Category: education

BBC’s Science Club with Dara O Briain

December 6, 2012 • 10:51 am

I’ve always been a fan of Dara O Briain—well, at least since I’ve known of this “strident” atheistic comedian and science love, which has been about a year.  Reader Tom told me that not only did O Briain have a new show, “Science Club” on the BBC, but that the first episode was on YouTube. (Watch it now folks, because once the Beeb finds out, it’s gone).

Further, the episode is on genetics and inheritance, and the special guest my old friend Steve Jones (quite eloquent, as always), as well as several other guests and talking heads.

It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast, with some glaringly disparate bits (e.g., the interpolated history of the bicycle), and the discussion of epigenetics was muddled and overblown, but overall I liked this episode.  The science is pretty good, and the discussion of whether the Human Genome Project has lived up to its hype is something one doesn’t often see in the popular media.

Science class in Louisiana, ctd.

November 21, 2012 • 9:55 pm

by Greg Mayer

In my previous post I noted that Zack Kopplin, at the time a Louisiana high school student and now a Rice University undergrad, has led efforts to repeal Louisiana’s creationist Science Education Act of 2008. Zack saw the post, and contacted Jerry, asking us here at WEIT to highlight some of the more recent and egregious actions of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Zack has a post at his site with more details, but here are some of the lowlights. (By the way, Zack’s Facebook page is a more frequently updated account of developements on this front, and WEIT readers should follow there for the latest.) According to Zack,

My review of the Governor’s voucher program identifies at least 20 schools who use a creationist curriculum or blatantly promote creationism on their websites.  These 20 schools have been awarded 1,365 voucher slots and can receive as much as $11,602,500 in taxpayer money annually.

Among the most egregious is Northeast Baptist School, in West Monroe, which uses BJU Press science textbooks, one of which was highlighted in my previous post. Zack notes that the University of California won a lawsuit in 2010 that successfully defended its right to not accept high school credits from courses based on creationist textbooks. Faith Academy, in Gonzalez, has a student handbook that states that students must “defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible verses traditional scientific theory.” (Their spelling is as bad as their science!) And taking the cake is Claiborne Christian School, also in West Monroe, where students are “taught to discern and refute lies commonly found in textbooks, college classrooms, and in the media”, and whose newsletter has approvingly cited the claim that scientists are “sinful men”. Each of these schools are eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of state support.

Gov. Jindal has recently gotten some good publicity for demanding that the Republicans “stop being the Stupid Party.” But as Newsweek’s John Avlon quickly noted, Jindal himself has presided over Louisiana’s plunge into creationism:

Marco Rubio said Earth’s age is a great mystery. Fellow rising star Bobby Jindal’s state teaches creationism alongside science. Both Republicans are preaching reform, but if they and others keep pivoting away from common-sense science, the GOP will remain the Stupid Party—and fail.

Jindal is promoting the “Stupid”, not preventing it.

Good luck to any student raised on this bilge trying to succeed in the 21st century. As the desperate Louisiana high school student pleaded to his science teacher, as the teacher explained creationism in the now classic Doonesbury comic, “Please stop. I’d like to get into a good college.”

Science class in Louisiana

November 20, 2012 • 10:46 pm

by Greg Mayer

Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed notes an AP story about how publicly-supported private schools in Louisiana are not required by state officials to meet state curriculum standards, and combines this with a sample of science textbook pages from (I’m not making this up) BJU Press, which offers “Christ-centered resources for education, edification, and evangelization”. An example:

A sample science textbook page.

It’s not clear from his piece, however, exactly what schools are using these materials. However, even if these schools were held to state standards, that wouldn’t be saying much in Louisiana, which passed its infamous, creationist Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008 (noted earlier by Jerry here at WEIT). A recent (2012) report on science education standards (also noted earlier by Jerry here at WEIT) sums up Louisiana’s condition:

The Louisiana science standards are reasonably challenging and comprehensive, but they suffer from a devastating flaw: Thanks to the state’s 2008 Science Education Act, which promotes creationism instead of science, the standards (especially for biology and life science) are haunted by anti-science influences that threaten biology education in the state.

(The report is especially damning because it comes from an otherwise conservative, anti-public school think tank.)

Efforts to repeal the law were begun almost immediately by Louisiana students and scientists, and have garnered an endorsement from 75 Nobelists. For the latest on the situation in Louisiana, follow the efforts of student Zack Kopplin at Repealing the Louisiana Science Education Act, and the work of the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

Steve Pinker on how to write science

November 16, 2012 • 9:10 am

I have it on reliable authority that Steve Pinker’s next book will be on modern grammar and usage: a Pinkerian update of Strunk and White’s famous The Elements of Style (a book I wore out with frequent use, but learn from the lecture below is flawed). And Steve’s already giving talks about this book to come.

I would have thought that after finishing his 832-page monster, the superb book The Better Angels of our Nature, Steve would have taken a breather, but if you know him you’ll realize that’s not on—and it makes me envious! He’s a book-writing machine, but all his books are engaging and well written.

At any rate, Steve has previewed his book in a new talk, delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), called “A sense of style.”  You can see the 77 minute video here.

As the MIT site describes, this is “The first annual Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering lecture about communicating complex scientific and technological subjects clearly and engagingly in the series: ‘Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century’.”

And it’s a very good talk.  If you have students, show it to them; if you write yourself, watch it. It’s not just about communicating science—to both the public and our colleagues—but about how to write clearly on any nonfiction topic.

His emphasis is on the “classic style,” a style I’ve tried to achieve (without copying its adherents), and of which I first became aware (do not end sentences with prepositions!) by reading Richard Dawkins. Note how Steve compares Dawkins favorably with the world’s most opaque and infuriating academic writer, the postmodernist Judith Butler (see Martha Nussbaum’s magnificant takedown of Butler in The New Republic).

In that style, one paints tangible pictures for the reader but never condescends, and writes as if the text should be read aloud (the “conversational style”); those are valuable tips. Steve’s examples of good and bad prose are enlightening, and his delivery instantiates his own clear but personal style. But watch the video yourself; you won’t regret it.

A screenshot of one of his slides:

h/t: Chris

U.S. school science standards pronounced “dismal”

November 16, 2012 • 5:23 am

The conclusion above came to my attention from Scientific American‘s “Budding Scientist” website, which has a report by Anna Kuchment with the frank title, “U.S. state science standards are ‘mediocre to awful.'”

Kuchment’s piece is based on a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “The State of State Science Standards, 2012,” released on January 31. The authors of that are a distinguished lot: Lawrence S. Lerner, Ursula Goodenough, John Lynch, Martha Schwartz, and Richard Schwartz, with an NAEP (National Association of Education Progress) review by Paul R. Gross.)

You can download the pdf of the report here, or just skip that and just see where your state stands if you live in the U.S. (Although the report is 217 pages long, all but eleven pages of that is either description of methodology or assessments of each of the 50 states.)

The conclusions (those in quotations are taken directly from the report):

  • “The results of this rigorous analysis paint a fresh—but still bleak—picture. A majority of the states’ standards remainvmediocre to awful. In fact, the average grade across all states is—once again—a thoroughly undistinguished C. (In fact, it’s a low C.) In twenty-six jurisdictions, the science standards earn a D or below. Yet this very weakness in what states expect of their schools, teachers, and students in science suggests that a purposeful focus on improving—or replacing—today’s standards could be a key part of a comprehensive effort to boost science performance.”
  • “Two jurisdictions—California and the District of Columbia—have standards strong enough to earn straight As from our reviewers. Four other states—Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Virginia—earn A-minuses, as does the NAEP assessment framework. And seven states earn grades in the B range. But this also means that just thirteen jurisdictions—barely 25 percent, and fewer than in 2005—earn a B or better for setting appropriately clear, rigorous, and specific standards.”
  • The average grade hasn’t changed since 2005, since those states that improved their standards are balanced by a slightly larger number that lowered them.
  • Why is the U.S. doing so poorly? The authors single out four problems with state standards:
  1. The undermining of evolution through a variety of methods, both involving the legislature (as in Louisiana’s “academic freedom” act that allows the teaching of intelligent design creationism) and more subtle incursions, like Colorado and West Virginia’s mandate that the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution be discussed, while of course other “theories” don’t come in for such treatment.
  2. Vague standards that give teachers little guidance. The report mentions, as two examples, “A middle school teacher in New Hampshire, for example, will come face to face with the following: ‘Identify energy as a property of many substances.’ Pennsylvania offers the equally baffling ‘Explain the chemistry of metabolism.’ Such empty statements can do little to inform curriculum development or instruction, and give no guidance to assessment developers.”
  3. The promotion of “inquiry based learning” without any guidance to teachers how to implement it. The report notes, “Iowa schoolchildren are directed to: ‘Make appropriate personal/lifestyle/technology choices, evaluate, observe, discuss/debate, recognize interactions and interdependencies at all levels, explain, describe environmental effects of public policy, choose appropriate course(s) of action.‘ Such statements are devoid of any teachable content and leave teachers with no guidance as to how they can incorporate genuine scientific inquiry skills into their instruction.”  Further, many states say nothing about the history of science, which is essential for teaching students how science works and how to be critical.
  4. There’s not enough math.  As the report notes, things are far too qualitative, perhaps catering to students’ “mathophobia”:  “Mathematics is integral to science. Yet few states make the link between math and science clear—and many seem to go to great lengths to avoid mathematical formulae and equations altogether. The result is usually a clumsy mishmash of poor writing that could much more easily and clearly be expressed in numbers.”

It’s no surprise, then, that among 15 year olds tested in 65 countries, U.S. students ranked 23rd in science proficiency, while only 21% of U.S. twelfth-graders (17 and 18 year olds) are at or above the “proficient” standard in science.

This is a very thorough report: the most thorough I’ve seen from any organization. There are an average of 3.5 pages of evaluation for each of the U.S.’s 50 states. If you’re a parent, or simply a citizen concerned about the condition of American science education, look at your state’s standards and, if so moved, complain!

Here’s the U.S. map with each state’s grade. Note that although the South is low as expected, the midwest, along with Oregon and Idaho, rank even lower. And an F for Wisconsin? This was a surprise to me. Read the state-by-state evaluations to see why.

It’s the day after Carl Sagan’s birthday

November 10, 2012 • 12:45 pm

If Carl Sagan had lived (he died at the young age of 62), he would have been 78 yesterday.  What a venerable old man he would have been: an elder statesman of science, still with that that deep and booming voice! Although I didn’t put anything up about the anniversary yesterday, it’s always a good time to think back on his contributions, including his television show Cosmos and his 30 (!) books, one of which won a Pulitzer Prize. (Can you remember which one it was?)

Here are two videos to help us remember. The first is the initial segment of a wonderful three-part interview with Charlie Rose.  It took place on May 27, 1996; Sagan died seven months later. It was his last interview.

Sagan is thin and wan, already suffering from the myelodysplasia that would kill him and the multiple bone-marrow transplants he received.  But his voice and opinions are as strong as ever. Note that, at the end, he discusses the difference between religion and science, defining “faith” as “belief without evidence.” Note, though, that near the end he takes a NOMA-like stance, saying (at about 8:02) that religion has contributions to make in areas like morality, compassion, and literature.  This is a bit too much for me, since I don’t agree that faith has anything to add to morality, and precious little to literature.

Here are the other two parts:

Part 2 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDKSZO-aACk
Part 3 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxeN6Wf7mbU

And here is a video I find unspeakably sad: the news announcements of his death on December 20, 1996.

The lacuna he left, like that of Hitchens, can’t be filled.

h/t: P.

Evolution: Making Sense of Life

October 5, 2012 • 9:29 am

by Greg Mayer

Another book that was just published in August is a new textbook of evolution intended for biology majors, Evolution: Making Sense of Life, by Carl Zimmer and Douglas Emlen; the title evokes Theodosius Dobzhansky‘s famous 1973 paper “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” (pdf). Carl Zimmer, a science writer and journalist, should be well familiar to WEIT readers, while Douglas Emlen, a biology professor at the University of Montana who works on sexual selection, has also drawn attention here at WEIT for his marvelous photographs of beetle weapons (and I wonder if he’s related to the famous Emlen family of biologists). Many illustrations have been provided by Carl Buell, the noted scientific illustrator. (I reviewed a couple of chapters in manuscript.)

The book is an interesting collaboration between a science writer and a biologist. There have been other such collaborations, usually for large multi-author introductory textbooks, where a writer is brought on to meld together and bring unity of voice to the disparate writing styles of the many scientific authors. In this case however, Zimmer is already a noted author on evolutionary topics, having written such books as At the Water’s Edge (my favorite) and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea (a companion to the PBS series), and had previously written The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution, intended as a non-majors text. The new majors’ text grew in part out of this earlier book.

The book is published by Roberts and Company of Greenwood Village, Colorado, a relatively new publisher that is quickly making a name for itself in academic biology publishing. In addition to textbooks, they publish important monographic works (e.g. Trevor Price’s Speciation in Birds, the perfect complement to Jerry and Allen Orr’s Speciation). We’ve noted one of their books, edited by Jonathan Losos, here at WEIT before.