Despite 80 years of court battles ousting creationism from public classrooms, most public high school biology teachers are not strong advocates for evolution.

While vocal advocates of intelligent design and similar non-scientific alternatives to evolution are a minority, more than half the teachers in a nationwide poll avoided taking a strong stance for evolution.

Such teachers “may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists,” wrote Penn State political scientists Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, the poll's architects, in a Jan. 28 Science paper.

Berkman and Plutzer, the authors of Evolution, Creationism and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms, examined data from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, a representative sample of 926 biology teachers from across the country. They estimate that only 28 percent of those teachers consistently and “unabashedly” introduce evidence that evolution has happened, and build lesson plans with evolution as a unifying theme linking different topics in biology.

At the opposite extreme, 13 percent of teachers explicitly endorse creationism or intelligent design, and spend at least on hour of class time presenting it in a positive light. An additional 5 percent reported that they support creationism in passing or when answering students’ questions.

The remaining fraction of teachers, who Berkman and Plutzer dub the “cautious 60 percent,” avoids choosing sides. Often these teachers have not taken courses in evolutionary biology and lack confidence in their ability to answer questions from skeptical or hostile students and parents.

There are three popular strategies for evading controversy in the biology classroom, Berkman and Plutzer say. Some teachers focus on evolution at the molecular level, ignoring the idea that whole species of animals can evolve.

Some hide behind rigid state science tests, telling students “it does not matter if they actually ‘believe’ in evolution, so long as they know it for the test,” Berkman and Plutzer wrote.

Others present both sides and let students decide for themselves. This strategy respects high schoolers’ critical reasoning skills, but undervalues the scientific method.

“These teachers fail to explain the nature of scientific inquiry, undermine the authority of established experts, and legitimize creationist arguments, even if unintentionally,” Berkman and Plutzer wrote.

The researchers offer one major solution: Focus on teacher training. Teachers who have had a course in evolution are statistically far more likely to advocate for evolution in their classrooms. Making such a course mandatory for all incoming teachers could make those teachers more likely to accept and teach evolution.

An evolution requirement could have the spinoff benefit of driving out the avowed creationists, the researchers write.

“Programs directed at preservice teachers can therefore both reduce the number of evolution deniers in the nation’s classrooms, [and] increase the number who would gladly accept help in teaching evolution,” they wrote. “Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations.”

Image: Clarance Darrow and William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial. Wikimedia Commons

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