Dawkins and Bad Pedagogy

Note: there is a nasty controversy about this post over on Richard Dawkins' website. Indeed, Dawkins himself has taken offense and demanded an apology. I certainly regret the tone of this post and, on reflection, I don't think I have enough evidence to claim Dawkins was promoting atheism. I have therefore withdraw part of my criticism and apologized twice.

I linked to a documentary called "The Genius of Charles Darwin" a while ago, but embedded below (or click here) is the real deal: the first installment of Richard Dawkins' new 3-part series on Darwin. I'm linking to it for two reasons: because I think it's worth watching but also because I think Dawkins is guilty of just horrendous bad pedagogy in the documentary and I want to talk a bit about that.

Let me start with a few caveats: I really like Dawkins - he has inspired me, and I think he's had a tremendous positive impact. Also, I am a fairly "hardcore" atheist not a 'Neville Chamberlain atheist'. And, obviously, I think nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Nevertheless, I don't think there is any logical incompatibility between theism and evolution, that is, I deny (part of) the conflict thesis and think theistic evolution may be extremely unparsimonious, but it is not logically contradictory. Moreover, I take it as a given that there is a difference between pedagogy and polemics and that the latter should largely be kept out of the former. I take it for granted, in other words, that instructors ought in general not to evangelize for a particular point of view or ignore alternatives when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Consequently, given the huge body of evidence and the consensus among the experts, teachers and lecturers are perfectly entitled to advocate the truth of evolution by natural selection and to dismiss or ignore alternatives. (I have been known to say things like 'anti-Darwinists are dumb and not worth taking seriously' in lectures). It is not cricket, however, to ignore alternatives and advocate a particular point of view about controversial issues like the relationship between theism and evolution.

Dawkins, I think, falls egregiously afoul of the last principle in this documentary. In one sequence, he goes to a school to teach a group 16 year-olds about evolution. Unsurprisingly, religion soon rears it head; several of the students, it turns out, are religious and they reject evolution for that reason. And what does Dawkins do? He tries to persuade them to become atheists! Now, I have nothing against evangelizing for atheism (I do it myself sometimes) but doing so (1) does not belong in the science classroom and (2) interferes with teaching evolution properly. Moreover, Dawkins' approach criminally neglects the duty of a teacher to present all sides of an argument when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Crudely speaking, there are at least four possible positions one can take on the relationship between religion and evolution: religious compatibilism (e.g. Ken Miller, Pope John Paul II), atheistic compatibilism (e.g. Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Novella), religious incompatibilism (e.g. Ken Ham, Henry Morris) and atheistic incompatibilism (e.g. Dawkins, PZ Myers). It is obvious that a teacher should at a minimum mention these four points of view and their respective proponents. Unless the scenes were not included in the documentary, Dawkins takes the atheistic incompatibilism point of view for granted and never even mentions the alternatives to his students. This is not only bad pedagogy, it is dumb from a tactical point of view twice over: if the aim is to convince students of the truth of evolution, removing impediments (like worrying they have to give up religion) is obviously a good idea. If the aim is to spread atheism, surely it is much easier to 'convert' someone who accepts science already than it is to convert someone who rejects science? Surely it is easier on average to convert a religious compatiblist who is knowledgeable about evolution than it is to convert an ignorant religious incompatibalist like a young earth creationist? (One issue here is that one does not want to be dishonest: lying to students about evolution's impact on religion would certainly be morally dubious. An incompatibilist can nevertheless go part of the way to allaying students' fears by mentioning millions of scientists and hundreds of millions of religious people do not think evolution undermines their faith. They can acknowledge, in other words, that their view is not the only one and that they might be wrong).

At one point in the documentary I wanted to scream at Dawkins to wake up - one student actually said he (I think it was a he) was afraid to learn more about evolution because he didn't want to give up his religion. By clinging dogmatically to atheistic incompatibilism, Dawkins failed this student, failed as a teacher, failed as an advocate of evolution and arguably even failed as an advocate of atheism.

Calling South African Science Bloggers

Update: the carnival has been launched. See also the substantive update.

South Africa needs science and South Africa needs prominent scientific voices. Unfortunately, like the media in much of the rest of the world, South Africa's media is not nearly welcoming enough to the skeptical and scientific views of the world. Luckily, we have great examples from the United States and elsewhere of how self-publication through blogs can affect public discourse, promoting science and acting as a counterweight to indifference, ignorance, and gullibility. However, unlike our comrades elsewhere, South African science bloggers are unconnected and not organized. I propose to change that...

Here are some suggestions. (Please let me know what you think of these and whether you'd be interested in participating. Also, other ideas are more than welcome).

1. We need to keep in contact with each other - we're a small community right now, so we can all read each other's blogs, contact each other and so on. This will allow us to coordinate and react to developments particularly relevant to South Africa.
2. We need to promote each other's blogs: I think we ought to create a South African Science Blogroll that we can put on our respective pages. (A bit like the Atheist Blogroll, but much smaller).
3. A monthly South African science / skepticism blog carnival would be a great way to draw traffic and promote our cause.
   

Things you can do: firstly, if you are a South African science or skeptical blogger, let me know via email (ionian.enchantment@gmail.com) or by commenting on this post. Secondly, spread the word - please blog about this initiative and link to this page. Lastly, contribute your ideas: let's have a public discussion about how best we can coordinate our activities and support one another.

South African science blogs I know about other than my own:

• George Claassen's Prometheus Unbound.
• Simon Halliday's Amanuensis (because economists also count).
• Doctor Spurt's Effortless Incitement.
• Owen Swart's 01 and the universe.
• Michael & Stephen's Irreverence.
• Darthfishy's Yet Another Sceptic's Blog.
• Skeptic Detective's The Skeptic Detective.
• Schrodingers Goldfish's subtle shift in emphasis.
• Pickled Bushman's Pickled Bushman.
  

Fun with geography

Warning: this game is very, very addictive.

One of the benefits of a political science major (with lots of International Relations thrown in) is a solid knowledge of geography. Try this "Traveler IQ Challenge" and see whether you can beat my score: on my first try, I got to Level 11, with 446,361 points and a "Traveler IQ" of 119 ... [Edit]: I managed to get to Level 12 on my 4th try, but there's no way I'm beating it. My knowledge of Russian, Chinese and Canadian geography isn't nearly good enough.

(Hat tip to Kelly).

Orwell's "blog"

A growing trend is to take old (read: pre-Internet) diaries or letters and serialize them on a blog, usually on the same date a set number of years after they were written originally. WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier, for example, serializes the letters of a British soldier, Harry Lamin, 90 years after he wrote the originals. Now, The Orwell Prize has just started (on August 9th) serializing the great George Orwell's diaries on a blog 70 years after he wrote them.

One can, of course, read Orwell's diaries in book form, but I must say I find the idea of reading it in bite-sized chunks exactly 70 years later quite appealing.

Tangled Bank #111

The 111th edition of the Tangled Bank blog carnival is out at Denialism Blog. My contribution to this edition is a post from a while ago, "Chimpanzees hunt with spears". Other pieces to check out: Moore Groups Blog on 13th century Irish murder victims and Living the Scientific Live on the evolution of bird plumage.

Encephalon #51

The 51st edition of the cognitive science / psychology / neuroscience blog carnival, Encephalon, is out at The Mouse Trap. Highlights: Doctor Spurt on the neural encoding of the concept "nest" in the mouse brain; Mind Hacks on consciousness, magic and the word 'the'; and Neuroscientifically Challenged on how mirror neurons have been over-hyped.

Neurons: Animated Cellular and Molecular Concepts

University of Toronto researchers have created a fantastic animated introduction to the cellular and molecular biology of the neuron. The introduction is divided into eight thematic chapters (e.g. "Anatomy of a Neuron", "Action Potential"), that explains the basics of neuroscience using interactive text and accompanied animations. Highly recommended.

By the way, the Society for Neuroscience's "Brain Facts" booklet (downloadable for free as a pdf) is also a useful introductory resource.

(Via Science's Random Samples).

Video: The Genius of Charles Darwin

The first part (of five) of a cool documentary about Darwin is embedded below (or click here).



(Via: Pharyngula)