[asa] science education (was: YEC the default Christian belief?)

Merv:

I think I'm not understanding you.

Are you saying that if the subject of evolution were moved up to a higher
grade, physics would have to be moved down to a lower grade to compensate?
That doesn't follow, unless I badly misunderstand your system.

I wasn't speaking of moving an entire biology *course* to a higher grade,
but of moving *material* from a lower-grade biology course to a higher-grade
biology course. For example, if biology in your school is studied in ninth
grade and eleventh grade, I was suggesting moving *the evolution unit* (the
two or three weeks spent studying evolution) from the ninth-grade course to
the eleventh grade course, and correspondingly moving something else (maybe
ecology, it doesn't matter, since it's only for illustrative purposes) down
from the eleventh grade course to the ninth grade course. If physics were
offered in, say, tenth grade and twelfth grade, it wouldn't be affected in
the slightest by the shuffling of material between biology courses. So I'm
missing your point.

Or are you saying that biology is only offered *once* in all of high school,
and physics is only offered *once* in all of high school? If that's the
case, American science education is in bad shape indeed.

Please describe the system for me. Suppose I enter ninth grade in a typical
American school -- use your school if you wish -- and I know right from the
start that I want to be a scientist or engineer, and I want to take *every*
science course available to me at *every* grade level. What would the
sequence be? What could I take in ninth grade? In tenth? In eleventh? In
twelfth? How many could I get in total? (Leave out the math courses; I
just want to know about the science courses.)

Please indicate also if you are talking about semestered courses (running
from Sept to Jan, or from Feb to June) or full-year courses (running from
Sept to June).

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: <mrb22667@kansas.net>
To: "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] YEC the default Christian belief? (was: (aliens) November
Newsletter from Reasonable Faith)

> Quoting Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>:
>
> That's an interesting proposal (to move biology to an 11th or 12th grade
> level.
> And maybe it would accomplish a "side-stepping" of controversy as you
> suggest.
> As a physical sciences teacher, though, I do enjoy the luxury of teaching
> physics as a senior level class when students have some algebra and
> trigonometry
> (and maybe even some calculus) under their belt. Teaching it earlier
> would
> seriously weaken the content. It would be interesting to hear if high
> school
> level life science teachers would or could teach biology more rigorously
> to a
> senior than they do to a sophomore.

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Received on Thu Nov 19 01:58:43 2009