Smrt Lernins

Perhaps it’s proof that God loves the secular homeschoolers, too–or at the very least, humors us–that a friend of mine should pass this link along to me just in time for a Secular Thursday. Pharyngula, a blogger at ScienceBlogs write about his dismay over the way a “science” textbook published by Bob Jones University presents the topic of electricity. I am equally dismayed.

You can view the scanned page here or at ScienceBlogs, but here’s the text:

Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see and feel and hear only what electricity does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like.

We cannot even say where electricity comes from. Some scientists say that the sun may be the source of most electricity. Other think that the movement of the Earth produces some of it. All anyone knows is that electricity seems to be everywhere and that there are many ways to bring it forth.

How would you have to change the way you get ready for school if you did not use electricity?

“The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.” Psalm 77:18

Ok, what in the happy crap is that? I’ll tell you what it’s not: Science.

Did the person who wrote that book ever read an actual science text? Do they actually know anything about electricity? Have they ever even bothered to look up electricity on Wikipedia? We do, in fact, know what electricity is and where it comes from. It’s generated by a myriad sources. It isn’t, as Pharyngula points out, “something like oil, a substance lying in large deposits that must be harvested and poured into your hairdryer to make it work,” as the BJU text’s author seems to think.

Obviously, BJU’s presentation of things like the origin of life and changes in species is going to be significantly different from that of secular science. While I think their presentation is based on an entirely non-scientific premise, I acknowledge that said premise is going to lead to a certain way of presenting certain topics. Fine. I won’t teach that to my kids, but if you think people lived with dinosaurs and the earth is only 6000 years old, you feel free to teach that to your kids.

There is NO excuse, however, for completely misrepresenting topics like electricity. Really, how is explaining about particles and currents not compatible with creationism? Can someone explain that to me? Does electricity have to be dumbed down and falsified and just…just…stupid-ized purely for the sake of making it different from secular science? What is the purpose here?

I’m absolutely baffled, is what I am. Can’t you teach your children a creationist viewpoint without screwing up the rest of science? DO you have to distill it down to something, as Pharyngula points out, worthy of the Insane Clown Posse [if you aren't familiar with ICP, please be warned, anything related to this band contains EXPLICIT LANGUAGE]?

I just find it hard to believe that Christian homeschoolers really want their children to be dumber than a Juggalo. Why would they tolerate this insulting level of pseudoscience?

Daisy asks, “Should I join a homeschool advocacy group like HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association)?”

In a word, no.

Please forgive me if I become too wordy or impassioned, but this particular topical splinter has been digging into my brain for a while now. What comes out might not be pretty. As a secular homeschooler, I’m not ever going to be on board with the HSLDA. As a liberal homeschooler, I’m not ever going to be on board with the HSLDA. Honestly, as a homeschooler in general, I’m not ever going to be on board with the HSLDA.

HSLDA is a religious group and has, in my opinion, some rather sinister ulterior motives that go much further than protecting or extending the rights of homeschoolers. It’s not just “rah rah, homeschooling!” but a lot of unpleasant cause mixing — they’ve either directly worked against, encouraged members to work against, or celebrated legislation outlawing/limiting gay marriage, gun-free school zones, abortion, and more. Not only does this stand against things I believe in, ethically/morally and politically/legally speaking, but really crosses the line from supporting homeschool to intervening in the lives of others — ironically, the very thing they seem so convinced the government is set on doing. A 2004 article in the Boston Globe addresses many of my concerns with the organization and what I feel is an exploitation of homeschooling families and homeschooled children to push the HSLDA’s ultraconservative agenda.

When I think of major legal or social issues that might impact homeschooling, gay marriage isn’t something that springs to mind. The HSLDA seems to think it’s terribly relevant to homeschooling, however, as they sent an email to their mailing list asking if members would support amendment to ban gay marriage and later posted a Q&A page on the importance of a federal ban on gay marriage. I haven’t yet had someone else’s marriage, gay or straight, in any way affect my ability to homeschool my children, but I guess it’s possible I’m missing something. Does the mythical Gay Agenda now include “outlaw homeschooling” along with “destroy the sanctity of your marriage” and “corrupt your children” “go to work,” “raise a family,” and “live my life?”

What does abortion have to do with homeschooling, exactly, outside of the topics of health or religious belief? The HSLDA has an entire page on their site celebrating “partial birth abortion” ban. HSLDA president Michael Farris hopes, in his own words, that “homeschooled young people will help reverse Roe v. Wade.” Again, I’m curious as to what Roe v. Wade has to do with mathematics, science, language arts, or any other aspect of home education. How is Roe v. Wade, or abortion in general, an issue that should be addressed by a homeschooling organization?

Why does an organization charging around $100/year in membership dues, supposedly to pay for legal defense for homeschooling issue, instead shunt that money into stopping abortion or gay marriage, or championing non-homeschool-related political causes in general? HSLDA funds the National Center for Home Education, which is a lobbying organization, and Generation Joshua, which is designed to indoctrinate homeschooled students into the Farris’s specific set of conservative beliefs and recruit them for conservative grassroots movements.

Additionally, the HSLDA, champion of the “rights” of homeschooled parents, is also absurdly afraid of children having rights of their own.

You’re better off knowing your own rights and retaining your own counsel, IMO, unless you want to fund the above. Obviously, I’m addressing a general “you,” or more specifically, answering the question of whether I would join the HSLDA, because I certainly wouldn’t want to fund the above. Even some of my politically conservative, Christian friends won’t join the HSLDA, because they feel uncomfortable with the degree of political involvement and the related pressure on member-families. Sadly, the HSLDA presents itself as the only game in town and the only group standing between homeschoolers and terrible, crushing demise at the government’s hands. Yes, homeschoolers do have it pretty rough in some states, but the intrusive, rabidly conservative approach of the HSLDA strikes me as a way to worsen, rather than improve, conditions for homeschoolers.

Daisy also asked about joining the HSC (Homeschool Assoc of CA). This group appears to be inclusive and to genuinely focus on advocating for the rights of homeschoolers. If you really feel that joining a legal/advocacy group is important, the HSC sound like a much better bet to this [Smrt] Homeschooler.

Do you have a question for the [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to
smrtmama@smrtlernins.com

I love it when I can start my Secular Thursday off with a story about dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered multiple 243 million year old Asilisaurus skeletons*, enough to assemble a complete skeleton. If you want to get technical, this Labrador-sized creature (which lived during the middle Triassic period) is a silesaur, another member of the clade dinosauriform, so more like a cousin to the guys we call dinosaurs. Still, dinosaurs and silesaurs existed simultaneously, springing from a common ancestor, so if silesaurs existed earlier than originally thought (by about 10 million years, by scientist’s estimations), their dinosaur cousins likely did, as well.

Now, “clade” is a fun word. It refers to a branch on the tree of life and includes the ancestor and all of its descendants. Cladistics is one way of studying/classifying the diversification of life of Earth through looking at evolutionary relation. The diagram demonstrating cladistics is called a cladogram, and it’s pretty nifty-keen in that it can show the origins and derivations of pretty much everything, or at least everything related, neatly laid out so that you can see what came likely from where (or who) based on shared derived characteristics.

Cladograms don’t indicate how much time has passed, just the relation between species, which makes it a useful tool in demonstrating evolutionary concepts to children. Explaining evolution to (especially younger) children can be tricky, in my experience, because children’s understanding of time is fairly limited. Trying to conceptualize time relations between species and understand tiny changes over millions of years is confusing to a kid who still think of his years in halves. Cladograms just show the probable order of speciation, like a family tree, which kids don’t seem to have a problem understanding.

If you want to look at something really cool (though now out of date, because science…always updating and changing as we develop better tools and find more clues!), you should take a look at this dinosaur cladogram completed in 2001. The way this tool can be useful for your kids isn’t because it has an up-to-date degree of accuracy (too many discoveries sticking other creatures in between the ones list), but because it does provide an interesting visual way to track how creatures change over time. The simple dino silhouettes will probably much a lot more sense that a text-only “family tree” of evolution, plus, what kid doesn’t love dinosaurs (probably some kids, but mine aren’t among them)?

If you’d like to read more about the Asilisaurus, you might enjoy one of the articles from Discover magazine or Wired. I’m sure you want to read more about this herbivorous lap dog of the Triassic period!

Nice looking guy, isn’t he?

*Sterling J. Nesbitt, Christian A. Sidor, Randall B. Irmis, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith & Linda A. Tsuji. “Ecologically distinct dinosaurian sister group shows early diversification of Ornithodira” Nature 464, 95-98 (4 March 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature08718; Received 16 September 2009; Accepted 1 December 2009

Happy Darwin Day to one and all! Here’s a little bit about what Darwin Day means to me:

My county’s public school system (an otherwise well-thought-of system, high scores and all those things one uses to grade a public school system as “good”) has a somewhat ignoble history of dealing with the topic of evolution. Up through the ’90s, the county’s policy was to avoid the topic entirely, so as to avoid “compelling of any student to study the origin of human species,” a stunning example of the separation of church science and state. In 2001, the school system started looking for new science books and new approaches towards evolution (new approaches encouraged, I suspect, by my former biology teacher, Dr. Wesley McCoy, who has testified in favor of evolution at public hearings and federal court — it’s worth noting that Dr. McCoy, when I knew him at least, was also highly active in his church and involved in trying to bridge the gaps between the religious and scientific communities). When the religious community got wind of this shift towards the more scientifically-sound teaching of evolution, they responded with a protest signed by some 2,300 parents (a number which makes up only a small percentage of the parents of the 100,000+ students enrolled in Cobb County schools).

The county, in order to avoid a media mess over the change toward a more evolutionist science text (the horror!), decided the solution was to include this sticker in the new science texts:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Approved by
Cobb County Board of Education
Thursday, March 28, 2002

I was lucky to have graduated five years (and my brother two years) prior to this incident, but it still struck a nerve. A small group of religious individuals had put pressure on a public school over the inclusion of secular scientific theory — and had won. To those with a decent understanding of science, “scientific theory” means an explanation based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena. We understand that a “fact” is a single piece of quantifiable data and a “theory” is the means of correlating and interpreting multiple facts. To say that say “evolution is not a fact, but a theory,” is to say “a duck is not a wing, but a bird.” There’s a twisted degree of limited accuracy there (the wing is not the whole duck, nor is the duck nothing but a wing), but a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between evolutionary theory and the factual existence of evolution (the wing is one necessary component of the whole duck; the wing doesn’t exist without the duck). Evolution is a theory…that evolution itself exists is a fact. Trying to use the “just a theory, not a fact” argument to discount the scientific validity of evolution only demonstrates one’s lack of understanding of the basic principles of empirical evidence-based science and of current modern evolutionary synthesis. Or, as one writer put it, “Evolution isn’t just a theory; it’s triumphantly a theory!”

In 2004, plaintiffs Jeffrey Selman, Kathleen Chapman, Jeff Silver, Paul Mason, and terry Jackson, who all had children in the school system, brought suit claiming that the sticker violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 2005, a judged ruled on the case (Selman v. Cobb County School District), finding that the stickers violated the Lemon test (which details the requirements for legislation concerning religion):

1. The government’s action must have a legitimate secular purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive entanglement” of the government and religion.

The stickers failed the Lemon test because they gave the appearance that “the School Board [had] sided with the proponents of religious theories of origin in violation of the Establishment Clause.” The board’s choice of language — referring to evolution as “a theory, not a fact,” a well-known tactic of evolution-opponents, using “theory” in the colloquial sense to mean an opinion or guess — was ultimately the hill on which the battle was lost. Judge Cooper, who heard the case, wrote: “…the distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards to make in the most recent anti-evolution movement.”

The case was appealed and ultimately settled out of court in favor of the plaintiffs, at which time Cobb County School District state it would not order the placement of “any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the sticker that is the subject of this action.” No stickers getting in the way of children learning about evolution in public school…at least, not in Cobb County.

The National Center for Science Education, the ACLU, and Smrt Mama called this a win.

The full text of Selman v. Cobb County can be read at Talk Origins Archive, a “collection of articles and essays that explore the creationism/evolution controversy from a mainstream scientific perspective.” You can find a list of additional resources on teaching evolution to your pre-collegiate students here.

I hate defining myself by what I’m not, but in the case of secular homeschool curricula, especially science curricula, it often really does come down to finding something that is not-religious. The options for homeschool science are pretty much all either religious or the supposedly neutral curricula that are really anything but. The issue is that there is no such thing as neutrality about science — you should be as impartial (in your methodology and interpretation of data) as possible, you can be avoidant (get around that pesky evolution issue by just not mentioning it) of those issues that are the source of dissent — but you can’t really be neutral when it comes to the issue of scientific theory versus religious doctrine.

If you discuss biology (though many Christian curricula call it “life science” or “zoology”) without mentioning evolution, you’ve made a decidedly un-neutral choice. If you present both the theory of evolution and the doctrine of creationism, you’re still making a choice that isn’t neutral — you’re presenting both as equally valid options, two “beliefs” of equal weight between which to choose, and which involves having made the choice to place religious dogma on the same level as evidence-based science.

Once you’ve made your choice, stick with it. Creationism and evolution are incompatible. Literal 6-day creationism and evolution, even less so. Either God made the Earth and its inhabitants in a divine wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am or not. Either the Earth and its inhabitants evolved over time, or they didn’t. Your science text needs to take a stance one way or the other. Anything less is hypocritical and a little bit condescending. A secular science text shouldn’t even address the topic of creationism (or it’s half-assed, fence-sitting cousin, “intelligent design”). There’s no need to bring it up in order to dispute it, because if your text is evidence-based and scientific, religious doctrine has no bearing on it.

Let your argument for your belief stand on its own merits, instead of basing it on how mine is wrong. There’s a time and place for the refutation of fallacies, but I don’t need to see the points of creationism discredited one by one in my child’s science text. The same should go for the creationists, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to discredit evolution. The wrongness of someone else’s belief isn’t argument enough for the rightness of yours. What I want is evidence, not faux neutrality. I want rigorous, secular science that addresses real scientific theories, rather than ignoring them to appease both sides. I’d like to have my scientific chocolate peanut butter free of any theological chocolate. That’s decidedly hard to come by in the world of homeschool materials.