I've been following the debate about this paper by Verhey (pdf) with some interest. The issue is about how to teach science, and what place the current creationism controversy has in it.

Verhey taught an introductory biology course at Central Washington University (I know CWU fairly well—I even have some friends who teach there (Hi, Jim & Lila!)), and his approach was to directly engage the students with some creationist literature, specifically assigning readings from Wells' awful book, linking to the Discovery Institute's web page, etc., and of course opposing that dreck with readings from Dawkins and Ridley and online rebuttals of Wells. It's an interesting idea, and I'm not totally against it, having tried to engage that material with my students this term myself. There are some problems with analyzing the effectiveness of the class, which Gary Hurd has pointed out. I'm not going to deal with those, but want to step back and look at the bigger picture here.

One thing that has to be spelled out is that introductory biology courses often have two disparate objectives: 1) teach young men and women how to think like scientists, and 2) teach biology majors core concepts in the discipline. These are very different things! Traditional biology survey courses have emphasized (2), and tend to be a rapid skim of basic stuff like the Krebs cycle, cat anatomy, and elementary population ecology. Students find this kind of course satisfying—they come out at the end with a nice lump of memorized facts—and they're also conceptually easy for instructors to do (but a lot of work to carry out!) and assessment is straight forward. (2) is also the usual format of our students' high school biology courses.

That first goal, teaching people to think like scientists, is harder and also unappreciated by many incoming students. A lot of freshman show up as biology majors expecting we're going to hand them a scalpel and point them at a dead cat; we get some resentment when instead we ask them to explain why they should cut up a dead cat, what they expect to learn and test, and how they should approach the problem. Teaching them the scientific method, experimental design, critical analysis, and how to write about science is hard work, but an important foundation. Verhey's course clearly falls within this category.

So let's be clear about this: Verhey's course is not trying to dilute good biology with crap. It's a course that's trying to help students find a conceptual framework to deal with the deluge of biological information that they're going to get in their next few years in the program, and I think that's a good thing. I also think it is reasonable and appropriate to bring up creationism in that context.

I don't think it's a necessary way of doing it—my fantasy introductory biology course would use John Moore's Science as a Way of Knowing : The Foundations of Modern Biology ^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} as a textbook, and would approach the subject with an historical look at honest controversies within the field (ID is most definitely not part of the legitimate history and debate within science)—but since creationism is white-hot in contemporary American culture, I can appreciate it as a valid way to address a real problem while trying to get students to think.

I'm somewhat torn on the issue of presenting creationism to biology students. I definitely dislike the idea of having debates in front of high-schoolers—that turns the whole thing into superficial exercises in rhetoric, and gives creationists a forum in our schools—but I think instructors should at least take a little time to specifically explain how creationist claims are false. Verhey is exactly right to say that "current approaches to science education are not very effective in helping typical students to think effectively about evolution and creationism." We must change that. I think some limited direct confrontation with the bad ideas of the new creationists is part of the recipe.