It’s nothing personal. It’s just that you’re doing a lousy job of teaching your children, and unfortunately for them, they aren’t getting the basic knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century. I know that some of your kids are smart enough to see beyond the drivel your teachers promote, and I really feel for them — they’re going to have to work twice as hard to get past Louisiana’s reputation.
Zack Kopplin has been doing a danged thorough job digging through records to find out what Louisiana kids are actually being taught. In way too many classrooms, the book of Genesis is being taught as a substitute for biology.
Through a public records request, I obtained dozens of emails from the Bossier Parish school district that specifically discuss teaching creationism. Shawna Creamer, a science teacher at Airline High School, sent an email to the principal, Jason Rowland, informing him of which class periods she would use to teach creationism. “We will read in Genesis and them [sic] some supplemental material debunking various aspects of evolution from which the students will present,” Creamer wrote.
In another email exchange with Rowland, a parent had complained that a different teacher, Cindy Tolliver, actually taught that evolution was a “fact.” This parent complained that Tolliver was “pushing her twisted religious beliefs onto the class.” Principal Rowland responded, “I can assure you this will not happen again.”
Holy crap. I’m just imagining the shock those kids would feel if they ended up in our introductory biology class here — it’s intended to cover basics of evolution as if the students had never heard of it before, but I don’t know if we could pull them up out of the deep hole their teachers are digging.
Is there anything more consistently entertaining then goofball god-botherers attempting to slander Evolutionary Theory by calling it a religion? “See, it’s just as stupid and nonsensical as the things I believe…”
Doubtthat, I don’t find it very entertaining. Try infuriating.
It’s a funny old country isn’t it ?
Feel free to write us off, that’s fine. Meanwhile, I’ll just be over here continuing my hard work educating LSU undergrads and Louisiana’s kids and families about biodiversity, natural history, conservation, and evolution. Along with other great faculty and grad students. Thanks for the support and encouragement.
Also, FWIW, had my evolution professor at the University of Alabama written me off as unreachable and a lost cause, I wouldn’t be an biology student today. Much less studying evolutionary biology.
cathynewman @ # 4: … continuing my hard work educating LSU undergrads and Louisiana’s kids and families …
Please tell us more: e.g., how many LSU students enter as creationists, how many leave that way?
I think the more worrisome statistic is how many of those mis-educated Louisiana students go on to schools like Liberty University and Oral Robert University where they won’t be taught a solid evolution-based biology curriculum and graduate from college with that same mis-education reinforced.
Cathy, keep up the good work. Baton Rouge and Louisiana need you. Things are bad enough here, I wish there were more here like you.
I also just got finished teaching my Ecology and Evolution class this morning to University of South Alabama students. Nobody fainted, and they seem to be taking it all in rather well. I get the south bashing, in many ways we deserve it. But if you don’t believe that K-12 students in Minnesota are getting lots of stealth Creationism you are in a fantasy world. You can write us off if you want, cathynewman and I will just forge on without you, thank you very much
cathynewman
Sounds like you’re doing valuable work. Thank you.
—
I’ve been reading this blog long enough, but it still sometimes suprises me when I read how backwards many places in US are. The image US has here, at least in my part of Europe, is of progress, knowledge, success. On the other hand, many schools there find teaching evolution controversial. It had never crossed my mind that the theory of evolution could still be considered controversial in a place presenting itself as a bastion of scientific progress and excellence, before reading about it here.
There are days when I despair of Wisconsin, too.
I feel so sorry for the kids, who are the real pawns in this stupid enterprise. They really don’t, or won’t, know better because of their ignorant parents and the school system that encourages and maintains that ignorance. PZ, I think you really need to support people such as cathynewman and brian axsmith, not “write them off.” They are brave and dedicated educators. Someone has to break through that wall of foolishness to get to the kids. How depressing all this is.
Gee, I’m so sorry it might be hard for you, but that is your job, so quite “writing kids off” and do the job.
to go all repub on ya:
“The Scopes Trial is over, and settled. That means we all believe evolution. donchano? You’re just cherrypickin single examples of backsliders. You’re just amplifyin it to make us look bad, you evil libruls.”
[as in, how the repubs claim “racism is over cuz we gots a blach potus”, etc etc]
–
I, too, was thoroughly ~amused~ to see the complaint; that their kids were being taught “religion” (i.e. evolution). I tacitly hear twisted pretzel logic behind such a statement: “religion can not be taught in school, but teaching Book_of_Genesis as science is okay, cuz we don’t teach the religion part only the facts of how creation is fully documented in a BOOK, Evolushun is just a _THEORY_. Made up in some guy on a boat lookin at birds on islands in the ocean. Being a theory, it’s a religion to passit off as fact. ipso facto.”
[ugghh, i’m twisting my brain up, here. gotta get it untangled…]
azpaul3,
No, it’s not, or should not, be the job of someone teaching at university level to teach the students the basic knowledge needed to even start the classes. Doing so removes valuable time needed to teach the actual contents of the class.
This is not advanced stuff.
I have to agree that the stated writing-off of Louisiana is unhelpful, demoralizing hyperbole. I was going to say you could probably safely write off their government, but a quick search turned up Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, who has been trying to get the Louisiana Science Education Act repealed. The most recent vote was 4-3. There is still hope, however depressing the current situation is. When people lose hope, they stop fighting.
Living next to the US, it’s tempting to write off the whole frigging country but that would be withdrawing moral support from those who need it. I have immense respect for people who stay and fight for change instead of just leaving. If I was an educator in Louisiana (or the US), I honestly don’t know how long I could handle it.
Heck, I won’t even write off Afghanistan.
slithey tove… @ # 14: The Scopes Trial is over, and settled. That means we all believe evolution. donchano?
Please remember: Scopes lost the trial, and was convicted (later overturned on a technicality). Doesn’t that mean we all disbelieve evolution, ispo fatco?
@azpaul3
Bullshit, it’s not PZ’s job to undo the damage that some other fucker has done, it’s also not his job to teach a kid how to whipe his ass, they are supossed to have learnt to do that by the time they reach his class.
The idea that educator’s have ALL the responsability to educate students in all matters, is ridiculous and causes a lot of problems.
@cathynewman
I don’t think PZ, an educator, actually means a complete writting off of the kids and people affected by the shite going on on Lousiana. I suspect he is talking about the people who are causing these problems, not their victims.
@18
That should have been “whipe their ass”, sorry…
Heh, “wipe” doesn’t have an h in it. And whipping someone’s ass is something totally different.
re @17:
Thanks for that fillin of what I left unsaid. The technicality overturn of the Scopes conviction. I was trying to imply that the conviction was just a little hiccup in the eventual exoneration of challenging the teaching of Darwin by Scopes.
I know I should wikipedia it myself (it’s not that hard, btw) but I still present it here. I vaguely recall that Scopes’ conviction was itself just a technicality, and Scopes paid only $1 as a fine from the conviction, just to be able to move it up, to get a higher ruling to notice the technicality and overturn the conviction. or somesuch… off to wiki i go…
I graduated from high school– Class of 2000– in a very small town along the MS River in between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Those were the days… The governor’s pet issue was allowing motorcyclists to ride without helmets. Now it’s this religio-fascism.
Anyway… I can say that the History classes were a bit white-washed and slightly bent toward reactionary positions. We didn’t learn much history regarding Africa, in other words. But I can rattle off a fuck-ton of facts about the fucking Civil War. Thankfully, the 10th grade Biology class was straight-forward and devoid of anything smacking of religious instruction. These were all AP or Honors classes but I can’t imagine my classmates’ curricula were that different from my own.
Jindal sucks.
cathynewman — I feel for you. For family reasons, I live in Texas. I can’t count the number of times people on my side (liberals, atheists, FTB commenters) have raised the tired joke about forcing Texas to secede, etc. Rather than being empathetic to the crap people have to endure* here, they love crowing and collecting internet snark points. Never mind that 40% of the population voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, probably a pool of people much larger than the population of whatever state they live in. Yeah, it rankles.
* = yes, we can vote, but despite the best efforts of the dems, including fleeing the state to prevent a vote on it, republicans successfully jerrymandered the state. there are tons of rural counties with outsized influence on voting issues. and here, as anywhere, money talks, and there are enough rich Texans to make sure they get what they want. One other bit of it just is the natural tendency of republican pols to be more cutthroat, and liberals largely don’t have the constitution to gin up fear voting the same way.
#18 Dreaming,
Of course it is.
From PZ’s OP: “…our introductory biology class here — it’s intended to cover basics of evolution as if the students had never heard of it before…”
“undo the damage that some other fucker has done” is exactly what this intro class is expected to do.
Teaching is not just conveying knew knowledge but is also correcting bad knowledge.
It is fucking depressing to hear that these teachers are getting away with teaching from the Bible in a science class. That some people turn around and call teaching evolution as an imposition of religion on the students is just so galling and yet so fucking predictable.
I was educated K-7 in Louisiana in the 60’s and it was all science, all the time. I don’t recall a single instance of talking about religion or that the natural world wasn’t exactly that. Sure, we dabbled in witchcraft but how else do you get through algebra?
Don’t worry, PZ, those good old boys and girls won’t be going up to Yankee land to get further educated because after high school they’re done. They’ll join the family bait business or the military or start a church. Ya-HOO!
Dreaming @18
I disagree with the assertion that colleges shouldn’t be teaching remedial content, because it turns out there’s some privilege hidden inside it.
Which college students are most likely to have come from high schools that didn’t teach evolution for religious reasons? Or had lousy science classes because the high schools are underfunded, understaffed, or otherwise failing? They tend to be students from poorer school districts, inner cities, places like that. Basically the sort of students who are under-represented at colleges now.
I know this because a few years back I taught a remedial college chem class. While the college overall was 80+% white, the remedial class (whose students were targeted based on their high school proficiency and previous chemistry courses) was at least 2/3 racial or ethnic minorities.
Yes the remedial classes are essentially putting a bandage over the gaping wound that is high school education in this country, but universities can’t directly fix that, and teaching the remedial material is better than ignoring the problem.
azpual3 @24: Yes, what you say is true, but the problem comes down to the bad information students receive. I also teach college freshman biology courses, in a red state, and 85% of our students are creationists (I’m not just throwing a number out there; I’ve actually done studies).
The time I spend teaching students basic information they should have come through K-12 with (and some of it they should have had by 3rd grade) takes a great deal of time from teaching college level material. Yes, I am teaching an introductory course, but I also have to teach so much basic information that by the time I get to the college level work, the students are exhausted (as am I). Is it the fault of the teachers? Or the churches? Or did the teachers teach it and the students forget it? I have no idea. All I know is that it is NOT my job to teach basic 3rd grade math and science before I can get to the high school science, and then to the college science.
I don’t write off the students. I don’t think PZ does either. I suspect he was engaging in hyperbole, not actually meaning that if he gets a student from Louisiana he is going to refuse to deal with their basic ignorance of evolution. It was a literary function, not an actual one, when he said he was writing them off. After so many years of reading PZ, I would think most of the commenters here would understand that.
@20 consciousness razor
xDD I blame the heat! Thanx for the correction.
@24 azpaul3
You are confusing what usually is the case with what ought to be the case. Students at the introductory biology class are being taught evolution as if they had never heard of it because of a failure of highschools to introduce the subject properly. That’s their failure, not PZ’s or anybody else in his position. Their work to undo the damage is an extra they should be praised for having to endure. You are placing the blame and the responsibility on entirely the wrong people and leaving the fuckers who are causing the damage scotch free.
slithey tove @ # 21: … vaguely recall that Scopes’ conviction was itself just a technicality…
The ACLU represented Scopes, who had deliberately broken the no-teaching-evolution law to provide a test case to get the law overthrown. The defense case consisted of an attack on the law, with no attempt to claim “innocence”.
[From Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, pg 191]
However, the law specified that the jury should set the penalty for violations, but the judge himself assessed the fine ($100), thus providing the technical error by which the Tennessee Supreme Court evaded ruling on the law itself. Nothing I’ve read on the case has answered the question of whether the judge set up that outcome deliberately or just stumbled into it in the hubbub of the
circustrial.My new favorite sentence.
It’s quite sad, but unfortunately it is PZ’s job to undo the damage done by simple-minded and outright lying preachers, teachers and parents. In a sane world, a university teacher would have better things to do with their time than correcting deliberately disinformation, but as we all know, this is pretty fucking far from a sane world.
What ought be the case is that the students come into school with acceptably accurate basic knowledge. We do not live in such a world.
Fool.
I did not fault PZ for this sad state of student knowledge. I take exception to his complaint about the difficulty in correcting that knowledge. That is his job.
I am sorry the universe and the State of Louisiana have conspired to make his job difficult in this respect. But what he is paid for is to teach.
Also, to “write off” Louisiana because of its lousy teaching is to write off the innocent students as well; the very students who may come to him for correction in the near future. Don’t write them off. Teach them.
I don’t imagine PZ is sincerely planning on writing off students from Louisiana. If one were to look at how much creationist nonsense has been stuffed into science education, and looked at the gutting of actual content of science education, in every state, I imagine we would probably be looking at abandoning students from at least half of the states in the union.
re “Scopes trial” @30:
thanks for the synopsis. In addition; my wiki research tells us that the fine ($100) was set by the law itself (not the judge). The technicality was that the is a prior specification that in all cases, only the jury can impose the amount of the fine. Since the law in question imposed a specified fine a priori, the Supreme Court of Tenn ruled it (the law) invalid, so tossed the case. Leaving undecided any ruling of guilt/non-guilty.
So. I was too hasty to use this as a prior example of Rethugs current thinking of, “because of a single case, problem SOLVED”.
apologies for the attempted derail.
re 34:
I agree. PZ wrote of Louisiana. To suppose that ‘write off’ applies to all the students from there, is too much.
azpaul3
PZ (or any professor) is getting paid to give certain classes containing certain content. If time cannot be spent teaching the aforementioned content, then all the students loose.
Let’s say the class is introductory biology. If the teacher first needs to teach maths because some people didn’t get enough of that in high school, en then needs to proceed to teach some English because some student’s level of English is insufficient to folow the class, then the class is a total failure and the teacher didn’t do their job.
Now, you can argue that the university should foresee remedial classes, and that it is then the job of the teachers of those classes to cover these basics. But those are separate classes.
So, uh, did you folks complaining read the bit where he says “you’re doing a lousy job of teaching your children”? Because that one makes it pretty clear he’s not referring to writing off anyone from Louisiana. Except maybe Jindal.
In my experience, Universities tend not to have super remedial classes. That’s part of the reason why there are admission standards. If you need remedial education, then you are referred to the local Junior College. Come back when you are up to speed. I know some people who had to do just that for both Calculus and Physics. If you need high school level education, then a 4 year University is not the place to get it. Go to the JC . You’ll still get you credit and it will save you $
JJ831,
I get it, a university should not be required to foresee an entire high school level programme. I do think in some specific topics a university is well placed to offer remedial courses, for the remained, a student service offered by the university which points students to the correct other institutions where they can be further helped seems helpful.
I teach freshman biology classes for biology majors at a big Texas university. I assume that even though these are biology majors, they do not know much biology when they enter because many of them were taught biology in high school by one of the football coaches. Even though I start at the beginning, students who have had poor preparation due to either a passive lack of interest or outright antipathy for evolution from their high school teachers are at a distinct advantage relative to those learned biology from an informed and caring teacher. With up to 300 students in each lecture section, it is impossible to fill in all of the holes or correct every misconception.
Teachers like the ones in the OP are setting their students up for a struggle in college, despite the best efforts of professors.
When I was teaching in a large Texas high school, a colleague who taught evolution as fact in his biology class was complained about by parents, written up by his department head and harassed by administrators “carefully monitoring” his class for the rest of the year. The administration chose not to renew his contract for the next year. Many of my students told me that he was their favorite teacher – caring and informative. BTW – his wife was given the same treatment in a Jr. high where she taught science.
That couple quickly left Texas.
My grandson attends a Texas high school that has won several awards as a school of excellence. He has had arguments with science teachers in both Jr. high and high school when the class was told to read the chapter on evolution just in case there are any questions on the state test or the SAT, but to otherwise ignore the contents as untrue.
I am concerned that his future science professors will think less of him for the state in which he was educated, even though his parents and grandparents have made sure that he has been exposed to real science.
#37: zenlike,
The subject here is teaching Biology. Specifically evolution. Not math or English or art or basket weaving.
If the student has no knowledge of evolution or has erroneous ideas about evolution then it doesn’t matter how difficult the task, the job, for which the instructor is paid, is to teach her evolution. Not math or English or art or basket weaving.
Dr. M: “I know that some of your kids are smart enough to see beyond the drivel your teachers promote, and I really feel for them — they’re going to have to work twice as hard to get past Louisiana’s reputation.”
Indeed. And the teacher’s job is to help the student in that effort. To help overcome the deficiencies in her past schooling in evolution. Not in math or in English or in art or in basket weaving.
#34: anteprepro
I know he wouldn’t. But the wording was in the OP and needed to be challenged. Otherwise this thread would be no fun at all.
Shithead, there is a difference between teaching chemistry at the highschool level, the AP level (usually equivalent of a freshmen general chemistry course), and actually teaching the general chemistry course. I’ve done two out of the three. And any biology course not mentioning evolution isn’t certifiable, and and any teacher who can’t teach evolution in high school shouldn’t be assigned to the course. Unless, of course, the teacher is under pressure from religiofascists who don’t understand science….
Magistramarla,
If your grandson takes freshman biology at a large state university in Texas in the next 5 to 10 years, there is a reasonable chance that he will take if from me (or at least a colleague with the same outlook as me). We certainly will not think less of him because of his poor preparation. We will think less of the schools and teacher who prepared him, though. However, our sympathy for him will be homeopathically diluted by the fact that he will be just one of 300 to 600 freshmen we are teaching that semester, and he will be at a distinct disadvantage relative to his classmates who had a biologically literate high school teacher.
The best advice I can give him and students like him is to approach the professor early in the semester (though I realize how difficult this can be for many freshmen) to introduce him- or herself and explain where they are coming from.
Professors, even at large, anonymous state universities, will do whatever it takes for their students to succeed. College professors, including PZ, are not the ones who are writing off students and setting them up for failure. It is their religiously blinkered high school teachers or clueless coaches who are doing that.
Sad to say, I wrote Louisiana off when they elected Mike Foster as governor. That was the last straw, Mike ran on a platform of dismantling the last remnants of Huey Long’s legacy, specifically the charity hospital system, and it was clear that Louisianians had become so stupid that they didn’t see they were shooting themselves in their own feet to spite Bill Clinton. So I left. I’ve visited back home a few times since, but haven’t seen anything to change my mind. I’m happy out here in civilization (California) and have no desire to live in the 3rd world nation that Louisiana has become ever again.
Azpaul3 I’ll refer you to JJ831’s @39, which you seem to have missed or chosen to ignore. If you can’t grasp that, then i’m done trying to explain to you why no, a college professor is not paid to teach students the most absolute basics…they are paid to teach them the advanced stuff…because it’s not kindergarten, it’s not even highschool….it’s COLLEGE. It really is not the place where people are paid to teach you the basics of any field.
People from Louisiana who take offense from this article need to look up hyperbole in the dictionary.
A friendly reminder about metaphorical language:
may be too late, but I have a question.
I live in Texas *sigh* and my daughter (aka ROTH: Red On The Head) officially became a middle schooler today. I’m not very knowledgeable about biology (I took it in rural Texas High School, on clay tablets if I recall) and I don’t really understand evolution as well as I probably should.
So to the question:
How do I figure out if her science teacher will be teaching evolution appropriately (for 6th grade) . That is to say, when we have the “meet the teacher” night, what can i do to ferret out any under the radar anti-evolution plans. I’d like to try to get some hints prior to ROTH starting, as opposed to waiting until later and questioning her. And I don’t want to tip my hand either way when we do meet the teacher.
Advice warmly accepted.
*crossposting my earlier comment to the lounge, cause I have more questions not really related to this OP.
I can only shake my head in disbelief when I read things like this. I cannot believe these things happen in the US in 2015. We are certainly not perfect here in the UK though, what with ‘faith’ schools encouraging social separation. (In my opinion, anyway.).
This accurately describes my own high school “biology” teachings. I entered college as a creationist. Introductory biology was a huge shock to my system but was directly responsible for my acceptance of the ebils of ebilution. Enormous thanks to PZ and cathynewman and all the teachers who have the patience to undo years of damage. You can’t reach all of us, but those of us whom you do reach are very grateful for your work.
It is a pity to see the Holy Gospel of MAD magazine and the likeness of the disciple Alfred E. Newman besmirched by use in this manner.