Vol. 21 No. 9 (September, 2011)
EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM, AND THE BATTLE TO CONTROL AMERICA’S CLASSROOMS, by
Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer. New
York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2010. 304pp.
Hardback. $85.00/£50.00. ISBN:
9780521190466. Paperback. $27.99/£17.99.
ISBN: 9780521148863. Adobe eBook. $22.00. ISBN: 9780511922251.
Reviewed
by Michal Paris, Political Science, The College of Staten Island (CUNY). Email:
Michael.Paris [at] csi.cuny.edu.
pp. 584-590
“No
scientific generalization is more strongly supported by thoroughly tested
[evidence] than is that of organic evolution.” So
said a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
the year 1922. Yet, as
is well known, shortly thereafter, in 1925, there followed the Scopes Monkey
Trial. For decades
after that, communities across America banished evolution from high school
biology classrooms. Susan
Epperson’s successful establishment clause challenge to an Arkansas law that
made it unlawful to teach Darwinian evolution did not end the controversy in
1968. Nor did Don
Aguillard’s successful attack on a Louisiana law that required “balanced
treatment” for “creation science” and “evolution” end it in 1987. Still,
in the 1990’s, the national guardians of modern science in public education –
for example, the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council – might
have reasonably thought that they were pounding nails in the coffin when they
pointedly argued that the scientific case for evolution had grown stronger by
the decade, and that evolution was scientific fact, pure and simple, and not
merely a hunch, an idea, or even “a theory” (Berkman and Plutzer, pp.14-15;
99-101; 145). But
anti-evolutionism in America is like the wounded soldier who suffers defeat only
to return to the fight with enhanced ardor (p.98, internal citation omitted). And
so “scientific creationism” soon morphed into “intelligent design,” and
controversies over evolution and state education standards erupted again, most
notably in Kansas and Florida. In
Dover, Pennsylvania in 2004, there were echoes the Scopes Monkey Trial when the
competing sides faced off in federal court in the Kitzmiller case. A
conservative judge nominated by George W. Bush dealt the anti-evolutionists yet
another stinging legal defeat.
Why is
there an ongoing political controversy when, according to an overwhelming
scientific consensus based on overwhelming empirical evidence, there should be
no controversy? What
explains “the amazing durability of this conflict on the American scene” (p.3)? In
this book, Berkman and Plutzer set out to unpack this puzzle and illuminate its
multiple strands. They
succeed. This is a very
fine and nicely crafted book. It
will be impossible here to do justice to the authors’ social scientific
creativity and nuanced argument.
Most
readers will approach the creationism/evolution controversy with the sense that
this is one instance of what [*585] Laurence Tribe once said about the abortion
issue: What we have
here is a “clash of absolutes” that is in large measure impervious to reason and
evidence. The secular
and scientific consensus on evolution threatens the deeply held religious values
of large numbers of people. After
that, there really isn’t all that much to say.
Although
there is some truth to this common wisdom, Berkman and Plutzer show, the story
of evolutionary biology in the classroom is far more complicated and
interesting. The
authors’ contribution begins, as does much good social science, with some
simple, important, and neglected questions: Who
should decide what children learn in public schools? Who
decides now? How are
policies on teaching evolution made in the fifty states? How
are they actually implemented (made?) at the point of contact in the classroom? Why
do teaching practices take the shape and form that they do? To
address these questions, the authors take us on a journey through America’s
honeycombed system of educational politics and policymaking. We
encounter some surprising facts, which in turn call for explanation, which in
turn give rise to new questions, which in turn give rise to the need to dig out
more facts. The heart
of this book consists of results from a nationwide, six-page survey of 926 high
school biology teachers conducted in 2007.
Berkman
and Plutzer focus on first response to the question “who should decide?” The
democratic answer is that the people should govern. Faith
in democracy finds institutional reflection in traditions of federalism and
local control in education. In
a constitutional democracy, however, the people often don’t rule
unproblematically, or without limit. When
it comes to teaching evolution, democracy competes with roughly three other
important sources of authority: (1)
law and courts, (2) science and the views of policy experts, and (3) ideas about
the professionalism and autonomy of teachers.
Chapter 1
offers a brief legal and policy history of the evolution conflict, taking us
from Scopes to Kitzmiller. Law
and courts scholars have often remarked that the implementation of judicial
decisions is generally easier when a court says “stop doing x,” as opposed to
“do x.” The creationism
decisions bear this out. There
is a constitutional boundary here. States
cannot ban evolution or allow “creation science” or “intelligent design” (ID) to
be taught. Lawmakers in
state capitals respect this boundary, give or take a few momentary lapses, as do
teachers in the nation’s classrooms, give or take a few outliers. At
the same time, the authors remind us, the boundary has another, “permissive”
side. The space
narrowed by the law “still provides significant room” for a wide range of
policies and practices (p.25). Do
the people govern within this permissive zone?
In Chapter
2, Berkman and Plutzer turn to public opinion on teaching creationism and
evolution. Some might
find these facts surprising, or even jarring. After
canvassing (and in some cases reanalyzing) all relevant polls and surveys over
the past three decades, the authors conclude that a substantial majority of
Americans endorse teaching both creationism and evolution. Indeed,
five administrations of one survey since 1999 reveal that 38% of Americans say
[*586] they would like “to replace scientific discussions of human origins with
biblically inspired alternatives” (p. 36). Poll
results consistently show that teaching evolution only (which is, after all, the
official policy in all fifty states) comes in a distant third place to teaching
both evolution and creationism or teaching creationism only. Teaching
evolution only received as low as 12% support, and never came in at higher than
35% (pp.36-39). These
opinions, the authors argue, have little to do with “irrationality” or
“ignorance.” Support
for creationism is rational in the minimal sense that it flows readily and
coherently from broader belief systems. Even
among the “scientifically literate,” public opinion still overwhelming favors
teaching both (pp.49; 75-79). After
this national overview, one might think that when it comes to teaching evolution
there is a very large gap between public opinion (the democratic will, if one
likes) and public policy. But
that view would be radically incomplete, if not mistaken.
Berkman
and Plutzer turn in Chapter 3 to explaining this observed pattern of public
opinion. They describe
“a nation divided by religion, education and place.” Support
for creationism is the product of a century-old split between mainline
Protestant denominations and doctrinally conservative ones. The
split within Protestantism reflects profound differences in attitudes toward
modernity, how to interpret the Bible, ideas about progress, and eschatoloty
(premillennial vs. postmillennial). The
authors draw on existing taxonomies of denominations and two surveys matching
these denominations with opinions about evolution to uncover a pattern with
significant implications for political mobilization. Only
among Jews and people with “no religious affiliation” do we find firm opposition
to creationism. Opinion
within mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations is rather diverse, and
often evenly split. Leaders
of such religious formations will likely avoid the topic. Only
within traditional Protestant churches is support for creationism nearly uniform
and deeply felt – perfect conditions for political mobilization, notwithstanding
repeated legal defeats (p.72). Levels
of education do not have a strong impact on opinion, except for the fact that
those with postgraduate degrees tend to strongly favor evolution. As
for geography, the authors point out that anti-evolutionism is a national
movement, although, as expected, it is strongest in South and the Midwest, where
traditional Protestantism is most prevalent.
Chapter 3
also goes on to map public opinion in each of the fifty states. Here,
the authors draw on nine studies with 9,533 respondents. Again,
we find surprisingly limited support for teaching evolution only. Even
in Massachusetts, the state most favorably disposed to evolution, and even
taking the evidence in the light most favorable to support for evolution, no
more than 47% support the consensus view among professional scientists (p.85). Support
for teaching evolution only falls below 30% in about half the states. In
each state, the authors conclude, public opinion on teaching evolution is
strongly associated with (1) the percentage of the population holding masters or
doctoral degrees, and (2) the percentage of the population affiliated with
doctrinally conservative churches (p.87).
Having
established what public opinion is, nationally and state-by-state, and
discussing why it is what it is, Berkman and Plutzer move on to a stepwise
examination of whether it matters, and if so, how? In
Chapter 4, they draw on a thorough review of the quality of each state’s science
standards as of 2000. They
find a considerable range of different formal standards on the permissive side
of the constitutional boundary. At
one end of the spectrum, we have Kansas’s myopic denial of evolution (since
reformed) or Iowa’s vague and meaningless verbiage (“students can understand
relationships and concepts in biological science”). At
the other end, we have states that fully embrace the rigor and elaboration of
the scientific consensus. The
best single source for this scientific consensus, a gold standard for science
standards, the authors note, is the National Research Council’s “National
Science Education Standards” (NSES) (1996) (p.100). What
explains this wide variation in quality? Berkman
and Plutzer compare the explanatory power of two models, a “technical” one in
which science and bureaucratic autonomy determine policy, and a “responsive” one
in which public opinion does. Interestingly,
they find that the technical model explains variation for subjects in science
other than evolution, but the responsive model holds for evolution (p.110). “In
states where a majority of the public are hostile toward evolution,” the authors
write, “the standards tend to be cursory and vague…” (p.113). So
public opinion is related to state standards. But do the state
standards determine what happens in the classroom? To
answer that question Berkman and Plutzer needed to know what happens in the
classroom, and what might explain variation in what happens in the classroom.
In Chapter
5, the authors describe their national survey of biology teachers (with 926
respondents) and report both quantitative and qualitative data from it. They
asked teachers to state how much time they spent each year covering
“evolutionary processes,” “human evolution,” and “creationism or intelligent
design.” They also asked several questions designed to probe how close teachers’
beliefs and practices were to the scientific consensus’s gold standard, as
defined by the National Research Council’s NSES document – questions about
whether teachers believed that evolution has the status of scientific fact,
believed that one cannot understand biology and several related fields without
understanding evolution, and believed that evolution is properly regarded as a
unifying theme in science. They
found significant variation in time spent on evolution and in teaching content
and methods, especially when it comes to “human evolution.” Seventeen
percent of their respondents did not cover human evolution at all, while another
35% spent only 1-2 hours on it (p.123). When
they combined “evolutionary processes” with “human evolution,” Berkman and
Plutzer found that the average teacher spent a total of 14 hours on it, and only
1% of the respondents excluded it entirely. When it comes to how close the
content of teaching evolution comes to the scientific consensus, Berkman and
Plutzer report that teachers are “divided roughly 50-50 between those who
embrace the national organization’s recommended pedagogical approach and those
who do not.” However,
only 12% “are teaching evolution in a manner [*588] totally consistent with the
recommendations of the most prominent national scientific organizations”
(p.127).
Many
teachers sought to undermine evolution, or to avoid controversy, by confining
instruction to “microevolution” (within species changes), by leaving evolution
to the end of the course so as to give it short shrift, or by explicitly stating
that students need not believe in evolution in order to learn about it as a
theory (the authors wonder what would happen if a science teacher told students
that he or she did not care whether students actually believed that light
simultaneously has the properties of waves and discrete particles) (p.133). Seventy-five
percent of the respondents reported spending no time at all on creationism or
ID, but 22% reported spending at least some time on them. Berkman
and Plutzer estimate that between 14-21% of all teachers are endorsing
creationism or ID in some fashion, mainly by presenting it along with evolution
as if the two views were akin to competing ideas or theories. Either
both are “scientific models,” or both are “religion,” but either way evolution
is undermined.
Why is it
that some teachers spend over 20 hours on evolution and adhere to the scientific
consensus on how to teach it, while others barely mention it? How
much of the variation might be explained by different state standards and
accountability mechanisms? How much by teachers’ educational
backgrounds, training, and professional identities? How
much by their personal beliefs? What
is the role of local community opinion, or pressure?
Berkman and Plutzer place their discussion of teachers’ beliefs and practices in the broader context of work on street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980). In Chapter 6, they ask whether differences in state standards (viewed now in 2007 based on their own analysis) explain differences in teaching practices. They find that, for the most part, they do not (p.174). By contrast, teachers’ self-rated expertise correlates well with time spent on evolution and the rigor of instruction (p.171). In Chapter 7, the authors turn to how “the personal becomes pedagogical.” They test various models designed to explore the role of two central personal characteristics: educational background and personal beliefs. They find that the educational backgrounds of high school biology teachers varies a lot – only 51% have earned a bachelor’s degree in science – and it seems to explain a lot of the variance. One interesting finding is that a teacher’s having taken a full college course in evolutionary biology appears to have the largest impact, compared to other measures of educational background and training. This finding and others in this chapter direct our attention to teacher training and certification (p.182). It is possible that changes in training and certification could improve instruction (my thought was that stronger requirements couldn’t hurt), but it is also possible that core religious beliefs and self-selection come before and trump formal training. Another regression model shows that “not only do personal beliefs influence instruction, they also have a stronger impact than any other factor [the authors] have examined. At the end of the day, beliefs are the most powerful predictor for teachers on both sides of the divide (pp.186, 189). [*589]
Does that
mean that teachers are simply and only free agents? Not
exactly. In Chapter 8,
Berkman and Plutzer conclude their empirical inquiry with a look at the
relationship between teachers and their local communities. Using
denominational membership data and data on the percentage of the local
population holding advanced degrees, they construct a scale of local culture
ranging from “traditionalism” to “cosmopolitanism.” They
show that teachers’ personal beliefs about evolution are strongly related to
school district characteristics. What
is at work here is a process akin to “assortive mating” in decisions about whom
to marry. Here, what is
going on is “assortive hiring and retention.” Teachers
tend to look for work within fifteen miles of where they grew up, and districts
tend to hire teachers who will “harmonize and fit in with the prevailing local
culture” (pp.199-200). Teachers,
districts, and local residents share values. Overt
community pressure is very rare, because often there is no home/school conflict
(pp.202-207). Moreover,
even when community opinion is diverse, teachers develop ways of avoiding
conflict. For example,
they might never say the word “evolution,” preferring instead to say “change
over time.”
Berkman
and Plutzer began with the question “who decides?” An
exhaustive review of public opinion on teaching evolution seemed to reveal that
official policy was wildly out of line with public opinion. Law
and science seemed to have won the day. However,
closer inspection state-by-state opinion, state policies, and classroom
practices revealed a fair amount of “bottom-up, democratic control,” produced
through “multiple mechanisms” (p.213). Teachers’
views reflect the culture of the communities they serve, and those communities
are increasingly divided by religion and education. About
20% of all teachers embrace the scientific consensus and another 20% or so
consistently seek to undermine it. That
leaves an ambivalent 60% in the middle, groping their way cautiously through the
minefield. This
controversy, with its “thousands of potential arenas of conflict,” is
“distinctly American.” The
nature and role of religion and political decentralization in education ensure
that the conflict will continue.
One
neglected theme in this work is the possible role of race and its relationship
to religion and politics (cf: Wadsworth, 2008). The
authors note that traditional Protestant black churches are every bit as
supportive of creationism as their white counterparts (pp.71-72), but,
interestingly, they are not politically mobilized on the evolution issue. The
authors surmise that evolution would not be a high priority for traditional
black churches, but they leave it at that. They
also note that their national sample underrepresents teachers teaching in
schools with substantial minority student populations (pp.118-19). Race
was not included as a variable in the many regression analyses in this book (or
maybe it was but didn’t yield any interesting result, so the results were not
reported). In any
event, more sustained attention to race might have filled out the picture. To
be provocative about this point, I’m wondering whether the strongest proponents
of creationism are not also those most ardently devoted to the survival of white
supremacy. If so, would
that matter? Are
evolution and a [*590] sense of white racial victimization part of the same
larger complex of underlying beliefs?
This minor
quibble aside, this book has many great virtues. Berkman
and Plutzer strike exactly the right balance between, on the one hand, revealing
their thought processes, describing the operationalization of their variable,
explaining their regression models, and the like, and, on the other hand,
sustaining a lively, engaging narrative discussion that keeps the reader engaged
and thinking and learning along with them. I
would think that anyone teaching a methods course, whether at the undergraduate
or graduate level, would want to take a close look at this book to consider it
for course adoptions. Scholars
of law and courts will like this book as a model of how legal decisions can be
placed in broader public opinion and policy environments through careful
quantitative analyses. Berkman
and Plutzer’s argument shows how legal ideas and rules can do real boundary
work, and can reframe the terms of conflicts, without tightly determining
policies and outcomes. If
we read only the law, we won’t begin to understand what is really going on. Finally,
many people who study education will want to read this book. The
authors are constantly framing their analyses in broader bodies of research on
what teacher do and why, and, beyond that, research on street-level bureaucracy. Anyone
concerned about state education standards, curriculum, and teaching practices is
likely to find a plethora of substantive and methodological ideas and insights
here.
REFERENCES:
Lipsky,
Michael. 1980. Street-Level
Bureaucracy: Dilemmas
of the Individual in Public Service. New
York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Wadsworth,
Nancy D. 2008. “Reconciling
Fractures: The
Intersection of Race and Religion in United States Political Development,” in
Joseph Lowndes, Julie Novkov, and Dorian T. Warren, eds., Race
and American Political Development. New
York: Routledge.
CASE
REFERENCES:
Edwards
v. Aguillard,
482 U.S. 578 (1987).
Epperson v. Arkansas,
393 U.S. 97 (1968).
Kitzmiller v. Dover School District,
400 F. Supp.2d 707 (M.D. Pa 2005).
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© Copyright 2011 by the author, Michal Paris.