More creationist nonsense

Via The National Secular Society and Telegraph.co.uk.

Third of teachers would give creationism the same status as evolution in classrooms

Concludes an email poll by Teachers TV.

What? I hope the respondents were PE teachers or have nothing to do with biology or any other science. Why do I fear I am wrong? (Note: it was 31.1%. That is not one third, it's nearer 3 out of 10. Good start Teachers TV).

So a proportion of teachers feel it is acceptable to hold back scientifically aware students while they pander to superstitious belief! Why are those children taking science in the first place, are they advised that way? Kind of "It's good to have a science qualification and biology is easy. None of those damn formulae and stuff." If true that is bad advice for the children. If it's not true then surely remedial classes, at the pupils expense (or their parents) would be more productive - why opt to study biology when your background understanding is lacking?

I followed this up by watching the featured video on Teachers TV School Matters - Adam Rutherford on Evolution and Creationism.
Whilst it starts well it descends rapidly into murk.

Michael Reiss appears early on and I still think he's wrong. In fact Jeremy Pritchard and Randal Keynes seem to be the only sane voices.

Next appearance was from the inappropriately named creationist organisation 'Truth in Science*' who mailed their propaganda to all schools in the country a couple of years ago. Fifty nine schools responded that it was a "valuable classroom resource". OK there are thousands of schools in the UK but 59 responded positively, and that is 59 too many. I hope some of those head teachers were joking. Or was it the PE teachers again. I doubt it. Truth in Science produces some very modern looking science videos which are just eye candy to draw the unaware into bullshit. The sensible move would be to bin it and forget it. It's about as valuable as Harun Yahya's fishing lures (more on this some other time).

The program had also contacted various faith schools/organisations to see if they would enter into dialogue. The answer? No, not one of them. None would even offer an opinion. That says a lot about closed mindedness. Only one teacher, seemingly found at random taking a school trip round the Natural History Museum, was willing to speak about his faith and it's just blustering apologetics.

On to a school classroom where the teacher had won an award, and the lesson looked like good fun till it was polluted by a 'chaplain' misinforming a young man about the evolution of the eye. The teacher then claimed it was a case of playing devil's advocate, so what is happening? Are the kids being taught biology or debating skills?

Should creationism be taught? Yes, as part of a study of comparative religion, contrasting mythologies from around the world. I have no argument with that, social studies are important. History, especially the history of science is anther field where creationism has a place. Teaching how modern thought has developed (evolved) from Dark Age belief can give an insight into the scientific methods used today.

But classroom time in real science is too valuable to waste on primitive ideas which make no contribution to understanding.

Only one thing left to say:

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* this link has the rel="nofollow" attribute so Google will not count it as any kind of positive endorsement.