SCIENCE EDUCATION



EVOLUTION, EDUCATION & ECOLOGY: spotlight on Kansas

Eugenie Scott: The nice thing about evolution is that it really makes biology make sense.

Phillip Johnson: Actually, the notion of evolution is so vague as to be meaningless.

Paul Ehrlich: One of the more amusing things is to hear people say “evolution is just a theory.” Well, in scientific terms, a theory is the most certain thing you can have.

Steve Abrams: Should it be taught? Of course it should be taught … but not to teach it as a fact.

Larry Scharmann: At some point, they had determined that we had banned the teaching of evolution. That didn’t happen.

Leonard Krishtalka: There’s been more evolution taught in public schools than ever before, because people started asking “well, what is this really all about then? Why is there such a controversy over this?”

*****

Ralph Titus (host): An editorial in the Emporia Kansas Gazette once posed the question: What's the Matter with Kansas? Here's part of it…. "Go east and you hear them laugh at Kansas; go west and they sneer at her …. Go into any crowd of intelligent people gathered anywhere on the globe, and you will find the Kansas man on the defensive." This was written more than a century ago, but the words could apply to more recent times. William Allen White, writing in 1896, was venting his frustration at the rise of Populism in the state. But if he had been around a century later, he would have found that Kansas once again was being ridiculed as a result of a decision by the state board of education to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. This prompts us to review the status of science education in Kansas and the educational philosophy associated with the teaching of evolution.

Part One -- Science Education

Nat Sound (Biology teacher to students at microscopes): See any nuclei yet? See any mitochondria? See any chloroplast?

Brad Williamson (High School Biology teacher, Olathe, Kansas): I would like to see the public realize that science education in this state at least is pretty darned good. This state has been known as a national leader -- which, isn't that ironic when you're talking about a state with two and a half million people -- we’re a national leader in science education and have been for a number of years.

Narrator: A biology teacher at Olathe East High School in suburban Kansas City, Brad Williamson has been actively involved with the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers for many years. In 1998, the state commissioner of education invited him to join more than two dozen other Kansans on a year-long project to develop new standards for science education in Kansas, which would provide a basis for state assessment tests.

Brad Williamson: Science is both an active process in which we push the boundary of human knowledge, which is doing science; so science is a verb in that context. That is what our previous standards emphasized at all grade levels because that is the part of science that is often not covered as well in many schools. So our charge, as I saw it and as I think the writing team saw it, was to bring more content to our state standards; more specific content and guidance for the school district. What we did was try to provide some type of framework for what the content core knowledge might be ... in all fields of science, at all grade levels. So that’s what we tried to do first. And we tried to fit that into the structure that the state was using for other curriculum areas.

Steve Abrams: That's where the curriculum standards come in. They are not to decide the curriculum, but they're to give the local boards an opportunity to know what the state board thinks is important and consequently will be on the state assessment.

Narrator: Steve Abrams and several other members of the Kansas State Board of Education found problems with the proposed curriculum standards that were presented to them in April of 1999. Their concerns focused primarily on references to evolution, and they also questioned inclusion of the so-called Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.

Steve Abrams (Kansas State Board of Education, Arkansas City): The main thing was … I mean it starts with the basic precept that they believe, and they stated in the draft standards as a matter of fact, that evolution is an over-arching, unifying concept without which you cannot study biological sciences. That sounds an awful lot like a fact. And as a veterinarian, I’ve had a lot of science courses -- biological science courses -- as an undergraduate, as well as graduate courses, and not one time did we get into the origins, the big bang theory, and animals changing from one species to another species, the macroevolution part. Should it be taught? Of course it should be taught, but not to teach it as a fact.

Narrator: Rejecting the curriculum standards presented to them by the appointed committee, the board considered a revised version prepared by Steve Abrams and a small group of individuals who shared his concerns and objectives.

Steve Abrams: In May, I presented a draft of science standards … curriculum standards I should say. And in that -- the draft that I presented talked about Darwinian evolution and, in addition, it also showed some of the critiques of it -- some of those evidences that seem to point that it is not exactly as it is cracked up to be. Couldn’t get the votes for it; couldn’t get the votes for it. Therefore, the next step is to say, “Well if we can’t do that, what my first choice is, we’ll go to the second choice.” The second choice is to pull it and to de-emphasize it. I’m still not interested in teaching it as a fact.

David McDonald: The evidence is very clear that all living things on the Earth evolved from simpler forms.

Narrator: The chair of the department of biological sciences at Wichita State University, David McDonald is one of a number of science educators who was disturbed by the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to de-emphasize evolution, which was officially announced in August of 1999.

David McDonald (Chair, Biological Sciences, Wichita State University): Well, I was very disturbed, as I always am, as any scientist is I believe, when a decision is made about science education which is influenced by ideology. So I was disturbed by that; I felt that it was a clear fundamentalist world view that was brought to bear and as such, evolution was brushed aside, the fact that the earth is very old was brushed aside -- geology; so just with one vote, much of modern science was kind of pushed to the background and that’s deeply disturbing.

Steve Abrams: I thought it would stir some controversy in the state; I really kind of expected that. I had no idea that we would receive all of this notoriety outside the state.

[Excerpt from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” -- November 9, 1999]

Jim Lehrer (NewsHour host): Now the teaching of evolution -- under attack in Kansas. Betty Ann Bowser reports:

Betty Ann Bowser: It was a simple majority vote, but it sent shock waves around the world....

Narrator: The state board’s actions on this issue immediately attracted international attention and widespread ridicule. Some people thought that the media exaggerated the extent of the board's action in regard to evolution. The chair of the department of Secondary Education at Kansas State University, Larry Scharmann, made note of such tendencies.

Larry Scharmann (Chair, Secondary Education, Kansas State University): At some point they had determined that we had banned the teaching of evolution. That didn’t happen. What did happen is more subtle than that, though, and I think if somebody actually reviews that section, what you’re going to end up seeing is that it’s more the treatment of the nature of science and the nature of theories that is the real crux of where I have the biggest problem. And as a consequence, if we accept the way that they wrote the nature of a theory, then the nature of evolution as a theory … as a consequence of the state standards that follow, are going to not be acceptable.

David McDonald: It IS a theory and that’s another problem. It is a theory but the common parlance of the word ‘theory’ means that this is conjecture; this is a guess. In science, we mean something very different when we say a theory. Let me give you an example. We still call the idea that bacteria cause infectious disease, we still call that the ‘germ theory’. Does anybody have any kind of a question about that? Of course infectious disease is caused by bacteria and viruses. We still call it a theory because that’s the way we deal with a big batch of internally consistent observations. The theory of gravitation. Lots of things we scientists call theory and we know what we are talking about, but the normal population, the rest of the world outside of our laboratories, when they say ‘theory’ it’s like, well, it’s an interesting idea but that’s just conjecture. Well, that’s not what is meant by the theory of evolution.

Eugenie Scott (Executive Director, National Center for Science Education): Evolution is to biology what the periodic table is to chemistry. As the periodic table organizes the elements and their properties and you can figure out what’s going on in chemistry based on the periodic table, so does evolution do the same thing with biological variables.

Narrator: Eugenie Scott is the director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit, membership organization that serves as a clearinghouse for information on science education and the teaching of evolution. She was invited to present a public lecture at a Congregational Church in Lawrence by a newly formed group called Kansas Citizens for Science. With a doctorate in biological anthropology, she acknowledges the complexity of evolutionary theory.

Eugenie Scott: But the basic, big idea of evolution is really graspable by anyone. The basic big idea of general evolution is that the universe has had a history -- that galaxies and stars and planets and life on Earth has changed through time. That’s a historical statement. In the case of biological evolution, a specific subfield of evolution, the big idea is that living things share common ancestors -- that we are descended with modifications from common ancestors with other creatures ... and all creatures are related in this way. That is a fairly simple idea, the essence of which can be communicated clearly enough in junior high. In senior high, students deserve to know more about the details of evolution; not just what happened in the whole branching of this tree of life, but also the mechanisms and processes that scientists have been studying to try to explain how it is that this change through time -- this descent with modification -- has taken place. So there are various levels that you can approach evolution -- from the very simple, direct ones to greater levels of complexity.

Phillip Johnson (Emeritus professor of law, UC Berkeley): Actually, the notion of evolution is so vague as to be meaningless.

Narrator: This controversy also attracted University of California emeritus law professor Phillip Johnson to Kansas. The author of a number of books such as Darwin on Trial, Johnson contends that evolution is a theory in crisis.

Phillip Johnson: Yes, the crisis of evolutionary theory has to do with a mechanism and what we understand today about the enormous complexity of cellular processes, of what you might say is the software that's needed to make the life processes run. Evolution is a theory that's just about change -- this is how it is defined: it's changes in gene frequencies or whatever. And you do get a certain amount of change, so in a limited, not in a very important way, that the theory is valid. But what it doesn't do is explain the origin of the genetic information of the software -- the program that makes everything operate. That's the issue that's really leading it into a crisis.

Eugenie Scott: A lot of the anti-evolution information is directed toward the idea that evolution is somehow a theory in crisis -- that evolution is being rapidly abandoned by scientists because it’s not good science ... it’s been discovered that it’s not good science any more. That’s just nonsense. If you go to any decent college or university in this country, you will be taught evolution matter of factly. It is only a controversial topic at the kindergarten through 12th grade level.

Phillip Johnson: The right thing to do is very simple to specify -- what educators ought to do is educate. The phrase I use is "teach the controversy." You ought to teach the school children -- the high school students, college students … whatever -- what mainstream science says or believes that the reigning theory says. That's good education. But when an enormous number are doubtful about it and the evidence isn't all that conclusive, you also ought to teach the position of the skeptics fairly. You ought to teach students so they understand why there are so many skeptics. Now they're afraid to do that -- the science educators of the Darwinian poll -- because once they let the skepticism get going, it's going to get out of control, and so they are trying to keep a lid on it. But that's bad education. That's propaganda and it's indoctrination.

Brad Williamson: The fairness issue, I think, is the critical issue that needs to be addressed, and people have to understand that there’s a significant difference in the way science operates. Science doesn’t operate the way social science operates. Social science -- the way we make most of our decisions in society are by consensus, and we hope that the truth will come out by a majority opinion as we reconcile and we grapple over these issues. But in a science classroom, we don’t let the truth come out by consensus. We work at trying to tease out, using natural evidence, what the possible truth is and we develop a model for that truth … that's never quite there ... never quite there, but each ... and when we make a claim for that knowledge, we put it out on the table for every scientists to tear down or build up or find support for. And we don’t even claim it’s reasonable knowledge until we have a whole lot of support for it. And so it’s not by consensus. Science is not something you vote upon.

David McDonald: And this is why it’s a real problem when people say, “Well gosh, you know, I mean, you’re just not being accepting of our ideas. Why don’t you just hold them on an equal level and why don’t we examine them together on an equal level?” Well, they’re not on an equal level. In a science course, we must talk about what most of the evidence supports. We are obliged as science educators to look at the evidence and say, “Well, what we’re going to cover, although there may be many creation stories, what we’re going to cover is what the evidence supports.” And evolution is here to stay for the simple reason that it has a huge amount of evidence to support it, not just from biology, but geology and anthropology and all of these other natural sciences - hard sciences we refer to them - this is an internally consistent idea that serves to tie them all together.

Part Two: Intelligent Design

Host: Many of those who oppose the teaching of evolutionary theory do so because they believe it leaves no room for a Creator. Some have tried to integrate science and religion by advancing such propositions as Intelligent Design. In Kansas, one school district considered adopting a text based on that theory -- the idea being that it would supplement the standard biology text. What is Intelligent Design? And why isn't it being taught in science classrooms? Phillip Johnson is one of its most visible advocates.

Nat sound (Phillip Johnson): Intelligent Design does not carry you into those questions. You recognize intelligence, but the nature of it is not a subject that is determined that way.

Phillip Johnson: Intelligent Design just says we should follow these usual scientific guidelines and procedures without prejudice in all areas. If you apply them in biology and to the kind of complex, specified order that is found in the genetic information in biology, then you would conclude that an intelligent cause had to be involved. The reason that that is rejected in mainstream science today doesn't have to do with the evidence it has to do with the prejudice -- that the evolutionary scientists think of their job as being, by definition, to explain everything in terms of natural causes they say, which means unintelligent causes. To allow no role for an unevolved intelligence, which would have to be supernatural. So that's a prejudice. That is not a following of the evidence. So I do not call it scientific.

Brad Williamson: The basic premise of Intelligent Design is the world is so complex it must have been designed by an intelligent, supernatural creator -- that particularly when you get down to certain complexities at the molecular level and places like that … or the incredible complexities at the cosmological level, there must have been a designer that set this all in motion or has guided it. And that may be, but it's not a question that we can ask in science, because the minute you say 'that is so complex, you can't even break it down; it had to be intelligently designed,' there's no reason to ask how it got there. And if we took that approach any place in science, we would have quit asking questions a long time ago.

Phillip Johnson: The key thing that needs to be explained is how do you get these wondrous things? How do you get a cell, which is miniaturized chemical factory or really a miniaturized city of very complex processes happening. How does that originate? That’s the problem that evolutionary theory exists to solve. So if you just say, “well it's evolution,” all have done is to stick a label on a mystery. You have to have a mechanism that explains how it happened, before you can call it science.

David McDonald: I see science, and this is from the inside ... as a practicing scientist, I see science as a very powerful way of asking how things work. How does this process occur? What are the nuts and bolts? I see religion and belief systems dealing with more ultimate questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my relationship to my fellow man? I don’t see any conflict between those two.

Larry Scharmann: Those that recognize that have recognized that there’s no need to compare one to the other and accept only one at the expense of the other. The group that helped write, in fact, the first document that was being proposed as an alternative -- the co-author of that was such an individual from the Creation Science Association for Mid-America who did take that position -- that to be a Christian means you must reject evolution -- you cannot have both; you must choose.

Phillip Johnson: I think there is a lot of doubletalk on this subject. The message of evolution is put very clearly when you get to the point of advanced levels, and all the scientific authorities are agreed on this … is that evolution, as they understand it, is an unguided, purposeless material process. God played no part in it. God is not our creator. These unintelligible, material processes are. Now when they say this doesn’t have anything to do with ultimate origins or religious issues, what they mean by that is that you can still believe in God if that fantasy makes you comfortable. But it’s all in your head. It’s not something that there is any tangible evidence of. Whereas, in fact, I think that’s completely false. If you view the evidence of biology impartially and without a bias in favor of naturalism, without a bias in favor of this mechanistic theory, you would come to the conclusion that the presence of an intelligent cause is necessary in order to produce these things.

Eugenie Scott: The issue of whether evolution replaces God or requires a rejection of God is a complicated one and again is a very definitional issue. I hate to keep coming back to definitions, but there are anti-evolutionists like Phillip Johnson who define evolution as an inherently anti-God philosophy. Well this is just empirically wrong because evolution is a science and it is no more anti-religious than is plumbing or carpentry or any other thing that you do according to natural processes.

Brad Williamson: The question that’s been asked me at different times during this controversy - “so okay, let’s say that we did all of this and we had all of this physical changing into what the human is physically. Really, what I’m concerned about is the soul. Where did the soul begin?” And all that I can say from the point of view of science is – “that’s not really a question that science can ask, because science can only ask questions about the natural world that can be answered with natural evidence. And what you’ve just asked me is something that is in the metaphysical or spiritual world, in which I have no way of gathering that evidence and I don’t ask that question.” I shouldn’t say “me” ... science. To me, that’s one of those great questions ...to me, that’s one of those places where your religion comes in and helps you to understand and reconcile it.

Larry Scharmann: I’ve never been against Intelligent Design. It’s not a tool, however, that helps you solve those same problems in a science classroom. If you want to learn about that, I think it’s great ... if you want to learn about it in social studies or in comparative religion class. It’s an important tool. I don't want to deny that tool to kids. I just think they have to find a place in the curriculum where it fits better.

Part Three: Beyond Darwin

Host: Those who advocate the teaching of Intelligent Design continue to rally their supporters and push for acceptance in science classrooms. In the meanwhile, the teaching of evolution has been reaffirmed in Kansas. Early in 2001, the State Board of Education adopted new science standards which clearly support the study of evolution. This came about following an election in which three new members joined the state board along with two who were re-elected. Steve Abrams was the only conservative board member up for re-election who was able to retain his seat. He makes note of what might be considered a silver lining in this cloud of controversy that passed over the state.

Steve Abrams: One of the things that I think has been the best thing that has come out of that controversy is the parents getting involved. No matter which side of the argument you stand on, it has been discussed many, many times that education occurs -- learning occurs best -- when parents are involved. That’s irrespective of race, irrespective of socioeconomic status; it occurs best when parents are involved. And if parents see this controversy and get involved with their kids’ education, I think that’s a win-win situation for education for the kids. So I see that as a big, big plus right there. I’ve had a lot of parents get involved with their kids’ education that I’ve heard about since the controversy.

Narrator: Parents can get involved with the education of their children in many different ways. Some find time to take their kids to places such as the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Leonard Krishtalka: The museum has been in existence as long as the University of Kansas has been in existence, because the museum was part of the original charter of the University of Kansas. So I believe it's been in existence since 1866 -- as a cabinet of natural history, now known as a natural history museum.

Narrator: The director of this museum, Leonard Krishtalka, describes the role that the institution plays in regard to science education…

Leonard Krishtalka: From the very beginning, the Kansas Legislature, in its wisdom in setting up the charter of the University, included a cabinet of natural history to teach all Kansans about the history and nature of life, of Kansas and the world. We certainly have an enormous impact on the public that lives in Kansas and surrounding areas. We reach approximately 200,000 visitors a year through our exhibits and educational programs. We reach 30,000 school kids a year in an informal science setting as opposed to a school classroom setting where they actually get to learn the science and complement the science they’re learning in the classroom through direct contact with real objects, whether they’re animals or plants or fossils. And we help reach approximately 4-500 pre-service and in-service science school teachers a year in updating them on the latest discoveries in science and translating those discoveries in their K-12 classrooms.

Narrator: During the recent, most active periods of debate over the science standards, the museum became a focal point for many different activities, as its director explains.

Leonard Krishtalka: The museum became sort of a flashpoint, because so many of our exhibits do feature evolutionary change and are examples of evolutionary change, evolutionary history. A great deal of our exhibits, many of them in the paleontology halls discuss the evolution of organisms. For example, the controversy over the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, the evolution of mosasaurs -- gigantic sea lizards that lived in the ocean that covered Kansas 80 million years ago; the evolution of the horse; evolution of the bison; so on and so forth. In a sense, every single one of our exhibits, whether they explicitly say so or not, are about the evolution of life on Earth.

Narrator: On the exterior of this building, Charles Darwin's name is prominently displayed, which may lead some to infer that the Darwinian theory of evolution is set in stone as Darwin himself is deified.

Eugenie Scott: You know, it’s interesting -- the fascination that the public has with Darwin. He’s almost the iconographic symbol of evolution. And Darwin was of course a brilliant man. He published not just The Origin of Species, but he published several other volumes of empirical research that he himself conducted. People don’t realize what a really solid scientist Darwin was. But I keep thinking, what if physicists had to be dependent upon what Kelvin said in the 19th century. Physicists aren’t dependent on Kelvin. Biologists aren’t dependent upon Darwin. Darwin made some wonderful observations, and his views are still very helpful to us, but he wasn’t right in everything, and we’ve gone far beyond Darwin.

Narrator: Emphasizing that evolution is a dynamic, on-going process in which human beings are immersed, the director of this institution expresses the view that such museums need to improve the manner in which they convey this dynamism.

Leonard Krishtalka: All natural history museums need to have exhibits and educational programs that do a much better job of tying bio-diversity with humans. As it stands, most natural history museums just by fact of history have dioramas that pretend…. They’re wonderful dioramas. They’re very artistic snapshots of a desert scene or a tropical scene or a forest scene, but basically they also pretend that nature is still pristine, untouched by humans. We need many more exhibits and educational programs that tie nature and humans together -- how much we depend on each other. I also think that natural history museums have a much larger role to play in collectively engaging the populace and becoming the environmental conscience of the nation.

Part Four: The Human Predicament

Host: Like natural history museums, zoos can play an important part in educating us about the natural world. During the recent controversy over science standards in Kansas, the Manhattan Sunset Zoo hosted an important conference relating to chimpanzee research. Among those attending the conference was the well-known primatologist Jane Goodall. As someone who has been closely associated with paleontologist Louis Leakey, whose discoveries in Africa have greatly contributed to the fossil record, it was not surprising that she would be asked questions about her thoughts on the recent debates involving evolution.

Jane Goodall (primatologist): Oh, I had one within ten minutes of arriving in the state. But you know, what I usually say is quite honestly, it’s far less important how we got to be the extraordinary beings that we are today. That’s much less important than how are we going to get out of the mess? How can we just get together around the world, however we came to be here, and create a future for our children, our grandchildren, and theirs? That’s what matters. Let’s use our energy to move together towards that goal because we don’t have that much time. And I don’t want people wasting energy on bickering about special creation versus evolution - it doesn’t matter.

Narrator: In a recently published autobiography, Jane Goodall tells why she has faith that humanity will make the changes necessary to reconnect with the natural world and pass into a new phase of human evolution. When asked if she thought a long-term, evolutionary perspective would help humans deal with the environmental problems facing the Earth, however, she had this to say.

Jane Goodall: Well, I think it’s important to think, you know, like the Native Americans, to think seven generations ahead. I don’t think evolution comes into it. It’s just simply, “do we care about the world into which our grandchildren grow up?” I have two grandchildren and I care very much. And if it costs a little bit more to buy products that are environmentally friendly, I’ll pay it. It may not be easy for some people, but everybody can try. You know, that’s what we’ve got to think of the future.

Paul Ehrlich (Professor of population studies, Stanford University): What do we owe, if anything, to future generations. Can we count on them always being richer than we are and better able to cope with things? How much of our non-renewable resources should we in some sense save for future generations? What are the ethical things to do? How carefully… How much should you think about future generations? And, of course, in all these environmental issues, is it right to hand a degraded planet down to the next generation or should we be struggling to hand a better planet to our children?

Narrator: A biology professor at Stanford University, Paul Ehrlich has written extensively about environmental issues and the course of human evolution. Recently, he returned to the University of Kansas, where he earned his PhD, to address the annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of Science. Like Jane Goodall, he expresses a pressing concern with what is sometimes referred to as the human predicament.

Paul Ehrlich: When people talk about the human predicament, they really mean the population resource environment predicament, the problems that everybody’s heard about with global warming, with toxic pollution over the entire planet, with problems of feeding people and so on. And all of these are problems which scientists have a lot to say about and have figured out pretty much what’s going on and the problem we now have is translating what the scientists know into general public knowledge so that we can get the appropriate policy responses. This is a very complex issue and people don’t always deal with information the way, in my view, they ought to.

Jane Goodall: You know, we tend to be very apathetic -- “I’m one person, we just passed the 6 billion mark, so what difference can I make?” I mean, we all feel that. You know, we know that we should turn the tap off when we’re cleaning our teeth, but what difference will it make if I don’t for once -- I defy anybody not to feel that way because we just do. And, yeah, it would be better if I walked than take a car but I’m feeling lazy and it really wouldn’t matter when you look at the great trucks going on spewing out all their gasses, my little bit really won’t make any difference to this greenhouse gas. But you see, as you get people around the world becoming aware and knowing what they should and shouldn’t do, so you suddenly have a billion people who know what to do and what not to do all thinking the same, “It doesn’t matter what I do because I am one person.” So if you can change that mind set so that we all know that what we do does matter.

Paul Ehrlich: And so, what we’re all interested in, I think, is changing our cultural attitudes towards the environment, to getting everybody to realize that our lives depend upon a sound environment; upon the services that natural ecosystems supply us. When you hear somebody say, “Well, what we have to concentrate on now, is economics, not on the environment.” That tells you the person saying it understands nothing, because you cannot have an economy without a sound environment behind it. When we attack the environment, we’re also attacking the economy, particularly of our children. Stealing from our children. Not a very clever idea if you care about your kids.

Jane Goodall: I find that the kids, it’s easier for them to change the way they live. It’s much harder for people like over 50. I mean, you can’t really expect most people who’ve worked hard and made a nice comfortable living to quickly change their … actually very greedy … not that they think they are being greedy, but the drain on the natural resources of the affluent societies is horrendous, but people haven’t been brought up to think that way. Now the children are beginning to learn that from a young age. So hopefully, the way that they're finding of trying to interact with the environment to be more friendly towards it, they’ll take with them into adult life. That’s why I’m concentrating so much on Roots & Shoots.

Narrator: An educational organization associated with the Jane Goodall Institute, Roots and Shoots encourages young people to get involved with projects that demonstrate care and concern for animals and the environment as well as other human beings. Through locally based projects, it applies a hands-on approach to education and community service supported by a global network of young people who are committed to making the world a better place.

Jane Goodall: The most important message is that every single individual matters; every single individual has a role to play; and every single individual makes a difference everyday of his or her life. And we have a choice -- what sort of difference do we want to make this day?

Part Five: Science and Stewardship

Host: While many Americans may express concern for the environment, we may not feel that what we can do will make much of a difference. Engaged with the demands of our daily routines, it can be difficult to find time to sort out the different messages we receive about the environment. And it can be particularly difficult without a basic understanding of science.

Paul Ehrlich: One of the problems we have with the general public is that scientists, in general, have failed to teach the general public about science … to give us a public that is literate in science. I mean, if you look at our culture, which is the non-genetic information which human beings have collected and pass on to each other, at least half of it is science and technology, and yet most people avoid taking science in school, particularly in college, and that’s because most science is badly taught and they get turned off. Science is absolutely fascinating to scientists, but very often they haven’t had the training or the interest in passing on the fascination to the public. So you’ll hear things like, “we've got to wait for scientific proof.” Well, a scientist can tell you there is no such thing as scientific proof. There’s always uncertainty.

Eugenie Scott: A statement that scientists make all the time is “I don’t know yet.” And this is something that we have to live with. Sometimes the public is very poor at accepting this. I mean, they want to know whether this new pesticide is going to work and whether insects will become resistant to it and they want to know if this new cure for multiple sclerosis is going to work. They’re very concerned ... they want answers now. And in many cases, we can only say “We don’t know yet.” There are a number of areas within evolutionary understanding that we have to say “we don’t know yet; we don’t have a consensus.” These are active areas of research. One of those areas is origin of life research, which is interesting because anti-evolutionists present origin of life research as this Achilles heel of evolution and “teachers shouldn’t be teaching it because scientists can’t explain the origin of life. Well, scientists haven’t yet agreed upon an explanation for the origin of life, but they’ve got a lot of pieces of it.

David McDonald: For many years, all we had was the fossil record. Now, I don’t want to minimize the fossil record because it’s becoming more complete as we speak, but for a long time it kind of stood alone. There were other ideas; people looked at organisms and they said, “Well you know, they look similar, perhaps they evolved from one another,” but it was again, not so strong. The fossil record was the strongest thing we had. Now, however, we have an enhanced ability to look at the genetics of an organism, to look at the genome - that’s all of their genes - and to determine their sequence. And guess what -- this sequence, when we look at different organisms, is exactly in line with what the fossil record has been telling us all along, and that is, all things living descended from common ancestors. And not only does the genetic record support the fossil record in this kind of idea of common descent, but the timing is also right in sync. These two things agree with one another. So while we’ve had a good record, now we have another record that supports it; and so this argument is becoming very, very compelling.

Brad Williamson: And in science in particular, what you better be getting across is these big contextual ideas that kind of carry over throughout science so you can kind of see how all of science is connected as we tell the story of the way nature operates. And I use the “tell the story,” because we’ve teased out that story and the pathway to that story that we’ve reinforced each path along there, each theme. And by bringing it connected into some kind of connected whole, you develop a different level of understanding.

Eugenie Scott: You know, so much of biological teaching at the high school level, unfortunately, consists of memorizing lists of bold-faced terms and definitions of things. I mean, one critic counted up the bold-faced words -- the new vocabulary -- in a high school biology book and found that there was more new vocabulary than in an introductory French book. This is crazy. You don’t have to learn that much stuff. But more importantly than that -- how can a student possibly come up with an idea of science or of biology as some kind of a unified field that actually can contribute to our knowledge about the universe when basically all he’s being given is a list of terms and concepts to memorize?

Brad Williamson: And one of the things that we don’t do as well as we need to do in science education or in education in general is helping students contextualize and bring everything that they’re learning and changing from little bitty pieces of unattached facts or concepts into some great understanding. And that understanding is so hard to teach. But evolution is one of those big explanations in science that help you understand lots of things when you put it in that framework.

Eugenie Scott: The nice thing about evolution is that it really makes biology make sense. You know, the geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky once said “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” And by “makes sense,” what he meant was “why are things like they are instead of some other way?” And if you look at just one thing – if you look at just the variety of animals and plants out there, why is it that you can take these animals and plants and you can group them together in more and more dissimilar groups -- you can group similar species into genera; you can take various genera and group them into families; you can take a variety of families and group them into orders ... because their similarities and differences are patterned; they’re not just random.

Narrator: The theory of evolution provides a framework for conceptualizing the manner in which natural processes have contributed to the biodiversity found on Earth and continue to shape the world in which we live. In cases where it has become the subject of controversy, however, it's often depicted as a particular type of evolution, involving common misconceptions.

Larry Scharmann: If you were to canvas the general public and just use the “e” word itself, the connotation is going to be human evolution, common ancestry with apes or even “we came from monkeys.” There’s a subtle difference there in terms of common ancestry with something that was apelike versus saying we’re a direct lineage from. That’s never been the case.

Eugenie Scott: In my line of work, I do a lot of radio call-in shows. And it seems like almost every single show, somebody calls in with what they think is going to be the question that’s really going to nail that smartalecky evolution lady. They say “if man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” And you just sort of sigh and count to three and explain very gently that someone has misled you about evolution ... because we did not evolve from monkeys. We and monkeys shared a common ancestor. And the whole nature of evolution has to do with common ancestry. We did not evolve from chimps. Chimps and we share common ancestors. It’s sort of like saying you evolved from your brother ... because you and your brother share a common ancestor in your dad, you and your cousin share a common ancestor in your grandpa – that’s the relationship that is between us and chimps and us and monkeys.

David McDonald: One of the things that, again as a geneticist … that the genetic record tells us, it speaks very strongly about the unity of all living things. All living things share a common relatedness. And some people, that bothers them. Some people say, “Well, it bothers me to think that I’m related to a lower organism like a bacterium or a worm or something like that.” But in point of fact … and again answering your question, I think it points out that we share this planet with other organisms that are evolving along with us and I think that implies a responsibility to be good stewards of the planet.

Part Six: Cultural Evolution

Host: At this moment in history, societies around the world are dealing with the environmental and social consequences of rapidly changing technology and economic globalization. Although we live in an age when information streams to us in many different forms, making sense of it can be challenging and falling victim to information overload all too common.

David McDonald: It is, in a sense, overload. It’s overload which leads to a kind of pulling back and saying, “You know, it used to be so much simpler; and why don’t we, in some respects, just go back to simpler times?” In some respects, that’s not an unattractive idea, but we have some important problems to solve and deal with as a civilization. We are not that far ahead of some things like some viral pathogens; we’re not that far ahead of some bacterial pathogens -- these are disease-causing organisms). And there are quite a number of heritable diseases that people continue to suffer from: Huntington’s Disease, cystic fibrosis -- all of these things are going to require even more accomplishment than we’ve been able to do till now. And for all of these people that are likely to suffer from those, it’s unfair to say, “You know, let’s pull back, let’s pull back.” I mean, when you make that decision as a school board or when you make that decision as part of any kind of decision-making body, you’re making that decision for a lot of people. And I’m not convinced all of them thoroughly understand the ramifications of that.

Brad Williamson: This isn’t like … the analogy might be like Pandora’s Box. We’re opening up some things and we can’t get it shut. It’s true – we can’t really get it shut. But it’s part of who we are. This is our basic human nature – to ask and wonder why. And at the same time, it brings along a lot of issues that we are not necessarily comfortable with. I mean computers, for instance, are a major source of frustration for all of us, but we’ve also become so dependent upon them that many of us when our computers go down or our email line goes down, we’re kinda lost for several days. So I think as a society we don’t have a lot of choice. I mean, we have to come to grips with this, and that’s part of what scientific literacy is about -- is understanding that we never quite get that black-and-white answer that we’re most comfortable with, but we can get a pretty good shade of dark gray and light gray in contrast there and feel pretty good about having our decision correct. Or let’s say, most of the time correct. And that’s an issue that many people have a hard time dealing with, but that’s the way they make every decision in their lives.

Leonard Krishtalka: If there’s one theme to human evolution from four, five or six million years ago, that theme is information management. In anthropology class we were all taught the difference between … this is how this interview started … between animals and humans -- that the difference animals and humans is that humans made tools and animals did not. Well, of course, now we know animals do make tools. Chimps make tools. Gorillas make tools. But it’s not tool making. It’s not making fire. It’s not language and it’s not all that. Those are all symptoms of what the difference is. The difference is information management. Humans have always managed information better than any other organism on earth. And managed it in such a way to ensure their survival and to ensure groundbreaking, technological discoveries, whether it’s fire or whether it’s rockets to the moon.

Narrator: In anthropological terms, information management and technological change are components of cultural evolution, which can be conceived as an historical process in which increasingly complex societies have emerged. Although he's a biologist, Paul Ehrlich maintains that cultural evolution may be more crucial to our current situation than biological evolution.

Paul Ehrlich: First of all, it’s really important to understand that from what we can see, our cultural evolution goes at very different rates. So does biological evolution in different ways. But the problem is that we …our ability to do has changed much more rapidly than our ability to understand what we’re doing and our consequences of doing it. So we’ve gone in a few hundred years from a species that had an economy based on horses, draft animals, carts, very simple machines and so on, to a society where you actually can show people pictures of someone who is in action speaking – who’s either not there or may even be dead. That’s a very, very big change. Our capabilities with things like nuclear weapons and biological weapons and chemical weapons and so on, to kill each other, to destroy the world, have become enormously greater, but we’re basically the same critters that lived in castles and fought jousts and so on and so forth. And that means we’ve got to pay a lot more attention to trying to accelerate our evolution in our ethics of how we treat each other and how we treat the environment in particular because our technological capabilities to destroy each other and to destroy the environment have become so much greater that we basically have no choice.

Leonard Krishtalka: Does this mean we have to go back to using buffalo chips over an open fire at a cave? Absolutely not. It just means we need to be smarter in applying our technological knowledge, our biological knowledge and our physical knowledge to strike the right balance between enjoying the environment, preserving the environment and yes, exploiting the environment.

Narrator: While government, industry and citizen groups continue to debate issues related to the preservation and exploitation of the environment, it’s conceivable that science education can contribute to the emergence of a new dimension within the evolutionary process – something that Paul Ehrlich refers to as conscious evolution….

Paul Ehrlich: Well, one of the things that obviously scientists would like to do is move our evolution … our cultural evolution consciously to making people recognize these changes that go on over decades. For instance, the nuclear arms race happened so slowly that people got used to the idea of there being enough nuclear bombs to destroy us all 100 times over. The general … the gradual appearance of smog, the same sort of thing. But you can teach people to learn to notice this. After all, how do we know that there’s more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Because we’ve made machines that measure it and they make a little graph and you train scientists to read that graph. And what we have to do basically is train the public and decision-makers to be better at reading those graphs -- to be aware that there are gradual changes that they don’t quickly perceive, but that it’s really incredibly important that they learn to perceive and do something about. The threats to us aren’t lions and tigers now. We’ve taken care of them. It’s little things like that line on a chart that comes from an observatory on Mauna Loa that tells us we’re gonna change the climate too fast and our kids may starve to death because of it.

Jane Goodall: So we’ve got to stop leaving the decisions to the industrialists and the politicians because only we can change the course of business by choosing ethically what to buy and what not to buy. And only we can cause the politicians to make the right environmental decisions if they know the people are behind them. But we don’t have too long. I mean, there really are horrible things going on.

Paul Ehrlich: I think it’s absolutely insane, if you think about the future of our species, if we don’t find ways to train every human being … to tell every human being the story of human evolution -- where we came from, what our characteristics are so they understand that we evolved a nervous system that was not designed to deal with the kinds of problems that are the most serious ones that we now face and we have to culturally substitute for that. It's really critical that people learn to take a long-term view if they want us to be a long-term society and a long-term species … if they want their grandchildren to be able to live a life that's something like the one they live today … at least as nice.

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Produced & directed by Dave Kendall

© 2001 KTWU/Channel 11 Topeka, Kansas

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