NCSE is pleased to announce the debut of the NCSE Teacher Network. Are you teaching climate change or evolution in your K-12 classroom? Are you interested in finding quality materials on these topics to use? Are you wondering how to deal with challenges? Join the NCSE Teacher Network!Members of…
Kate Heffernan is interning this summer at NCSE, where she is working with Minda Berbeco on teacher outreach activities. A recent graduate of the University of Florida, her undergraduate studies focused on environmental policy and education. Growing up in South Florida was a kid’s…
We talk a lot about the dismal state of science education in America. Students in our country don’t do well on international science tests, a quarter of American adults think the sun revolves around the earth, and major political figures deny the validity of scientific consensus on a more or less…
If we’ve seen one thing over and over again in this series of stories about influential teachers, it’s that a little personal attention and encouragement from a teacher can change the course of a student’s life. In the case of Dickson Despommiers, Professor Emeritus of microbiology and public…
The phrase “arrival of the fittest” is seen and heard from time to time, often contraposed with the phrase “survival of the fittest” (due to Herbert Spencer, but adopted by Darwin in the fifth and sixth editions of the Origin). Typically it is used in making the claim that natural…
"Campaigners who called for an official ban on teaching creationism in schools have welcomed a 'clear statement' from a Scottish Government minister it should not be taught in science classes," reports the Glasgow Herald (May 24, 2015). The proposed ban would have barred "the…
Let me start this post with this declaration: the Natural History Museum in Knightbridge, London, is awesome. Where else does a marble statue of Darwin sit serenely atop a grand staircase overlooking “Dippy,” a magnificent Diplodocus? Nowhere. (I bet that NHM is glad that it’s a …
“Greenhouse gases” and “the greenhouse effect” are terms used to describe some of the most basic concepts related to global warming. If students learn anything about climate change, they usually learn about these first. This is good in some ways, because these are the fundamental concepts in…
One of the first things I (and many others) noticed about the graph of various American religious groups’ views on evolution and the environment was how much of an outlier Jehovah’s Witnesses are. They are, on average, quite supportive of environmental policies, while vigorously anti-evolution.…