Thank you for your correspondence to the Secretary of State expressing disagreement with his decision to support the Exemplar New Business Academy Free School project with its links to the Everyday Champions Church. I hope you will appreciate the Secretary of State for Education receives a vast amount of correspondence and is unable to reply to each one personally. It is for this reason I have been asked to reply.
I'll bet he does. Probably all of it from teachers like me wondering what the fuck he thinks he's playing at. Still, I'm miffed that the DfE couldn't even manage a form letter pretending to be Govey.
No Free School is allowed to teach creationism. The Free School application guidance published by the Department now specifically says creationism, intelligent design and similar ideas cannot be taught as valid scientific theories.
Which is all well and good, except that you have organisations like the abominable Truth In Science, who have been sneaking their resources into state-funded schools for quite some time. You say they will not be able to teach creationism, but you have not said that they have to say that evolutionary theory is the best explanation for the diversity of life on Earth. This leaves them with plenty of opportunities to criticise evolutionary biology.
Furthermore, the funding agreements for all Free Schools state that divine creation should not be taught as an 'evidence-based view or theory' (a scientific theory) in any lesson: so if a school did do this they would be putting their funding at risk. We are confident that the Free School project you mention will follow the rules, having explored these questions robustly with them at interview.
See above. This is not a strict enough definition - it still allows the teaching of what is a non-existent controversy by making out that it is critical thinking. Are you familiar with the Wedge Document?
Prior to entering into a funding agreement, the Academy Trust is required to carry out a consultation about their plans to open a Free School. Consultations can be run in a number of ways including surveys, the launch of a simple website, meetings of key individuals and open public meetings.
How many scientifically literate members of the Trust are involved with each consultation? Are any of them experts in science?
Academy Trusts also need to demonstrate that they have considered the views of their stakeholders. Most do this by publishing a report setting out the key findings of their consultation.
You could have done a lot for your transparency by suggesting where it might be possible to find these reports. You know, so we could see the key findings and assess for ourselves whether a rigorous consultation has been carried out.
Every application approved has had to demonstrate that the new school will provide a broad and balanced curriculum. Free Schools are subject to Ofsted inspections in the same way as all other state schools, and the government has powers to intervene in a school where there is significant cause for concern.
And in the same way that we invested in two dozen new waste bins, put up displays of student work and told the more "challenging" individuals to not bother showing up for a week, so any school can game the system when Ofsted come around. Unless the teacher themselves is unaware that the people who've just walked into their lesson are from Ofsted, one can always pull out of the bag what should be happening in a lesson.
Please be assured that the Department will be working with the project mentioned over the coming months to ensure that the assurances they have provided us with are honoured.
You don't actually know which project I'm referring to, do you? This is your standard response to every single letter querying the possible teaching of creationism in state-funded schools.
As part of our commitment to improving the service we provide to our customers, we are interested in hearing your views and would welcome your comments via our website at: www.education.gov.uk/pcusurvey
I'm more annoyed than I should be that you missed out the full stop at the end of that sentence.
Come on now. "Guy Manly"? That's a made up name. Like Bloke Personage, or Dude Chaps. I'm suspicious that the publicity lot are involved with this - it implies this is more making Govey look good than ensuring the policy is enforced rigorously. I am not reassured.
It's often a little unwise for me to blog when I've had something to drink, but bugger it. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, and I've had a margarita. Today, faith schools have pissed me off on two fronts. I find them an utterly illiberal concept, and I long for the secularisation of the state school system, and both Paul and I actually attended faith state schools for our primary and secondary education (Catholic and Church of England respectively). I still remember being told by the priest attached to our school that I shouldn't support the Green Party because David Icke thought he was the son of God (now I don't support the Green Party because they're anti-science).
I'm reminded of the attitude of Cambridge college porters towards TV licence enforcing officers. The porters turned away the officers at the porters' lodge, because college regulations stipulated that students were not allowed televisions. Therefore no students had televisions and no TV licences were required. Yeah, right. Making up rules prohibiting something is no guarantee that the rules will be obeyed, whether it is not having a television or not having sex before marriage.
In any case, this assertion does not allow for the fact that a) abstaining from sexual intercourse does not appear to guarantee a young woman will not acquire HPV (non-penetrative sexual contact is a plausible infection route, as are fomites, vertical transmission and skin-to-skin contact), b) young women are usually held up to standards of virginity that are not expected of their prospective husbands (so a female virgin could still acquire HPV from her husband on her wedding night), and c) women who "follow strict Christian principles" can still be raped or coerced into sex.
Being offered the HPV vaccine was not linked with higher rates of sexual activity.
Receiving the HPV vaccination was not associated with increased sexual risk-taking.
HPV vaccination is unlikely to affect girls' sexual behaviour.
Well then. A move like this has no benefit to the school or to its female students. And by not informing the GPs in the area, the girls' doctors are prevented from offering a safety-net of vaccination.
I tell my male students to check their testicles, and I tell my students to check their breasts and to have regular cervical smears when they're called for them. And yes, I tell them to have their HPV vaccines. It might save their lives.
Teaching Creationism And so creationism raises its ugly head. We could have predicted this particular outcome of the disastrous free school programme. Yesterday I had a notification from the British Humanist Association regarding three creationist free schools that had been given approval to open, including Grindon Hall Christian School. According to the BHA, Grindon Hall have the policy that:
We will teach creation as a scientific theory and we will always affirm very clearly our position as Christians, i.e. that Christians believe that God's creation of the world is not just a theory but a fact with eternal consequences for our planet and for every person who has ever lived on it.
Eek. Classic "teach the controversy" stuff, part of the "wedge strategy", and just plain wrong. According to the Grauniad article linked above, the head of Grindon Hall has said this policy is out of date, and that they won't be doing that, but there is no real indication of what will be taught. The DfE hit Twitter to reiterate their position that no free school is allowedto teachcreationism as scientific fact, but the statement on their website is not exactly clear:
We would expect to see evolution and its foundation topics fully included in any science curriculum. We do not expect creationism, intelligent design and similar ideas to be taught as valid scientific theories in any state funded school.
Doesn't exactly lay down the law, does it? I'm tempted to respond that no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Not an explicit ban on the teaching of creationism as science. And that is where, I fear, the schools will start to chip away at the teaching of evolution. This is the thin end of the wedge in UK schools; this is where it begins.
So there you have it, two ways in which faith schools are damaging their students physically and intellectually. I need another drink.
I don't remember being so tired coming into the first half-term of the year before. I've had to be reminded several times this week what day it is. As I went into college on Monday to do some marking, Tuesday felt like Saturday. Today felt like a weird hybrid of Saturday and Sunday. And now half-term is nearly over. Meh.
So here's some of the stuff I've been favouriting (watch the English teacher I'm married to cringing at the imaginary word...) on Twitter and in my feeds.
There's an uplifting report on women's progress in STEM, reported in the Huffington Post. I'm not overly impressed by the image used to illustrate it - blue liquid in a graduated test tube, being held by a beautifully manicured finger that is no doubt wholly impractical for the majority of scientific lab work.
However, the positive aspect of the HuffPo article is tempered by a LinkedIn study reported in Jezebel that one in five professional women have never had a professional mentor, let alone a female one. Might I still be in academia if I had? Maybe. I know that the day one female professor came to find me, told me she could see I was suffering from depression and that she was taking me for a coffee and a damn good chat was one of the brightest moments of my whole dismal experience in St Louis.
I don't have to enforce a uniform, thank FSM. I know muggins would end up being the one volunteered to tell the girls their skirts were so short one could see what they'd had for breakfast. According to the Torygraph, schools are increasingly banning skirts in favour of trousers to ensure girls don't look like ladies of negotiable affection and incur the interest of prospective rapists. Yeah, right, because no schoolgirl wearing trousers has ever been raped. I remember there being quite a to-do about whether we got to wear trousers at school. My mum, as the wife of one of the deputy heads, went up against the headmaster's wife, and won - trousers became part of the uniform. Didn't stop my chemistry teacher writing up on the board at the start of the lesson:
Sure, dress your lower limbs in pants;
Yours are the legs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance...
Have you seen yourself retreating?
Creationism continues to loom, though I am heartened that the OCR A-level Biology specification quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky (I want to move exam boards for A-level). There is a call for more stringent guidelines on teaching creationism. There may be reason for optimism in the face of Muslim opinion on evolution - this is something I'm following closely, as I'm very much hoping to write up my PGCE research as a paper.
Finally, Kevin Zelnio has issued a call to arms on evolutionary biology and viral marketing - the last thing we want is for creationist websites to be the top hits on Google!
I've been off for ten days now, and the weather has rewarded my year's hard work with rain - all my grand plans for reading in the garden, going out on day trips and doing a lot of catching rays are on hold until Britain remembers that it's fucking summer and is supposed to be warm. The weather picked up nicely on Friday, when I picked up Chris from Highly Allochthonous from the airport and took him for beer and sausages - I think we went through a full reminiscence of every lecturer we'd had in Cambridge Earth Sciences.
There's a new site called Instagrok, which markets itself as a search engine for educational materials. I'm quite taken by the idea of having the more commercial sites discounted from my searches, so I'll be trying it out over the holiday.
Clearing some of my starred feed items, my husband shared this little gem courtesy of The Onion:
I like the satires about fundamentalism and creationism that involve the other students objecting. Sometimes it feels like it's only the teachers complaining about anti-evolution sentiments in the biology classroom, but it's worth remembering that there are a lot of students who want to learn the science, as Doonesbury demonstrates:
On the subject of inspiring students overcoming the odds to study, the Mary Sue ran a feature on Sada Mire, the only active Somali archaeologist in the world. One of my Somali students is really keen on anthropology, and somehow I have got to get her to meet Dr Mire as soon as possible.
I'm on a bit of a women-in-science binge, to prepare for my additional role next year as the chair of our Women In Science committee, and may well have more to say about this, but I noted this press release reported on Labspaces. We have a long way to go, ladies!
I'll be using this XKCD cartoon in my classes when we have to look at correlation and causation:
And I'll finish off with something that will make the former students who read my blog snigger like they're still at school (bonus points guys if you download and read the paper!): "Immune Activation Reduces Sperm Quality in the Great Tit". Don't say I don't give you interesting articles to read!
Bloody typical. I spend all this time putting together a post on GCSE Biology teaching specifications, and they all go and change it! Well, actually I did know about this, but at the time, and until the end of this academic year, there will be students examined under the old specification. The good news for you and me is that the specifications have not changed very much at all - I'll get up a revised post sometime soon. Anyway, here are some mini-bits that don't quite make up a full blog post, for your reading pleasure.
Mike Keesey has launched Phylopic, a resource with silhouette images for anyone who might need them in their phylogenies. It's wonderful to see these, and I hope many more people contribute. Best of all, from my perspective, is that they are on a clear rather than white background, so I can put them into my teaching slides without having to edit the backgrounds out. Not every organism is so easily converted to silhouette though (amoebas and bacteria...):
In reference to last week's highlight of AQA GCSE Fail, there have been some follow-ups. My post hit the Bad Science forum, probably as a result of being included on Ed Yong's Missing Links post. I've since seen that the New Humanist picked up on this, and managed to extract from AQA confirmation that future exams will not contain anything on creationism or intelligent design. I should bloody well hope so.
But AQA aren't off the hook yet: the bar-stewards discovered a marking error in some of their A-Level exams on 17 September 2010, but didn't think to notify Ofqual or UCAS until 30 September 2010. UCAS Clearing ended on 20 September 2010. Over 600 scripts were incorrectly marked, for GCSE, AS and A2, and this resulted in 13 A2 students not being able to get their first choice of university due to missing the grades (which they subsequently received), and not being able to do anything about it because UCAS didn't know until 10 days after places were no longer available for the 2010-2011 year.
In more palaeontological news, there is a new species of sauropod dinosaur, Brontomerus mcintoshi[*]. Now that we have "Thunder Thighs", I wonder if there'll be any more dinosaurs springing up with the other cruel nicknames I had as a child... They're currently getting a good deal of publicity, although as Dave Hone predicts, there'll no doubt be a load of inaccurate references to Brontosaurus.
Currently not getting any publicity at the moment is a paper linking sex, climate change and dinosaur extinction[*]. You'd think the redtops would be all over this like a rash. I have only skimmed the paper so far, but I am intrigued by a possible issue regarding genetic sex determination (GSD) and temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). For this to be a plausible mechanism, I would presume it would have to be shown that most, if not all, GSD species survived (not simply birds and mammals), and that most, if not all, TSD species died at the end of the Cretaceous. Rising global temperatures could have a rather major effect on TSD species, but one wonders if perhaps parthenogenesis as demonstrated in a number of reptiles could have countered this in the past.
Right, students - consider this your homework (in addition to the rest of it) - go read Silber's paper and come back and report on your views of its plausibility.
Finally, this has been amusing and appalling the kids in equal measure this week:
Following the theme I shall be attending the NHM After Hours event this Friday, visiting the Sexual Nature exhibit and the Let's Talk About Sex talk. I'm contemplating taking the AS Biologists to the Sexual Nature exhibit, so I'm off to scout it out to see if the little buggers are mature enough to deal with the contents...
[*]Silber, Sherman J. 2011. Human male infertility, the Y chromosome, and dinosaur extinction. Middle East Fertility Society Journal, [In Press], Corrected Proof, Available online 17 February 2011, ISSN 1110-5690, DOI: 10.1016/j.mefs.2011.01.001 [*]Taylor, Michael P., Mathew J. Wedel and Richard L. Cifelli. 2011. Brontomerus mcintoshi, a new sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah, USA. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica56(1):75-98. doi: 10.4202/app.2010.0073
I feel quite fortunate. Out of my class of A2 Biology students about half believe in one or more deities, but there is only one student who has a real problem with evolution, and their beef is with macroevolution rather than microevolution (a classic issue, if one that I'm going to need to think about to combat). Although I love teaching evolution, it is a little awkward when said student (only semi-jokingly) accuses me of trying to convert him! I see them again on Wednesday to discuss "Evidence for evolution", and I have already taken the liberty of furnishing them with a copy of "15 Evolutionary Gems". I will always take some hints and tips though!
Still, it would appear that as always I have some things to learn from my students:
The only reason they remember the Evolutionary Species Concept is because George Gaylord Simpson came up with it.
As a result they would like all the scientists they encounter to have similarly "memorable" names (although they think Melvin Calvin's parents should be given a sound talking to).
They want to petition the ICZN to change the genus of humans from Homo, as "well, the English language has changed, Miss". I cannot wait to read their submission.
Thanks to Linnaean taxonomy, they cannot conceive of an instance when a paraphyletic taxon like "Reptilia" might be a problem.
Teenagers appreciate being given a wadge of papers about speciation in cichlid fishes about as much as college seniors and grad students.
I've been getting a great deal of use out of the Understanding Evolution website, and especially their cute cartoons on fruit flies and reproductive barriers. Since I was telling a story, the students demanded that I put on a sing-song primary school teacher voice. I told them I would only do this if they came and sat cross-legged on the floor. Which the little buggers did. Damnit.
On Wednesday I decided to ask my local candidates for Brentford And Isleworth their views on a subject close to my heart. Since all three candidates have Twitter accounts it seemed like a good forum:
The first response came from - you've guessed it - my Lib Dem PPC, Andrew Dakers, who sent me a public response thus:
I think it is reasonable for creationism to be on the curriculum but I would not advocate it being on the 'science' curriculum.
Good - nice clear response and it is clear he would not be in favour of it being on the science curriculum. This makes me happy.
A day later, the Conservative PPC Mary Macleod sent me a DM (not sure why she didn't feel this was something she could @reply):
I think we should discuss different views within the curriculum including creationism, although this is down to faith perhaps not science.
Really not that clear what she'd be in favour of - do I need to "teach the controversy" or would she be happy enough for me not discussing any supernatural ideas in my science class? As she won't follow me back I can't DM her and ask for further clarification.
And what of our current MP, Ann Keen? Here's her response:
[...]
Yeah, that'd be no acknowledgement whatsoever. It would appear from her Twitter feed that she's plenty busy enough metaphorically fellating Gordon Brown and making out that the Labour Party are going to win, but this is by no means the first direct question she has ignored from myself and my husband (Paul has been in touch about the impending closure of the Tropical Zoo).
For the people who are reading the manifestos, who are watching the televised debates and engaging with their local candidates, most are finding that the Lib Dems are doing incredibly well - in some post-debate surveys from Thursday night Nick Clegg had over 60% of the votes. However, there will be problems with likely low voter turnout numbers, along with the "I've voted for X all my life and I'm going to continue to vote for X" lot.
(An aside to non-UK readers - GCSEs are qualifications that high school students sit at age 15-16, and the last compulsory education British children have.)
I saw this headline: "Creationism question 'misleading'" on the BBC News website. The AQA exam board has received a number of complaints after a question appeared on this summer's GCSE Biology paper asking students how the Bible's theory of creation seeks to explain the origins of life. I'm afraid the original wording isn't included in the news article, so we can't have a proper discussion on its significance, nor on how it might have been answered.
AQA said:
"Merely asking a question about creationism and intelligent design does not imply support for these ideas. Neither idea is included in our specification and AQA does not support the teaching of these ideas as scientific."
All fair enough, perhaps, but then the BBC went on to say:
Nonetheless, the candidates were expected to have some understanding of it. A spokeswoman explained that pupils had been asked to match up several theories, including the Biblical theory of creation, with descriptions of them. She said pupils were not taught creationism as a valid scientific theory but that it would be strange not to mention it when discussing Darwinism.
But this is a GCSE Biology class, and "[matching] up several theories, including the Biblical theory of creation, with descriptions of them" sounds awfully like a GCSE Religious Studies class.
This is all very relevant to me. In September I will begin teaching Biology at GCSE and A level (the 17-18 qualification). The college uses Edexcel rather than AQA, but evolution is still very much a topic on the syllabus. According to my teacher notes, higher tier students will be expected to:
Discuss why Charles Darwin experienced difficulty in getting his theory of evolution through natural selection accepted by the scientific community in the 19th century.
This is a world of difference to matching up theories of creation, and something I would be very happy discussing in a science class.
This is the textbook I'll be using, and on page 29 (do not read page 28 if you're a palaeontologist who suffers from high blood pressure) it reads:
Most people recognise nowadays that evolution explains the development of life on our planet and the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, when Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species, in 1859, it created a huge controversy. Some said it contradicted the Bible's account of creation. The power of the established church was so great at the time that some scientists were frightened to support Darwin. The theory of evolution also drew on a number of different areas of study (biology, chemistry, geology, geography) and scientists did not tend to cooperate across disciplines in those days. Nowadays the vast majority of serious scientists, and many Christians, accept the theory of evolution as the best explanation we currently have. The original antagonism to the idea may have been because it was so shocking. Even today in some parts of the USA, science teachers have to be very careful to explain that evolution is just a theory (which is true for almost everything in science lessons!) to avoid criticism from fundamentalist believers.
So, blogosphere, what do you think of that? Is that okay for an explanation for a 16-year-old? How could I improve that in my lessons? Given that Christianity is unlikely to be the majority religion of my students, what else might I need to consider?
Bet you weren't expecting that were you? But I don't believe in evolution. Believing in something implies that a degree of faith is needed in order to accept something that cannot be proven one way or another. Oooh, like the existence of God for example.
Creationists often use the strawman argument that "evolution is just a theory, even the scientists say so". Yeah, well we also refer to gravity as a theory, but that doesn't mean that we don't think it's a FACT, or that we're happy to have intelligent falling taught in schools as an alternative to gravity!
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.
So I don't believe in evolution for the same reason that I do not believe in gravity. There is no need to believe in something that is happening constantly, measurably and without us thinking about it. It is as silly to believe in evolution as it is to believe that 2 + 2 = 4.
Sadly this distinction has been lost on the journalist who wrote this report on a survey of evolution versus creationism, and I presume on an awful lot of the people who filled in the questionnaire, whether they are part of the 25% who "believe" evolution is definitely true, or whether they are strongly opposed to it. As for the actual figures reported, that half the people surveyed do not accept evolution, looks like we're in for a battle like the Americans have been fighting.
And because it needs to be said, evolution is a testable scientific concept. We can now see it happening in nature and in the lab. We can see it in our own embryology and that of other animals. It is as real as that force keeping you on that chair rather than atomised in space.
