………………………………………………………………………?
mps…………..why exactly is the reason you do not paratice medicine anymore?
I think this should be an interesting response.
Rage,
College and medical education 12 years.
Oops, bad late-night math. I’ve spent a total of 29.5 years in education institutions, including a semester taking a carpentry class at community college. It fun. But it was also eye-opening. Most of the students were 18-19 year olds. They weren’t “dummies” but they didn’t know basic measurement math, much less trig, which are cornerstones of construction.
Apophis,
I raised busing because it is a critical issue. For the several million dollars spent annually on busing, we could instead be building neighborhood schools, and restoring parent-teacher community. So what are you doing on this issue? For a “public instutions” a “local” partisan, are you bothered that the millions go to a PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT TEXAS bus company?
Schools are going to have to prepare 60-70% of kids to go to college, and I don’t mean get admitted and flunk/dropout in their first year, I mean enter with requisite study skills to stay in, and earn degrees. What is your plan for achieving this? Or what is the plan that your experts have devised that you believe will work to achieve this goal?
Schools’ only legitimate mission is to prepare students for the future. In other words, what is being taught in 2007 to first graders must bear relevance to their lives as young adults in 2027.
So what is your plan, or your experts’ plan, for connecting today’s first graders with the 2027 economy? If you aren’t thinking in these terms, you’re not really thinking.
Apophis,
On why I’m not practicing medicine, I could say, like you do: “It’s none of your business.”
But if you were not so half-clever, you’d realize that to home educate my kids, I had to give up my medical practice. Primarily, I had “climbed many mountains, and ascended high peaks.” In order for my kids to experience this, I had to come back down the mountain and teach them how to climb.
But home-education has had a larger societal impact than I realized. Home-education of my kids, which resulted in their experimental admission to very difficult universities, played an important role in encouraging the universities to admit more home-educated students and transform such admissions from experimental to mainstream. The universities were tracking these alternative-education students’ performances, to see if the experimental admissions had positive consequences.
Today, all universities and lieral arts colleges accept home-educated students. Why? Because the earlier entrants generated great “track records”.
Today, Emporia State University, Kansas’s first teachers college, a PUBLIC SCHOOL of higher education, “welcomes” [ESU's word, not mine] home-educated students. Why? Because their parents sacrificed incomes to give them personal attention, guidance and substantive encouragement, and the students have shown outstanding self-organization and study skills that set a positive example for their public-school-educated cohorts to learn from.
We have contributed to this movement’s success and growth. Thirty years ago, there was no such thing as a job application that required a listing of education that showed High School: Home-schooled; College: BA Emporia State University (University of Kansas, Kansas State University), Summa Cum Laude.
So, in giving up a traditional profession, and its money, I became an agent for change, and enabled my kids to become agents for change.
Apophis, thank you for your question. Perhaps you can learn something from my response. If you can’t, I hope that other readers can.
For the record MPS…………..I do not like the fact that busing is contracted out to a private firm. But, what other option is there? Should the District buy 500+ buses?
I do support the building of neighborhood schools to reduce the amount of busing. I would think that would be a focus of any new bond issue. The big question is “will the community support a new bond issue”?
I’m glad we agree on some things.
On buses, thousands of districts in America own theirs. Durham states that it originated in California. Many California districts today use Durham, but most own, operate and maintain their own fleets.
Run properly, district-owned fleets can either save taxpayers money, running at the same operations cost as Durham, without paying a profit margin to non-state-residing company shareholders, or if run at the same cost, this would be in the form of drivers and local maintenance workers higher wages.
I should clarify Durham’s ownership: the American owners sold their company to a British company, National Express Group, PLC. Send Wichita taxpayer dollars to England, or keep it in Wichita. Your choice.
I’m glad you want to return to neighborhood schools. I hope you use your influence to make this happen. Since I don’t reside in the district, I won’t get to vote on the matter. But I think if you work on a public relations campaign as occurred for the much-needed first bond issue, you can get people to support it.
Channel 20 had a really nice discussion of the AVID program at North High. I see Southeast has it too. That’s taking things in a good direction, encouraging kids who under normal conditions wouldn’t consider going to college to strive for it.