Teaching beyond the textbook

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

One hundred years ago, the trial of the century took place in a small southern town: The State of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes. A Tennessee state law prohibited the teaching of evolution in schools. John Scopes was put on trial for violating that law.

BROWN: We’ve slated an episode about the Scopes trial for a special weekend edition of The World and Everything in It in partnership with our Doubletake series.

But today, we’ll hear from a current biology teacher … and from a lawyer. They’ll talk about the landmines at play when teaching evolution in the classroom today.

And Jenny, you bring us the story.

KRISTIN SEDATE: Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is my purpose? How should I live? And what is truth?

ROUGH: Those are the five worldview questions Kristin Sedate asks her high school students in biology class.

Over the years, she’s taught in both public schools and private Christian schools. In Christian schools, she can present the two origins stories—creation and evolution —side by side. Then go through the questions.

SEDATE: How does a Christian worldview answer those five questions and how does an evolutionary worldview answer those five questions?

But in public schools, it requires a lot more finagling. She says she can’t teach about creation.

SEDATE: Your hands are pretty much tied in the public schools. You’re very tied to the curriculum. You’re very tied to the textbook.

That’s because of the way the law has, well, evolved over the years! In the 1920s, a handful of states passed laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution. But in 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws violate the establishment clause of the Constitution.

Then—on similar grounds—a 1987 Supreme Court case struck down a Louisiana law that required the teaching of creation science alongside evolution.

So how does a standard biology textbook today present evolution?

SEDATE: It will say the theory of evolution, but it is absolutely presented as fact.

The curriculum is based largely on the work of Charles Darwin. With the discovery of genetics, scientists added some upgrades over the years. Now it’s known as Neo-Darwinism.

But the theory has weaknesses. Like how life arose from non-life or the gap that would explain how asexual organisms that replicate became male and female life forms that sexually reproduce.

SEDATE: Mitosis and meiosis are two separate processes.

And the fact that evolution is linear, but life is not.

SEDATE: Bones cannot exist without blood. But blood is made in the bones.

Sedate also likes to talk to her students about the complexity of DNA.

SEDATE: Our kids these days understand coding. They understand how precise coding has to be. And no kid will tell you that code just happens by itself, that it can just write itself. They understand design. They understand intelligent thought.

Then there’s the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, combined with what’s known as the Cambrian explosion.

SEDATE: We have no fossil record, no fossil record, no fossil record, and all this strata, and then all of the sudden, you see all these fossils. And so again, to me, I’m like, that shows life came to be at this certain point.

When she teaches, Sedate feels convicted to raise these points. But for biology teachers like her, discussing evolution’s problems gets tricky in public school classrooms.

SEDATE: You can absolutely lose your job and be blackballed as far as being hired somewhere else, that kind of thing.

Many of these cases require the assistance of an expert.

CASEY LUSKIN: I’ve been a California licensed attorney since 2005.

Casey Luskin is a lawyer and a geologist with the Discovery Institute. His law practice falls almost exclusively within the realm of academic freedom. He advises teachers:

LUSKIN: On how to teach evolution objectively without getting into legal trouble. It’s a pretty weird, niche area.

The Discovery Institute where Luskin works promotes the idea that many aspects in the universe are explained by an intelligent cause rather than undirected natural selection.

Luskin says the term “intelligent designer” doesn’t necessarily mean the Christian God. But in 2005, a federal district court found it’s unconstitutional to teach intelligent design in public schools—claiming it is a form of creationism.

But Luskin says teachers aren’t teaching creationism.

LUSKIN: We’re talking about teaching scientific critiques of evolution. Simply peer reviewed science that challenges some of the evidence that might be in the textbook.

In fact, in the 1987 Supreme Court case, the Court made a point to note that teaching scientific critiques of prevailing theories could be done as long as it has a clear secular intent.

LUSKIN: And so when a teacher is doing that they are on very firm legal ground.

Even so, teachers who poke holes in Neo-Darwinism get pushback. Luskin says teachers have very little academic freedom.

LUSKIN: So if a school board does not want you to teach X, Y, or Z, even if it's legal, even if there's nothing unconstitutional with doing that, the school board has the right basically to exercise very tight control over what teachers teach in the classroom.

In response, some states have passed academic freedom bills.

LUSKIN: This is legislation that protects the rights of teachers to teach controversial scientific topics, like evolution or human cloning.

When Sedate taught in private Christian schools, she found more flexibility. She appreciated the fact that the textbook presented quite a bit of information about evolution.

SEDATE: Anyone in Christian education would agree that we need to understand what the theory of evolution is, what it says so students can learn about it.

But it also presented the Christian worldview of creation. And Sedate covers the fact that there’s challenging questions within the Genesis account, too.

SEDATE: A God that we can’t see with our eyes that created the world just by speaking. I understand that doesn’t make sense either.

And although she believes in a six-day creation, she explains that Christians may disagree on the details and the timing of the Genesis account.

SEDATE: But Genesis makes it clear that there is an all-powerful God who is the designer and creator of the world and the life that we see in that world.

Sedate says when schools allow both theories to be taught together, it leads to actual learning—giving students the opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of both explanations.

Sedate says everybody puts his or her faith in something. Students who believe nature speaks to a designer have an uphill battle.

SEDATE: Unfortunately our science classrooms are geared these days, especially at institutions of higher learning, would tell them that they’re less than, that they’re foolish, that they’re not intelligent if they believe in creation.

But Sedate inspires her kids to not get discouraged.

SEDATE: I tell them they can be great scientists and be creationists. They can be just as great of a scientist, maybe even greater because they’re willing to look at things critically and really consider the facts.

It’s something Sedate says young creationist scientists need to hear.

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