{"id":1261,"date":"2013-08-01T14:01:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T19:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2013-08-01T14:01:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T19:01:51","slug":"teach-the-controversy-a-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/08\/01\/teach-the-controversy-a-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Teach the Controversy – A Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Laurence Moran of Sandwalk put up an interesting post yesterday<\/a>.\u00a0 Why not “teach the controversy”?\u00a0 Why not allow high school students to examine a claim in detail, using real peer-reviewed research?\u00a0 Aren’t they up for it?<\/p>\n

They probably won’t be, but if this is done right, then they will by the end of it.\u00a0 The point isn’t to specifically discredit anything (though, that’s a result), but to teach concepts like critical thinking, how to research a scientific claim, and thinking about sources.<\/p>\n

Dr. Moran suggests one of the two questions to start with.<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. The universe was created only 6000 years ago.<\/li>\n
  2. Humans were created separately from apes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    In Texas, the first question is out of scope for the basic science courses taken by all students (integrated physics and chemistry, biology, and chemistry).\u00a0 Some students may take environmental science, AP biology or chemistry, and\/or physics.\u00a0 It is a rare school that will offer astronomy.<\/p>\n

    The curricula for most courses are very constrained, but they are still so large that there’s no way to cover all of it in a normal school year.\u00a0 But these are all content based concepts.\u00a0 Most states don’t even include science practices (or lab safety) in the curricula anymore… so all that has to be taught in addition to the actual curriculum that will be tested.<\/p>\n

    The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)<\/a> will go a long way to helping out with this.\u00a0 They are almost entirely concept and practice based, rather than content.\u00a0 Content and the concepts that are content are the context in which science practices are taught.<\/p>\n

    A student who learns about photosynthesis has learned about photosynthesis.\u00a0 A student who learns how to evaluate sources and critically review documents… has learned everything that there is to know (or can soon enough on their own).<\/p>\n

    So, let’s talk about a curriculum for teaching the controversy.\u00a0 (And let’s see if any ID proponents approve.)\u00a0 This is a rough draft, feel free to add suggestions.<\/p>\n

    Based on the discussion, the obvious choice is “Humans were created separately from apes.”<\/p>\n

    Prep Activities\u00a0 ( I would do these at the end of a test, sort of an introduction to the next days work)<\/p>\n

    Brainstorming – humans and apes – what are they, how are they different, how are they the same<\/p>\n

    homework:\u00a0 research – defining characters, similarities, and differences of humans and apes, include in discussion the sources used and why those sources were used<\/p>\n

    Day 1:<\/p>\n

    Initial Question – What would we expect to see if humans and apes were created separately? (Ask students to consider genetics, morphology, behavior, etc).\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 [NOTE: This is what I would call a ‘bell-ringer’.\u00a0 Something to get the kids going when they walk in the class until the bell rings, and I finish attendance and other administrative chores.]<\/p>\n

    Ask students to create a testable, falsifiable, valid hypothesis related to the genetics of humans and apes.\u00a0 [NOTE: Hopefully, by this point, some will be asking about “apes” which isn’t a taxonomical concept.\u00a0 Then we can have a brief discussion of taxonomy and what we really mean here… presumably chimpanzees.\u00a0 If humans and chimps were created separately, then there should be little or no genetic similarities, certainly no identical mistakes.]<\/p>\n

    Research to see if this has been done.\u00a0 Have student present the sources that they used to research this question.\u00a0 Why they used those sources.\u00a0 Now would be a good time to talk about a valid source.\u00a0 i.e. Was it peer-reviewed or does it reference peer-reviewed sources.\u00a0 What is peer-review.\u00a0 Have papers been found that discredit it.\u00a0 Is it used by others in their work?\u00a0 Compare the student’s source to the original reference… do they say the same thing?\u00a0 Is the source an accurate reflection of the reference?\u00a0 Is the source selling something?\u00a0 Why is that important?<\/p>\n

    At this point, students should have found two major genetic concepts that refute humans arising from chimps separately.\u00a0 Those are The human chromosome 2 (this Wikipedia entry<\/a> lists several papers and general overview and here’s my post on how this could still result in viable offspring and a comment about how it could become fixed in the population<\/a>.) and the inability to manufacture vitamin C (this Wikipedia entry<\/a> lists some papers and a general overview).<\/p>\n

    There could also be a discussion of anatomical differences.\u00a0 For example, the shoulder blades of humans and chimps are very closely related. <\/a><\/p>\n

    For the lab component, I would get examples of the human and chimp chromosomes and have the students line them up.\u00a0 Like this one for example:<\/p>\n

    \"Human<\/a><\/p>\n

    For the Vitamin C portion, the students can be given several data sets (from this paper for example<\/a>) and asked to construct a cladogram from the vitamin C data. Maybe not a cladogram, but evidence that certain organisms are related because they have the exact same mistakes in certain genes as other organisms.\u00a0 A simple cladogram is a good way to show this.<\/p>\n

    The important point of this, is a discussion of evidence, sources, and how we know the things that we know.<\/p>\n

    Another activity, which would be enlightening is to have the students look at the evaluation of ancient humans and apes.\u00a0 If humans and created separately, then there should be a distinct line that separates fossil humans from fossil apes right?<\/p>\n

    Here’s a table that shows what creationists think of fossils.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Creationist Classifications of Hominid Fossils<\/b><\/caption>\n
    Specimen<\/th>\nCuozzo
    \n(1998)<\/td>\n    		Gish
    \n(1985)<\/td>\n    		Mehlert
    \n(1996)<\/td>\n    		Bowden
    \n(1981)
    \nMenton
    \n(1988)
    \nTaylor
    \n(1992)
    \nGish
    \n(1979)<\/td>\n    		Baker
    \n(1976)
    \nTaylor
    \nand Van
    \nBebber
    \n(1995)<\/td>\n    		Taylor
    \n(1996)
    \nLubenow
    \n(1992)<\/td>\n    		Line
    \n(2005)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"ER<\/a><\/td>\nER 1813<\/a>
    \n(510 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman
    \n??(2)<\/sup><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"Java<\/a><\/td>\nJava<\/a>
    \n(940 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"Peking<\/a><\/td>\nPeking<\/a>
    \n(915-
    \n1225 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"ER<\/a><\/td>\nER 1470<\/a>
    \n(750 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nApe<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman(1)<\/sup><\/a><\/td>\nHuman
    \n??(3)<\/sup><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"ER<\/a><\/td>\nER 3733<\/a>
    \n(850 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \"WT<\/a><\/td>\nWT 15000<\/a>
    \n(880 cc)<\/td>\n    		Ape<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\nHuman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    by Jim Foley from the Talk Origins archive hominids page<\/a> here.\u00a0 That link includes the references.\u00a0 As you can see, even the creationists can’t agree on what is a human and what is an ape.<\/p>\n

    This last bit would be (very) problematic to present in a class, but I think it certainly useful for students to research what anthropologists consider to be human and why.\u00a0 And then look at the actual fossils and think about those characters.<\/p>\n

    That’s a very rough outline.\u00a0 Of course, I’ve presented less comprehensive lesson plans in my time, too.<\/p>\n

    Read what Larry has to say about the idea and then, feel free to make suggestions for additional activities or information that would be useful.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Dr. Laurence Moran of Sandwalk put up an interesting post yesterday.\u00a0 Why not “teach the controversy”?\u00a0 Why not allow high…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,46,8,28,89,6],"tags":[939,510,98,938,117,511,283,937],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creationism","category-education","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-research-2","category-science","tag-creationism","tag-critical-thinking","tag-evidence","tag-evolution","tag-genetics-2","tag-high-school-science","tag-intelligent-design","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}