Barashs Talk [EvolutionBlog]

University of Washington biology professor David Barash published this op-ed in The New York Times recently. The title: God, Darwin and My College Biology Class. Intriguing! Lets have a look.

EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isnt, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they dont.

Im a biologist, in fact an evolutionary biologist, although no biologist, and no biology course, can help being evolutionary. My animal behavior class, with 200 undergraduates, is built on a scaffolding of evolutionary biology.

And thats where The Talk comes in. Its irresponsible to teach biology without evolution, and yet many students worry about reconciling their beliefs with evolutionary science. Just as many Americans dont grasp the fact that evolution is not merely a theory, but the underpinning of all biological science, a substantial minority of my students are troubled to discover that their beliefs conflict with the course material.

Until recently, I had pretty much ignored such discomfort, assuming that it was their problem, not mine. Teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without molecules, or physics without mass and energy. But instead of students growing more comfortable with the tension between evolution and religion over time, the opposite seems to have happened. Thus, The Talk.

That doesnt make a whole lot of sense, alas. He has many students, unsurprisingly, who have religious objections to evolution. So he addresses the issue by opening the semester with a talk aimed at confirming their fears? Why is that a smart thing to do? He had it right the first time. Its their problem, not his.

I have a real problem with Barashs talk. My problem is not with the substance of the talk, as I shall describe below. Unlike Jerry Coyne, I do not think there is any first amendment issue here. Im not motivated by political concerns that challenging religion in this context makes it harder to protect science education below the college level. And my objection is not primarily that the talk seems tangential to the main business of the course.

Rather, my problem is that this seems like a needlessly aggressive way of starting the semester.

People who dont teach often think that teaching is just a matter of having a smart person standing at the front of the room, coldly transmitting knowledge to students who dutifully jot everything down in their notes. People who actually do the job, on the other hand, understand that teaching is far more than that. It has to do with building a rapport with the class. If you want to be effective, especially in math and science courses (where beginning students often start out nervous and fearful), you need them to trust you and to feel comfortable around you. They need to know they can talk to you about any concerns they might have. That includes the very religious students. Opening the class with an attack on their religion hardly seems like a way of building trust.

Please spare me any harangues about the value of challenging students beliefs, or about how college is about making students think in new ways, or anything like that. Im not saying that students beliefs must always be respected or anything of that nature. In an evolutionary biology class, any student raising a misinformed religious objection to the material (or a faux scientific objection easily recognizable as standard creationist BS), should be politely but firmly smacked down. I am saying, though, that you shouldnt look for excuses to be confrontational with your students. I am saying that you will have all you can handle pounding the course material into their heads, without wasting time with a lot of irrelevant preaching about religion or politics.

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Barashs Talk [EvolutionBlog]