ACCOMMODATING STUDENTS WITH ANTI-SCIENTIFIC CREATIONIST BELIEFS IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS: SUCCESSFULLY IMPARTING STUDENT UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENTIFIC METHODS AND RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT EVOLUTION

Science instructors are often faced today with creationist students who don't accept evolution and even aggressively resist instruction dealing with it. Many of these students have received anti-evolution instruction in their home schools, Sunday schools, and churches. This instruction is invariably deceptive and mendacious, usually presenting creationism or intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to evolution. The Constitution prohibits prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This means that students can believe whatever they want about the universe, whether it conforms to scientific knowledge or not. This right follows directly from the principles of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience first formally expounded by John Locke in the seventeenth century. A science instructor would be wise to explicitly acknowledge and accommodate these rights and principles if any situation develops regarding evolution instruction, with no penalty to a student.

On the other hand, scientific integrity and professionalism should not be compromised in the face of aggressive student and community anti-evolutionism. All too often, teachers minimize, euphemize, and even omit evolution instruction, even though the state science standards require that the substance of evolution must be taught. Experience suggests that about half of college freshman don't accept evolution, because they never learned the scientific evidence for it in their high school science course and they were taught to believe in special creationism by their religious upbringing. In Texas, students can be formally excused from any classroom instruction dealing with evolution, and Texas mandatory science exit exams deliberately omit specific questions about evolution.

Students should be told that they must learn the required scientific knowledge of evolution even if they don't believe it, because of its importance in achieving a scientific understanding of the universe. Science department heads and school administrators must support teachers when confronted with student or community opposition to accurate and reliable science instruction. Survey data of introductory science students suggests that exposure to the empirical and logical methods used by scientists will convince many of the ultimate truth of evolution.