Spore & The Royal Society: Teaching Evolution

Posted on September 19, 2008
Filed Under Religion, Science |

F5540099-4F2C-49FC-ADA9-537B952DCDCF.jpgOK, I’m late to this one. But a lot of people are talking about the game Spore. I don’t have the game although I’m thinking about downloading the iPhone version of the game. The problem is that the game was hyped as if it were teaching evolution. Yet, it seems to me that as necessitated by having interventionist game play it’s really more teaching bad evolution. i.e. intelligent design.
I’m not alone in this. Doing a quick Google the top hit was from The Christian Post. It’s title even says: “‘Spore’ Game Helps Players Understand Intelligent Design. Fans of a video game about evolution include young Christian teenagers and intelligent design proponents.”

Now some folks skeptical about ID still think the game is good if it gets people interested in evolution. This seems at least somewhat right. When most fundamentalists (including many who claim belief in ID) really reject any aspect of evolution then getting them to at least accept elements is a good thing. Further once you start teaching the science then they’re more apt to accept a lot more of evolution. So curiosity is a good thing I suppose.

The question is whether this leads to people misunderstanding evolution rather than understanding it. That gets into the whole “it’s just a game” and how much people understand the difference. My guess there is that to the degree people have experience with reality they’ll see the difference. To the degree they don’t have experience it’ll lead to misunderstandings. And most people don’t have a good grounding in evolution.

What is interesting to me though are all the pro-evolution folks who are normally almost rabid against ID see this as such a good teaching moment. For instance in an oft linked to article in Education Week we have the following:

Computer games like Spore “are a natural place for students to gravitate to,” said Joe Meert, an associate professor of geology at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, who covers evolution in his classes. He is a member of Florida Citizens for Science, a group that has supported the teaching of evolution in public schools and opposed what it regards as unscientific alternatives to it.

“Even the things that it gets wrong, it could be a teachable moment,” Mr. Meert said. “Here’s something the game gets wrong. Why is it wrong?”

Here’s where I get confused. Most are familiar with the recent case of Michael Reiss and the Royal Society. Here a professor was forced to step down as the Royal Society’s director of education because he said that one should engage with creationism and ID in the classroom. (Crooked Timber has a good discussion here and more significantly a discussion of the fundamental issue here) Weiss’ point was (quoting Crooked Timber now)

…that teachers should, as a matter of good pedagogical practice, be willing to engage with students they encounter who come to the class with creationist views. That seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate position for someone concerned with science pedagogy to take.

Quick. Someone explain to me again why this is bad when done when a student raises the question out of curiosity or ignorance but good when raised due to a video game?

Comments

14 Responses to “Spore & The Royal Society: Teaching Evolution”

Maybe because the alternative is to acknowledge that an incredibly hot selling and long-anticipated game from one of the market leaders is essentially, if not centrally, about intelligent design? What’s the alternative - rail angrily against the game, then be utterly ignored and call attention to ID in the process? Many of the people who are up in arms about ID or even creationism frankly have consistency, even science, as a secondary concern at most.

And I say this as someone who doesn’t believe design detection can be scientific - that sort of design in nature defies scientific detection either for its presence or lack. What’s going on is an attempt at trying to make the best of a momentary, awkward situation.

I’ve found contrast to be a powerful teaching tool. When I try to explain evolution to friends/family, I often start with creationism and intelligent design because they are familiar with those ideas (not because they are necessarily comfortable with them), and then point out how they are not evolution.

In school districts where students are heavily indoctrinated with creationist/ID views, the very best way to teach evolution would be to teach ID first. Not that this would be politically viable….

I’ve not checked out Spore yet, but your post inspired me to order a copy. I can see both points of view. I am against any kind of ID being taught as science in schools, but the game itself might provoke discussion of what evolution is and how it works. It’s like a Zoo. It’s a horrible way to get to know things about the animal kingdom, but how many of us can trace our interest and love of animals to our experiences as children at the zoo? Zoos provide an exposure to animals in ways that we and our children would never have otherwise and lead us to explore more deeply Nature. Maybe Spore can do the same for evolution.

There is something to be said about curriculum done on the state level rather than the school district level. I really haven’t been aware of any substantial ID debates up here in Canada where we have provincially mandated curriculum.

I think there is nothing wrong with discussing creationism and ID in contradistinction to evolution and science in a science class. If you can’t explain the difference then you probably don’t know science.

Rich

Brian, I think I’m slowly coming around to that view. I think that while you can teach facts, teaching understanding means working with the preconceptions your students have. Of course I’m no teach and have never had a desire to teach beyond the teaching I did as a college student. Christ, above, does a ton of science teaching and is the expert. Although Chris, I think you’ll find that even when there is state control this issue appears in the states. It’s been a big deal in southern States like Texas or Louisiana for instance. And it tends to get people involved in attempting to influence science teaching who don’t know a whole heck of a lot about science.

“Christ, above, does a ton of science teaching and is the expert.”

I love the typo.

ID may make a nice contrast for what is and is not science, but the ID people want it as part of the curriculum as an alternative explanation for life’s complexity. It is not and should in no way enter the class room as such. I use astrology for contrasting science and non, but the switch to ID might be a better more contemporary approach.

I actually think hitting ID head on and dealing with some of the issues (such as falsification) would be useful. I can understand why some might be leery. It’s a sad truth that not all those teaching science are really adept at teaching science. Further some parents might take it as an attack on their religion if ID is attacked - even if merely treated as being non-science. That is it might make the situation worse in some locales rather than better.

Many science teachers (and even more Americans) think that science is a collection of facts, ideas, etc., rather than a philosophy based on reproducible data and testable hypotheses. Give me a biology textbook, rip out half the chapters, and I could still use it to teach “science.”

That’s why I think ID—presented as an alternate explanation and all—poses no problem in the classroom. “The eyes of squids and humans are very similar; can anyone think of an explanation for this observed phenomenon?” Let the kids come up with all sorts of ideas—from magic, to the Matrix, to ID, to Darwin, to whatever.

Sometimes I feel that my fellow scientists defend evolution as though it was some sacred dogma—to the point of making science serve evolution as opposed to evolution serve science. In many communities I think we’re winning the battle and losing the war.

I have nothing to add, except the marketing forces behind Spore are apparently aware of this. I just saw an ad on TV, and one of the lines was “do you believe in creatio-evo-lution-ism?”

Yeah, I was getting the impression from Googling that the marketers might have been using ID as a selling point. So they made the rounds of the science shows pushing the evolution angle and there has been a surprising amount of interest from the fundamentalist camps as well. Of course why knock a client just because you disagree with them?

Brian, I agree that far too many are very ignorant of the way science proceeds. A lot of that is due to very bad science teaching. And of course even if you get a good teacher they are stuck with students taught to think by route. It’s interesting that two shows, while very imperfect, do actually teach a bit of scientific thinking. (House and Mythbusters) So maybe they’ll at least affect the collective view of science somewhat.

House drives me crazy because every time I’ve watched (which is 3), he just comes up with some idea and then runs with it, sending the patient into shock or worse, causing him to rule out that hypothesis and move on to the next. Yes, it’s “scientific,” but very few scientists have the kind of budget required for being so…”pragmatic.”

But yes, I see your larger point.

I think one of the biggest reasons that K-12 science is so poorly understood by K-12 teachers is that most have never done science and in fact have taken very few science courses. They take a ton of child development, psychology, elem ed, etc. classes, but only a few science classes—and those are 100 or 200 level courses at that! What I’d love to see is a program where future science teachers are given a summer rotation internship in a college/institute research lab. These kinds of internships are already underway all over the place, so it’d be easy to set it up. The projects are rather simple and often end without any experiments actually working, but the exposure to thinking like a scientist is priceless.

I think though usually the reaction is a surprise or the person is dying which justifies more extreme measures. But I agree that in practice no hospital would ever let someone like House practice. (Which the show acknowledges and plays with)

When I was in college one of my math classes made us do a ton of reading on teaching pedagogy as it was related to mathematics. I’m not sure what a differential equation class had to do with pedagogy but I guess the teacher figured there were a lot of math minors with teaching majors in the class and was trying to get information across he feared wasn’t taught in the teaching classes. I loved it though. One of the papers we had to read was how a lot of math anxiety came about because the people teaching math - especially in elementary school - were themselves afraid of math. (Especially High School or College math) This gets communicated in some way.

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