Evolution and Religion in American Education

This book illuminates a dark educational corner in today's America-students' classroom experiences as they consider, or are illegally prevented from considering, evolutionary theory. It attests to the existential anxieties the theory's cogency can engender.

Evolution and Religion in American Education shines a light into one of America's dark educational corners, exposing the regressive pedagogy that can invade science classrooms when school boards and state overseers take their eyes off the ball. It sets out to examine the development of college students' attitudes towards biological evolution through their lives. The fascinating insights provided by interviewing students about their world views adds up to a compelling case for additional scrutiny of the way young people's educational experiences unfold as they considerand indeed in some cases rejectone of science's strongest and most cogent theoretical constructs. Inevitably, open discussion and consideration of the theory of evolution can chip away at the mental framework constructed by Creationists, eroding the foundations of their faith. The conceptual battleground is so fraught with logical challenges to Creationist dogma that in a number of cases students' exposure to such dangerous ideas is actively prevented. This book provides a detailed map of this astonishing struggle in today's Americaa struggle many had thought was done and dusted with the onset of the Enlightenment.

Provides clear ethnographic insight into the hopes, fears, and rationales of Creationist students as they contemplate evolution amidst their peers Analyzes the existential anxiety expressed by Creationists when they are asked to consider "what if evolution had happenedhow would that affect their lives" Illustrates and theorizes the socio-cultural complexity of student interaction with science, and how it is weighed amongst competing interests in their lives Describes vignettes where Creationist teachers and school administrators control whether evolution is or is not taught in schools, in some cases braking federal law

Contenu
Prologue: Darwin's Apocalypse.- Chapter 1: Evolution Education: A Lay of the Land.- Chapter 2: Evolution and the End of a World.- Chapter 3: Evolution and Religion.- Chapter 4: Evolution and the Structure of Worldview Change.- Chapter 5: Evolution, the University, and the Social Construction of Conflict.- Chapter 6: Evolution Education from Campus to Home.- Chapter 7: Darwin's Hammer and John Henry's Hammer.- Epilogue: How science's ideologues fail evolution, or: Richard Dawkins and the Madman.- References.