Born this way?
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so…[T]here is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while Atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal. —ERNESTINE ROSE, “A Defence of Atheism” (1861)
Boy do we secular parents love us a quote like that. It says my atheism is just a return to my natural condition, a rejection of something artificial that had been blown into my head by human culture. Like!
But in the last few years, I’ve come to think of the idea that we are born atheists as a seriously misleading one, and correcting it as Job One for secular parents.
It’s obviously true that we are born without religious belief. But this equates to what is called weak or negative atheism, the simple absence of belief in a god or gods. But what about the other major assertion there — that without inculcation, that absence would remain?
This gets at the very basic question of what religion is. The Rose quote implies that it’s a cultural construction, pure and simple. But if Ernestine Rose was right and atheism is so damn natural, why is the inculcation of religion received so eagerly and pried loose with such difficulty?
I’ve spent years chasing this question through the work of EO Wilson, Pinker, Boyer, Dennett, Diamond, Shermer and more. The result has made me less angry and frustrated and more empathetic toward the religious impulse, even as I continue to find most religious ideas both incorrect and problematic. It has also deeply informed my secular parenting in a very good way. Yet I’ve never expressed it out loud until a few months ago, when I reworked part of my parenting seminar to include it.
Thinking about religion anthropologically has made me a better proponent of my own worldview, a more effective challenger of toxic religious ideas, and a much better secular parent.
Why (the hell) we are the way we are
If you want to understand why we are the way we are, there’s no better place to look than the Paleolithic Era (2.4 million years ago – 11,000 years ago). Over 99.5 percent of the history of the genus Homo — 120,000 generations — took place during the Paleolithic. For the last 10,000 of those generations, we were anatomically modern. Same body, same brain. The brain you are carrying around in your head was evolved in response to conditions in that era, not this one. The mere 500 generations that have passed since the Paleolithic ended represent a virtual goose egg in evolutionary time.
To put it simply: we are born in the Stone Age. Childhood is a period during which we are brought — by parenting, experience, and education — into the modern world. Or not.
So if we were evolved for the Paleolithic, it seems worth asking: What was it like then? In short, it sucked to be us.
In the Lower Paleolithic, starting around 2.4 million years ago, there were an estimated 26,000 hominids on Earth. The climate was affected by frequent glacial periods that would lock up global water, leading to severe arid conditions in the temperate zones and scarce plant and animal life, making food hard to come by.
The average hominid life span was about 20 years. We lived in small bands competing for negligible resources. For two million years, our genus was balancing on the edge of extinction.
Then it got worse.
About 77,000 years ago, a supervolcano erupted in what is now Lake Toba in Indonesia. On the Volcanic Explosivity Index, (apparently created by a seven-year-old boy), this eruption was a “mega-colossal” — the highest category. Earth was plunged into a volcanic winter lasting at least a decade. The human population dropped to an estimated 5,000 individuals, each living a terrifying, marginal existence.
Now remember that these humans had the same thirsty and capable brain you and I enjoy, but few reliable methods for filling it up. The most common cause of death was infectious disease. If someone is gored by a mammoth, you can figure out how to avoid that in the future. But most people died for no apparent reason. Just broke out in bloody boils, then keeled over dead.
Imagine how terrifying such a world would be to a mind fully capable of comprehending the situation but utterly lacking in answers, and worse yet, lacking the ability to control it. It’s not hard to picture the human mind simply rebelling against that reality, declaring it unacceptable, and creating an alternate reality in its place, neatly packaged for the grateful relief of subsequent generations.
The first evidence of supernatural religion appears 130,000 years ago.
Religion solves our central problem: that we are human (to quote Jennifer Hecht), and the universe is not. It’s not really about explanation or even comfort, not exactly. It’s about seizing control, or at least imagining we have. To be fully conscious of our frailty and mortality in a hostile and indifferent universe and powerless to do anything about it would have been simply unacceptable to the human mind. So we created powerful beings whom we could ultimately control — through prayer, sacrifice, behavior changes, ritual, spinning around three times, what have you.
Conservative, traditional religion is a natural response to being human in the Paleolithic. Whether it was a good response or not is beside the point — it was the only one we had.
But we’re not in the Paleolithic anymore, you say. You certainly have the calendar on your side. We began to climb out of our situation about 500 generations ago when agriculture made it possible to stand still and live a little longer. Eventually we had the time and security to develop better responses to the problem, better ways of interrogating and controlling the world around us. But the Scientific Revolution, our biggest step forward in that journey, was just 20 generations ago. Think of that. It just happened. Our species is still suffering from the post-traumatic stress of 120,000 generations in hell. And like the battle veteran who hits the dirt when he hears a backfiring car, it takes very little to push the Paleolithic button in our heads.
Yes, your kids are born without religious belief. But they are also born with the problem of being human, which includes a strong tendency to hit the dirt when the universe backfires. One of the best things a secular parent can do is know that the Paleolithic button is there so we can help our kids resist the deeply natural urge to push it.
(Part 1 of 3. Go to Part 2.)
Catch the rainbow
- October 27, 2011
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, Science, wonder
12
Our family has a longstanding relationship with the speed of light. We take care never to exceed it, for one thing, no matter how tempting. But there’s more than that.
I had all sorts of light-related fascinations when I was a kid — that light had a speed at all, for starters, and that it was so unimaginably fast, yet also finite and measurable. I knew the moon was a light-second away, the sun eight light-minutes, and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, 4.2 light years. I knew the Milky Way, one galaxy of billions, is 100,000 light years side to side.
Light helped me finally grasp the real immensity of the universe and my own infinitesimalitude.
Light is SO much faster than (pfft) sound — almost a million times faster — which is why lightning is already kicking back with a light beer when thunder comes panting up behind.
This stuff gave me endless fodder for discussion on first dates. It also took care of second dates rather neatly.
When it came time to marry, I limited the pool to those with no more than two degrees of separation from the speed of light. Fortunately my college friend Becca attended the same high school as Nobel laureate Albert Michelson, he of the Michelson-Morley experiment, which laid the groundwork for special relativity by showing that light weirdly measures at the same speed even if you are moving rapidly toward or away from the source.
Becca and I were married in a San Francisco Lutheran church with You-Know-What streaming through the windows.
Our kids have picked up the thread. As we drove home from his football practice four years ago, Connor (then 12) asked why time slows down as you go faster. (The previous week we had discussed the very cool Hafele-Keating experiment in which cesium clocks flown around the world differed from identical clocks on the ground by a few nanoseconds. I think I spotted the exact moment during the practice that he was thinking about Hafele-Keating instead of Offensive-Lineman.) I said our velocity through space plus our velocity through time equals the speed of light, so the faster you go through space, the slower you necessarily go through time.
In less than five seconds, he said, “So light doesn’t experience time, then.”
Holy buckets. I’d never thought of it.
Last week, standing in the dark waiting for the school bus, I discovered that I’d never shared with Delaney (9) the insanely cool fact that many of the stars we see probably aren’t there anymore. Some may have blinked out before the dinosaurs went extinct, but the end of the column of photons, even at 186,000 miles a second, still hasn’t reached us. Tomorrow morning we might suddenly see a “new,” bright star in the sky, which is actually a nova that happened millions of years before. That’s what nova literally means — a new star. But it isn’t really being born — it’s dying.
She made all those astonished, comprehending sounds I’ve come to love, and we quickly re-combed her hair as the bus pulled up.
On the heels of last month’s announcement that the speed of light might have been exceeded by neutrinos at CERN, Becca took the opportunity to give her second graders a little insight into how science works. “All these years we thought light was the fastest thing possible,” she said. “Even Albert Einstein said that was true. Now maybe, just maybe, scientists have found that it’s possible for something to go even faster. First they have to test and test again to be sure, and if it is, they’ll say, ‘Wow, we were wrong. We have to change our minds.'”
It’s true that we’re capable of upending our Newtons and Einsteins when the evidence insists, but of course it never happens quite as gladly as we sometimes claim. Individual scientists are just as prone as the rest of us to kick and scream and bite to protect their favorite conclusions, until the collective enterprise of science itself busts them upside the head. The important message for these second graders, though, is that science contains the ability, the means, even the willingness to change its conclusions in light of new evidence, despite whatever preferences individual scientists might have. (The CERN scientists assumed they made an error in measurement, by the way, something that has happened before — and a team in the Netherlands think they’ve found the error.)
All this light conversation brought me back to experiments I conducted around age seven, just inside my front door in St. Louis, Missouri. The edge of the glass on our front storm door was beveled, which formed a little prism, which at a certain time of day threw a tiny, intense rainbow on the floor.
I decided I was going to catch that rainbow. In a shoebox.
In what may be a perfect illustration of the seven-year-old mind, I knew that I would have to move faster than light to do this, but had not received the memo specifically prohibiting such a thing.
I found a shoebox and held it above the rainbow. I slowed my breathing and concentrated…then CLOMP! brought the box down on the rainbow.
Too slow. The damn thing was on top of the box.
I’d do this for a good half hour at a time before giving up — but only for that day. I remember thinking maybe light was a little slower in the winter, which was why it was colder then. So I tried in January. Even then, it was always just a liiiittle faster than I was, and the rainbow appeared on top of the box.
I eventually gave up my dream of catching the rainbow. But these experiments at CERN have given me hope. I just need to find a box made of neutrinos, and I’m back in the game.
Bless THIS
Laney came home with the requisite back-to-school head cold last week and immediately became a patsy for bacterial evolution.
As a kid, I learned that sneezing was a way for us to clear gunk out of our tubes. And yes, it is that. But it wasn’t until a college anthro class that I learned the other reason we sneeze when we’re sick: there’s an evolutionary benefit to getting other people sick too. The benefit isn’t ours — it belongs to the bacterium, which uses the sneeze to propagate itself.
I know, I shouldn’t say that it “uses the sneeze.” That suggests bacteria meeting inside the host, trying to figure out how to spread to other hosts, and finally hitting on an idea: let’s make him sneeze! People rightly think that’s crazy talk and opt for the talking snake story instead.
It is crazy talk. The way natural selection actually works is cooler than both of those.
Suppose that a half million years ago, three kinds of bacteria infected humans, and each caused a different symptom. One infected the muscles, causing hosts to tap their feet. The second infected the brain, causing them to recite dirty limericks. And the third irritated the hosts’ mucus membranes, causing them to spray infected droplets over everyone they knew. Which of these three bacteria will die out, and which is going to spread effectively and survive?
Evolution is not a conscious process. It’s a case of millions of natural variations, most of them neutral, some of them detrimental, and some of them advantageous to survival. Even a tiny advantage will multiply over the course of generations and can eventually become the dominant trait in the species. Even if you’re a bacterium.
Next time your kids are covering badly — not that they ever do — tell them not to be such patsies for germ evolution.
The Kid Should See This!
- August 25, 2011
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, Science, wonder
0
It’s been a busy August, including an explosion of activity and good news at Foundation Beyond Belief. I’ll catch you up on that in a three-dot post at some point.
On top of that, the post I was working on is one I should have posted three years ago — a productive way to look at religion. It’s a simple re-framing that has helped break me out of dead-end head-butting and has shaped my own approach to secular parenting. Simple yes, but it can be made otherwise by crappy writing, so I’m taking my time.
Meanwhile, here’s a website that’s simply MADE for my family, and yours too, I’ll bet — The Kid Should See This:
There’s just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven’t seen. It’s most likely not stuff that was made for them…But we don’t underestimate kids around here.
A taste:
Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can’t See from NPR on Vimeo.
Thanks to Joe Golike (designer of PBB.com) for this priceless tip. Hell, I didn’t have anything else to do today. Now go!
The aspiring rationalist
The brain is an inelegant and inefficient agglomeration of stuff…Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer…The brain is built like an ice cream cone (and you are the top scoop): Through evolutionary time, as higher functions were added, a new scoop was placed on top, but the lower scoops were left largely unchanged.
–David Linden, The Accidental Mind
Though it’s been years now since I taught college courses and public seminars in critical thinking, I still try to practice it once in awhile. I can even get myself to believe for a moment that it’s easy—that the three-pound mass of goo in my noggin is actually predisposed to thinking well.
To counter that illusion, I’d often start my seminars with a perspective-setting exercise. Take a minute to think of areas in your life in which your decision making is to some degree non-rational. Some would quickly start scribbling, but there’d always be a few who stared into space, trying hard to identify any chinks in their critical armor.
After a few minutes I’d go around the circle and invite participants to share their irrational sides. “Dealing with my mother.” “Whenever I’m buying a car.” “Spiders.”
Once I came to a gentleman, maybe in his 60s, who fixed me with a slow-burning glare. “I could come up with something just to play the game,” he said, “but I can’t think of a single thing. Sorry.” He crossed his arms and fumed. A strictly rational response, of course.
“Allow me to help,” said his wife. Ba-boom!
I then listed my own irrationalities. Food, for one. From the Kroger aisle to my choice of mid-afternoon snack to the 30+ times per meal I “decide” whether to raise the damn fork again, eating is an area in which rational thought vies with non-rational impulse — and mostly loses.
There are a hundred good reasons that I love my wife and each of my three children, but it would be delusional to say that my love for them is entirely the result of a rational process.
I went on and on. I am less than fully rational when someone challenges my opinion, mocks me, or threatens me. I wake in the middle of the night convinced without cause that I am dying. When I come up from a dark basement, I feel a tingling on the back of my neck, my step quickens, and my heart races just a bit. There is a rational, evolutionary explanation for my irrational feeling, but that does not make my response to the dark basement (which, unlike basements on the ancient savannah, rarely contains a cheetah) itself a rational one.
One of the most persistent delusions in the non-theistic community is the idea that, having thought our way out of religious mythology, we are now fully rational. This is most clearly on display when we think we’ve spotted a fundamental error in reasoning by another non-theist and we hurl the ultimate high-horse insult:
“And you call yourself a rationalist.”
This arrogant sniff never fails to cwack me up. It implies that the sniffer is a fully rational being, and had perhaps thought the other person to be so until this happened, and is now sorely dismayed by the lapse, and so now clutches the pearls, aghast, while looking forward to the return of the penitent to the fold of the pristine rational.
Silly monkeys.
As David Linden notes in The Accidental Mind, our brains are a mess of jury-rigged responses to a long series of evolutionary pressures—the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. As for “intelligent design,” only something as haphazard and imperfect as the human brain could come up with the idea that it is so perfect it must have been designed.
It’s amazing, really, that we can walk, much less figure out the distance to the Sun or juggle chainsaws more than once. And yet we do. In his novel Timequake, Vonnegut argues facetiously for a Creator, saying, “There is no way an unassisted human brain, which is nothing more than a dog’s breakfast, three and a half pounds of blood-soaked sponge, could have written ‘Stardust’, let alone Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.” And yet it did! Instead of being shocked, shocked when we screw up, the fact that we ever do anything right should be a source of continuous giddy amazement. This perspective can also help us step away from self-righteousness, one of the ugliest human traits, and be a little kinder and more empathetic.
One of my favorite people on Earth is Lee Salisbury, a former Pentecostal preacher turned atheist and critical thinking activist in Minnesota. Lee opened each meeting of the organization he founded, the Critical Thinking Club, with a brilliant turn of phrase. “Welcome to a monthly meeting of aspiring critical thinkers,” he said. “We all want to think better, but we also know we have a long way to go.”
In addition to being a healthy way to think about it, this has the virtue of being exactly right, and carries the potential to completely reframe our approach. We are not rationalists, we are aspiring rationalists. We’ve recognized the rational as a good thing, and we’re reaching for it as hard as we can and often failing. Suddenly we can feel a bit of empathy for the rest of humanity instead of placing ourselves in some exalted camp above them.
One of the greatest gifts of a nontheistic worldview is the realization that we are not fallen angels but risen apes — and even then only slightly. Given our humble origins and the hot mess we’re balancing on our necks, I’d say we’re doing pretty damn well. But we can do better by recognizing those origins and that mess, and laying off the false presumption that by setting aside one set of irrational beliefs, we’ve left irrationality behind us.
IT’S ALIVE!
- June 20, 2011
- By Dale McGowan
- In Parenting, Science
0
In April 2010 I told y’all about BANG! The Universe Verse, a unique comic book that illustrates scientific theories about the origin of the universe as Dr. Seuss might have done — in verse, delivered by a cartoon Einstein. Author/illustrator Jamie Dunbar went to great pains to get the science right, always a lovely thing, and better still gives the reader permission to not fully grasp it all. “This book is intended for all ages,” says the preface. “If you don’t understand everything, don’t worry, no one does!”
Now Jamie is out with Book 2 in the series, and boy does it deliver.
IT’S ALIVE! turns to the story of life on Earth, and does so in magnificent full-color big-format illustrations. “From the formation of our solar system to the birth of bacteria,” says Jamie’s website, “you’ll learn about the conditions that could have created life, the nature of organic existence, and the beauty of evolution.” His work is imaginative and fun, accessible without dumbing down, and unique in its presentation. Two opposable thumbs up!
Order the published hard copy from James and Kenneth Publishers for $14.95, or request a FREE pdf eBook from Mr. Dunbar himself. (While you’re at it, drop your local library a note asking them to purchase a copy or two. Most public libraries are eager to take patron suggestions for purchases, and this one will jump off the shelves.)
Pushing the point…or not

Adomaswillkill at DeviantArt
Once you cast doubt on man’s place in creation, the entire Biblical story of salvation history, from original sin to Christ’s incarnation, is also threatened.
–TULLIO GREGORY, Libertinisme Érudite in Seventeenth-Century France and Italy
As I may have mentioned, I’m up to my neck in fun and fascinating work right now, including an anthology project called Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics.
I was invited to write this book by an editor at ABC-CLIO, a publisher of beautifully-produced and researched reference works in a variety of fields. The final product will be 45 documents by atheists and agnostics — letters, diary entries, essays — each with an intro, framing questions, historical context, and additional resources. It differs from other freethought anthologies by being strictly limited to atheists and agnostics, meaning no heretics (Spinoza, Montaigne), no deists (Paine, Voltaire, Jefferson), and no one whose position can be taken as mere skepticism of the local gods (goodbye to Socrates and most of his chums). I’m also casting a wider net culturally than usual (China, India, Persia, Uganda), filling that annoying 1200-year gap between the Romans and the Renaissance, and aiming at high school and early college readers. Due out August 2012.
When I said last month, “I’m in the research phase for some really engaging writing projects right now…while I’m overturning cool rocks, I always find some fantastic tangent wriggling underneath,” THIS is what I was talking about.
While doing background on the clandestina (several compelling anonymous atheist booklets circulated secretly in 17th c. France), I came across the Gregory line at the top of the post, which reminded me of Darwin’s Autobiography, which reminded me that I hadn’t touched the blog in weeks.
So here’s my bit on the problem posed by evolution for traditional religious belief.
Evolution was the most recent in a series of discoveries knocking us from our central and special role in the scheme of things. The Abrahamic religions are all premised on our central and special role in the scheme of things. It’s hard to think of a more foundational assumption of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam than the special relationship of God and Human. Every major assumption, from sin to soul to savior, relies on the idea that we are separate and distinct from other animals.
Millions of Christians accept evolution. But the implications for belief are almost never dealt with, since they require an incredibly radical rethink. Instead, many say that God created life, then used evolution to create the diversity of life. And I’m left wondering whether to push the point.
Analogy: Suppose the 2012 election approaches. I very much want Barack Obama to continue in office. A friend of mine expresses deep and fervent support for Obama, saying “I just really love the idea of a Muslim president.”
Do I push the point…or pat the back, glad for the ally, and whistle my way on?
The first question I ever asked Richard Dawkins was about Catholic support for teaching evolution. Do we push the point that evolution creates serious, arguably fatal problems for some of the defining tenets of Christian belief, or be happy for allies against evangelical opposition?
“You’ve asked a tactical question, I suppose,” he said, grinning. “Not really a tactical fellow myself. So I think it depends on whether you are Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould.”
Since only one of us was either, this didn’t entirely help.
He went on to say that he would certainly push the point, and does, since that’s what inquiry is about. The very idea of withholding challenge to protect a pet hypothesis is anathema to Dawkins. Gould was more tactical and strategic, taking allies where he could find them.
I’ve struggled with years over which is pragmatically best. When I bring up the problem of reconciling evolution and Christian belief even to extremely intelligent and progressive religious friends, they get really tetchy, mumble foolish things about our inability to know how God works, then huff at me for…what, I dunno. I feel terrible for forcing them to suddenly sound so silly, and I never get around to saying why I find the positions incompatible.
So here’s why.
Evolution was not aimed at making us. Thinking otherwise guts the whole enterprise. The countless blind, reckless, wasteful, weaving paths and dead-end alleys of the history of life on Earth make it plenty clear that, clever and handsome as we (currently) are, we are merely one of these side streets, impressive in our way and to ourselves, but otherwise unremarkable. The process that created us is necessarily unguided on the large scale, and is only guided locally by the ever-fickle demands of natural selection. To make evolution a tool God used to create “Man” requires either a complete upheaval in the concept of evolution, or a complete upheaval in the concept of God, neither of which is forthcoming in the mutterance Goddidit.
I’ve always granted evangelicals a point for noticing the problem (if for little else).
Saying God had us in mind from the start does violence to what we know about evolution. Saying he didn’t have us in mind does violence to the conception of an all-knowing God. Take your pick.
Also problematic is the idea of the soul. If other animals are without this lovely thing, God must have chosen a moment in evolutionary history when we were “human enough” to merit souls. Since evolution is an achingly incremental process, there was no single moment when we crossed a line from “prehuman” into “human.” And even if there was, we’re left with the odd prospect of a generation of children who are ensouled but whose parents are not, or some similarly strange scenario. I’d be very happy to hear an argument for ensoulment (of the species, not the individual) that makes more sense, but have not yet.
There’s also the fact that the astonishing wonder of evolution is that it works entirely without a puppeteer. That’s not a reason for accepting it, but so much wonder is lost, so much color and beauty drained, with the introduction of those divine strings.
There are many other reasons, but they all boil down to the decisive dismantlement of human specialness wrought by evolution properly understood. One can apparently be Christian and accept evolution — millions do — but I’d love just once to hear someone acknowledge the profound revolution of Christian belief that is required.
So we’re back to the tactical. It’s easy to wax rhapsodic about inquiry courageous and pure, but the longer I think of this, the more I seem to choose to make but not push the point, at least not uninvited — to allow those who wish to keep their compartment walls well-spackled to do so. Most people forced to choose between doing violence to science or to their conception of God will have little trouble making up their minds.
But I’m wide open on this one. What do you think?
Kudos to the good
- March 31, 2011
- By Dale McGowan
- In action, My kids, Parenting, schools, Science
8
Erin (13) came home from school a few weeks ago and sat in front of me with evident drama.
“Guess what.”
“Norway fell into the sea. You can burp the alphabet. Am I close?”
“Dad, stop.” She leaned forward. “We started evolution in science today.”
A tickle of dread went down my spine. I’m a busy boy. No jonesing for another fracas.
“And?”
“And it’s awesome. He’s teaching all about it, just like you would. He explained what theory really means, and said that the evidence is incredibly strong for evolution, and when kids started saying, ‘But the Bible says blah blah blah,’ he just put his hand up and said, ‘You can talk about that with your minister. In this class we are learning about science, about what we know.”
I have never, ever seen her so jazzed about a class experience. She knows what a crapshoot it is, knows that she has less than a 50-50 chance of learning about evolution in any depth in the classroom. She lucked out.
So what’s a parent to do? Most, including me, will do a nice cartoon wipe of the brow and go back to the next thing on the plate. That’s a major mistake. It’s also simply wrong.
We’re happy to fire off a blistering corrective to the Mr. Taylors and Ms. Warners, the educators who fall down on the job and take our kids with them. But we’ve got to get just as good and consistent at complimenting the good as we are at complaining about the bad.
It’s not just a question of good manners. If we really care about quality in the classroom, it’s a practical imperative.
Imagine you’re a biology teacher. The evolution unit is approaching, again, and you know for certain you will get a half dozen scolding emails from angry parents the moment the word crosses your lips. Again. If you’ve never received a note of thanks for tackling the topic honestly, it’s easy to feel isolated and beleaguered. Who could blame you for gradually de-emphasizing the topic until it disappears completely? Even a teacher with the best of intentions can be worn to a nub from years of self-righteous tirades.
And those of us who sit silently, never lifting a finger to reinforce good teaching when we see it, deserve what we get.
I finally woke up to this about two years ago and started making a point of shooting off a message of thanks to teachers who rocked my kids’ worlds. This is especially important for middle and high school teachers, who are much less likely to hear any positive feedback through parent conferences and the other frequent contacts elementary teachers get.
When Erin was working her way through a much better-than-average comparative religion unit in social studies, I dashed off a note of appreciation to the teacher, who nearly passed out from the shock. When Connor told me his high school science teacher spent some time explaining what “theory” means in science, I shot him some kudos. And when Erin came home with this story of courage and integrity, I sent a message expressing my deep and detailed appreciation…and cc’ed the principal.
The teacher replied, telling me how gratifying it was to hear the support. “It’s a passion of mine,” he said. Even passion can be pummeled out of someone. But now, the next time he approaches that unit, he’ll hear not only angry shouts ringing in his ears, but a little bit of encouragement from someone who took the time to make it known.
I’m better at this than I once was, but I’m still about three times as likely to pipe up when I’m pissed as when I’m impressed. Gotta work on that. How about you? Anybody you need to thank RIGHT NOW?
Screwing with…His Holiness?!
I’m in the research phase for some really engaging writing projects right now. That’s good except for one thing: while I’m overturning cool rocks, I always find some fantastic tangent wriggling underneath. I chase after it, giggling like a wee lass, and forget all about the original task.
It’s an actual problem.
Exhibit A: I’m under contract for a fun anthology project I’ll tell you about later. In the course of that, I uncovered the way Darwin’s agnosticism and critiques of religion were hidden from view by his own family as they edited his Autobiography. That led to my “Screwing with…” blog series, which I knew needed to start with Sam Pepys.
As I finally got to Darwin in that series, I needed the date on which Pope John Paul II made the strongest-yet Vatican acknowledgement of evolution as established fact.
And you won’t believe what was wriggling under THAT rock.
First some background: The Vatican came to accept evolution the same way it agreed that Galileo deserved an apology — glacially and partially. This isn’t entirely a strike against Rome. I’ve always at least given the Catholics credit for seeing something that is too often denied by others: that evolution, properly understood, presents a very serious problem for some of the most fundamental assumptions of their religion. More on that another time. (See what I mean? Even tangents birth tangents.)
Since Darwin, a few popes had skated at the margins of the question. They rarely mentioned evolution in the last few decades of the 19th century but repeatedly affirmed “the special creation of man” — one of the above-mentioned fundamental assumptions that evolution severely guts.
In Providentissimus Deus (1893), Leo XIII decried “the unrestrained freedom of thought” — yes, his actual words — that he saw running rampant as the 20th century approached, and warned that religion and science should stay out of each other’s sandboxes.
Whatever sharpens your hat, I guess.
In Humani generis (1950), Pius XII said “the Church does not forbid” research and discussion related to biological evolution. But the encyclical contains a self-cancelling message typical of papal pronouncements: “Men experienced in both fields” (science and theology) are free to study the issue, so long as their conclusions do not contradict assumptions x, y, and z. Included in that list: that “souls are immediately created by God,” and that humans cannot have ultimately come from non-living matter.
Excluding possibilities a priori is, of course, one of the best ways to get things entirely wrong. But that’s not the wriggle I’m chasing at the moment. And before we jeer too much at the Vatican for taking 91 years, we need to recognize that much of the scientific community had only fully accepted evolutionary theory in the previous decade. It was the modern synthesis with genetics, articulated by (among others) Ernst Mayr in 1942, that answered the most serious remaining questions and cemented the scientific consensus on evolution.
In an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, John Paul II improved on Pius XII. “Today,” he said, “more than a half-century after the appearance of [Pius XII’s] encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.”
Ignoring the (shall we say) fallible math, here’s where it gets interesting. The speech was in French, with the above sentence rendered thus:
Aujourd’hui, près d’un demi-siècle après la parution de l’encyclique, de nouvelles connaissances conduisent à reconnaître dans la théorie de l’évolution plus qu’une hypothèse.
Like all major papal holdings-forth, the October 22 address was translated into several other languages. The English language edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the papal paper, translated it like so:
Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of more than one hypothesis within the theory of evolution.
Somebody diddled with the Pope!
The difference is huge. If the pope says “[there is] more than one hypothesis within the theory of evolution,” that’s a yawn. If he says “Evolution [is] more than an hypothesis,” that’s an earthquake.
A correction appeared three weeks later. But you know how that is. The faithful worldwide jumped on whichever translation they preferred. Some major media stories even got it backwards, claiming that “more than an hypothesis” was the original error, and that “more than one hypothesis” was the correction. Answers in Genesis and other creationist organizations accepted the correct translation as evidence against the Catholic church. That’s all the expected gum flapping, none of it as interesting as the initial act of mistranslation.
In the correction, the English edition editor explained that they had taken an “overly literal” translation of the French text. But one enterprising media outlet ran the text by four French language experts, none of whom saw any possible reading other than “evolution [is] more than an hypothesis.”
Whether the switch was intentional is the fascinating question here. And it’s always safe and fun to play the cynic and assume the conspiracy. But it’s pretty hard to picture anyone in the Vatican having sufficiently well-developed cojones to intentionally scramble the Pope’s words, something that was easily discovered. The fact that the editor in question was transferred from Rome to a parish in Illinois seems at first to suggest retribution, but that was five years after the bungle. And he was returning home.
Now to find my way back to whatever the hell I was working on before this shiny object caught my eye.
The incredible shrinking woman
[Continued from Part 2, “The Empire Strikes Back“]
The day before the meeting with the principal and Ms. Warner, Becca made my year by insisting on going as well. She took a half day off work, on short notice and with difficulty. I was so grateful — helps me feel less like a lone loon.
After talking with hundreds of parents over the years in dozens of different situations, I’ve worked up a few guidelines for approaching this kind of thing. It works not just for church-state issues, but any similar conflict:
1. Know your main objective and keep it in focus. It would have been easy, and gratifying, to focus on the first three of our objectives (abject apology, school-wide statement, head on platter). But if it came right down to it (and it often does), the last two were most important: damage control for Delaney, and a greatly-reduced chance of this kind of thing happening to another student in the school. Ever.
2. Frame in terms as broad as possible. It’s almost never just about my child or our family’s rights. If a teacher leads students in a Christian prayer, for example, and I respond as an offended atheist, I’ve drawn this tiny circle around my offended little feet. If instead I defend the constitutional right of all kids and families to freedom of religious belief, I’ve drawn a much larger circle with a much firmer foundation.
3. Don’t let your tone become an issue. This keeps a laser-like focus on the real issue.
4. Find allies with common goals. They’re almost always there. If we treat them as co-perpetrators, we’ve robbed ourselves of powerful leverage.
5. Position yourself as a resource, not a problem to be avoided or contained. When it comes to the issues at hand, as well as district policy and legal precedent, make yourself the most knowledgeable one in the room, then offer your help in navigating that maze, now and in the future.
The meeting began with the obligatory chit chat, then Becca took the floor — not as a parent, but as an appalled educator. For five minutes, in a voice laced with emotion but entirely under control, she explained why Warner’s action violated the central responsibility of educators to their students. She ended by quoting the framing concept in the elementary curriculum. They are the Habits of Mind — four characteristics all Georgia educators are expected to engender in their students. “A CONTENT STANDARD IS NOT MET,” says the science standards document in bold caps, “UNLESS APPLICABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF SCIENCE ARE ALSO ADDRESSED AT THE SAME TIME.”
The four principal characteristics:
Students will be aware of the importance of curiosity, honesty, openness, and skepticism in science and will exhibit these traits in their own efforts to understand how the world works.
In a single ill-considered sentence, Ms. Warner had managed to violate all four. Then there’s this further down — hard to beat for spot-on relevance:
Scientists use a common language with precise definitions of terms to make it easier to communicate their observations to each other.
I made a mental note to marry Becca all over again.
Ms. Warner responded with an apology of the “I’m sorry if you were offended” variety. “If I had known you felt this way, I would certainly not have said what I said.” It was all about a wacky breakdown in communication. If the principal hadn’t dropped the ball, went the implication, we wouldn’t be in this pickle. Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do. Cue laugh track.
I’d expected that. “Yes, I do wish we’d been able to intercept this extremely bad idea you had,” I said. “But that’s irrelevant. I want to know why you had the bad idea in the first place to censor Delaney’s accomplishment.
“You claimed evolution wasn’t in the curriculum, when in fact it’s deeply embedded in our curriculum from seventh grade on. And if a third grader were to master calculus and win a national contest, I doubt we’d say, ‘Well shoot, I wish we could celebrate that, but it isn’t in the elementary curriculum.’ So let’s agree that’s silly and not the reason anyway. Now I’d like to know the real reason.”
She nodded and shrugged. “I wanted to avoid conflict.”
To paraphrase what Huxley supposedly said before he gutted Wilberforce, the Lord had delivered her into my hands. I produced a summary of that deeply depressing Penn State study showing that conflict-avoiders “may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists.”
But there’s an even more interesting context for this in Georgia, I said — a specific history of removing the word “evolution.”
“Yes, there is!” said Mr. Robinson, nodding enthusiastically and leaning forward. Principals tend to know what’s going on in the educational world outside of their own skulls. Even better, he clearly cared. Warner’s blank smile showed that she neither knew nor cared. She was counting the minutes until this annoyance was over.
It was at this point that Ms. Warner began to shrink from view, and Mr. Robinson began to grow. We could exhaust ourselves trying to get a genuine apology from this person, trying to get her to understand that she was an embarrassment to her profession and why, trying to let the school community know exactly what had happened so they could take sides and put Laney in the uncomfortable middle.
Or we could turn the focus toward this nodding, well-informed, well-placed ally.
I gave a five-minute capsule history of the issue in Georgia, complete with handouts, starting with the D grade the state science curriculum had earned from Fordham in 1998. Why the low grade? Largely because in the interest of conflict avoidance, the word evolution had been removed:
Like many Southern states, Georgia has problems with the politics, if not the science, of evolution. In the biology course, the euphemism “organic variation” is used for evolution, yielding such delectable bits as the following:
“[The learner will] describe historical and current theories of organic variation . . . describe how current geological evidences [sic] support current theories of organic variation . . . explain that a successful change in a species is most apt to occur when a niche is available.”
The purpose of this approach, of course, is to insulate the study of science from the inroads of politics. But for all its good intent, it makes it difficult or impossible for all but the most gifted students to understand the profound importance of evolution as the basis of the biological sciences. It also isolates biology from the other historical sciences, geology and astronomy, and thus wounds the student’s understanding of the unity of the sciences. [Lerner 1998]
Fast-forward to 2004. State Superintendent of Education Kathy Cox is reviewing Georgia’s new and greatly improved proposed science standards, which include an impressively straightforward approach to evolution. And what does she do? She red-lines every occurrence of the word “evolution,” changing it to “biological changes over time,” which does NOT mean the same thing.
Why did she do that? Conflict avoidance, she said later.
There was an impressive public backlash. Jimmy Carter lashed out in the press: “As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox’s attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia’s students.”
Cox reversed herself. In an interview last year on the occasion of her retirement, she remembered the issue as the biggest mistake of her career:
It was a great lesson for me….The standards are more than a classroom teacher. They represent something to the larger public [and the] entity of the nation. And that was a great lesson for me, that I needed to step out of my shoes as a teacher sometimes and see the bigger picture. And even though I was trying to make it so that our science standards could be such that a teacher anywhere in the state could teach what they needed to teach, it wasn’t the right decision from the bigger picture. And, boy, did I learn that in a hurry – and kind of had it handed to me in a hurry.
Robinson continued nodding. None of this was new to him.
The standards went on to full approval, unbuggered, earning Georgia a B for science overall in the next Fordham review and the highest ranking possible for evolution education.
“So we’ve learned this lesson already, over and over,” I said. “But it just doesn’t get through. And the messages we as parents and educators send these students, both inside and outside of the classroom, affect the way kids will encounter concepts and content later in the curriculum.”
Mr. Robinson was continuing to exhibit not just agreement, but enthusiastic engagement. Warner at this point was too small to be seen clearly.
“We have these extraordinary standards, but because of ten thousand things like this” — I gestured toward Warner’s last known location — “they aren’t finding their way into the actual education of our students, especially in science. I’d like to help get a larger conversation going in the district. We need to help parents, teachers, and administrators get more comfortable with the great standards we already have.”
Mr. Robinson was nearly out of his chair. “Yes. This is great. I would love to see this happen.” He began scribbling notes. “I want to put you in touch with Samantha Burnett, the director of science curriculum for the district. I know she’d love to connect with you and get this going. This would be a very positive thing.”
He added that he wanted to be sure Delaney was taken care of as well. “I want her to know that this school encourages all of her ideas and accomplishments.”
Becca then shared Laney’s heartbreaking response to Mr. Hamilton, her beloved first grade teacher, and his expression of interest (“I don’t know what I should tell him and what I shouldn’t.”)
“Well there’s an opportunity,” said Mr. Robinson. “I’ll get in touch with Mike and see what we can work out. Maybe instead of just explaining it to him, she could give a presentation to his whole class about the contest.”
That would help a lot. She would be over the moon.
That night we learned from Delaney that Mr. Robinson visited her classroom later that day to congratulate her again on her achievement in the “Evolution & Art contest.”
In terms of vengeance, the meeting was mostly unsatisfying. But in terms of positive progress, it was immensely satisfying. We’re working our way toward two conversations, one large and one small. By being reasonable and well-informed, by leaning forward instead of back, it looks like some lasting good could come out of this.
I’ll keep you in the loop as we go.