50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution • Hacker News Board

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#41

Post by harrytuttle » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #23

harrytuttle wrote: post #10

We should exclude such people from educational institutes by nature of belief. They're not teaching science if they already have an agenda, bias or belief and allow it to interfere with objectivity and professionalism. In fact any religious school or education institute should be of independent of religion how the church and state supposedly are. This shit is unfortunately rife. I had to explain this to my daughter's…

Frightening to hear. I don't have children yet, but stories like this make me think about wanting to homeschool.

This is exactly what we're doing after the incident and others. Two extracted, one will not be going to school. We have a strong home-teaching network in the area we are moving to (Cambridgeshire) so there will be plenty of opportunities for them to grow and learn.

The other incidents included utterly sub-standard teaching [1], particularly with mathematics, bullying, actually receiving personal insults from heavily unionised teachers (for daring to speak up against the public sector - how dare I) and handing out "story books" from corporations (Lloyds in particular) to instill brands into the children from day one.

[1] I obtained a marked SAT maths paper from the school for my daughter which had 40% of questions either mis-marked, unsolvable or missed (bear in mind I have an engineering degree, so I can add ;-) ).

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#42

Post by rdouble » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:33 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #32

[deleted]

There's not a 50/50 split. A large number (46%) of South Koreans identify as "not religious." (from the link you provided)

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#43

Post by AlisdairO » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:33 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #24

prawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terns able to dive deeper (for whatever physical reason) survive and breed.

Exactly, survival for most animals are always based on their immediate ability to adapt, not the ability to adapt over thousands of years, that is the paradox of evolution. Animals supposedly evolved to have these specialized features essential for survival over thousands of years, but natural selection is in conflict. Animals need to survive their conditions immediately, they can't wait for their bodies to evolve.

> Exactly, survival for most animals are always based on their immediate ability to adapt, not the ability to adapt over thousands of years

Incorrect - it's both. Obviously adaptivity to rapid changes is key, but species don't only disappear/change due to extinction-level immediate events. Individuals also get edged out by their peers (or members of other species) who manage to outcompete them just that little bit for food, or sexual attractiveness, or any of many other reasons.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#44

Post by Tichy » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

harrytuttle wrote: post #10

We should exclude such people from educational institutes by nature of belief. They're not teaching science if they already have an agenda, bias or belief and allow it to interfere with objectivity and professionalism. In fact any religious school or education institute should be of independent of religion how the church and state supposedly are. This shit is unfortunately rife. I had to explain this to my daughter's…

Wouldn't that be grounds enough to fire the teacher?

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#45

Post by boneheadmed » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

alayne wrote: post #31

boneheadmed wrote: post #25

Evolution can be further classified into "microevolution" and "macroevolution". Evidence for microevolution is directly observable (e.g. bacteria adapting to changes of nutrients in their environment, viruses adapting to vaccines). However macroevolution has never been directly observed. It is extrapolated from considering what occurs after a multitude of generations of microevolution. An interesting new documentary…

A "documentary" about evolution by a televangelist. Give me a break.

Yes. Three evolutionary scientists are interviewed and are asked to give examples of directly observable evidence of macroevolution.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#46

Post by prawn » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:35 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #24

prawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terns able to dive deeper (for whatever physical reason) survive and breed.

Exactly, survival for most animals are always based on their immediate ability to adapt, not the ability to adapt over thousands of years, that is the paradox of evolution. Animals supposedly evolved to have these specialized features essential for survival over thousands of years, but natural selection is in conflict. Animals need to survive their conditions immediately, they can't wait for their bodies to evolve.

I don't think you understand how it works. It's not about animals adapting to survive, but the survival of those best equipped. Not everything survives.

Imagine there's a life and death surprise test on evolution. Demonstrate knowledge and you live. Fail to do so and you die. Part of the population already has a reasonable understanding of it. Others don't. You're looking at it from the perspective of the less knowledgeable cramming their study to pass the test. Evolution in this contrived case can select for those who already happen to understand the topic.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#47

Post by alexk7 » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:36 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #24

prawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terns able to dive deeper (for whatever physical reason) survive and breed.

Exactly, survival for most animals are always based on their immediate ability to adapt, not the ability to adapt over thousands of years, that is the paradox of evolution. Animals supposedly evolved to have these specialized features essential for survival over thousands of years, but natural selection is in conflict. Animals need to survive their conditions immediately, they can't wait for their bodies to evolve.

Natural selection does not occur in a series of instant events! Evolution happens over a long period as the result of a statistical advantage in survival rate. It does not work for rapid change in environment. I don't think anyone is claiming that.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#48

Post by inkaudio » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:37 PM UTC

salgernon wrote: post #22

inkaudio wrote: post #17

I love science & technology therefore I'm alarmed because so many scientist and technologist don't see the inherit paradox in evolution. Natural selection makes it virtually impossible for animals to adapt via the proposed mutations. Natural selection happens immediately, valuable life preserving mutations are suppose occur (typically) over thousands of years. To illustrate Arctic terns are dying because they are not…

Congratulations, you are front row center to a mass extinction event. There was not time for the dinosaurs to react to the meteor either.

Don't underestimate natural selection, specialization is more common than not. Most animals are so specialized to their environment it would be impossible for them to survive without these inborn essential traits. We can't demonstrate how they could survive while evolving these essential traits.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#49

Post by Tichy » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #17

I love science & technology therefore I'm alarmed because so many scientist and technologist don't see the inherit paradox in evolution. Natural selection makes it virtually impossible for animals to adapt via the proposed mutations. Natural selection happens immediately, valuable life preserving mutations are suppose occur (typically) over thousands of years. To illustrate Arctic terns are dying because they are not…

Nowhere in evolution theory does it say that it has to take 1000s of years. Neither does it claim that every species would find a way to adapt to any change of environment.

You are just creating strawmen to support your belief. Evolution theory is not even confined to biology. You can watch it life in computer simulations if you want to.

Re: 50% of South Korean biology teachers do not accept evolution

#50

Post by wnewman » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 3:39 PM UTC

That the South Korean school system would do this is discouraging, no question. But I am also discouraged by how, when reading academic scientists and academic journals (_Nature_ in this case), it seems considerably easier to find concern about unscientific nonsense beloved of the right than about unscientific nonsense beloved of the left.

E.g., individual genetic heritability is even more fundamental and even more loudly supported by obvious evidence than evolution by natural selection. Yet not only is this sometimes slighted in the high school curriculum, one can find academic work from prestigious institutions that pretends heritability does not exist (or is at least, for some unexplained reason, absolutely negligible). See, e.g., Chan and Boliver "The Grandparents Effect in Social Mobility", http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0006/papers/asronline.pdf (HT http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/a-grandparent-effect/). It is not easy (for this reader with a BS in Biology) to see why it's scientifically OK to assume that heritability is negligible at the level of detail considered by Chan and Boliver ("if mobility follows a first-order Markovian process"; "well-connected grandparents could also use their social contacts to help grandchildren with job searches"; citations into a more than a decade of research on multigenerational issues, e.g. the cite to Bengtson). It's easy to see how this taboo can help produce useful political soundbites, and why the BBC would take it and run with it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23101446 . It's just hard to see why scientists wouldn't be concerned about this behavior by the BBC and by the academic research community.

In general, it's sensible for a scientific journal to worry about unscientific claptrap. However, specifically skipping over the unscientific claptrap beloved of their faction in the BBC, in academic science, and in academic journals in order to zero in on the unscientific claptrap of rival factions is unbecoming in an organization that claims to be scientific. It doesn't resemble science as much as it resembles sleazy-think-tank-style selective invocation of research in order to advance a political agenda.