The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions in Teaching

Scriptural

116 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p scriptural There are biology students who don’t limit their objections to the teaching of evolution. Sometimes they reject the whole kit and caboodle of science. Such was the case with Twyla. At first she seemed absolutely unremarkable, sitting in the back of the room, in the corner, reasonably attentive. In fact, the ensuing week was also as placid as a lake in summer, with all of my students, including Twyla, quietly writing in their notebooks as I lectured. Soon thereafter, I gave the first quiz, in which I asked the students to write down the names of five biology subfields of their choosing and then describe their subject matter. Acceptable answers would have included areas like pathology, the study of disease processes, or mycology, the study of fungi. Twyla did just fine. But once I got into the more conceptual aspects of biology, such as evolution, chemistry, and life’s origins, things got sticky, and there was nothing subtle about Twyla’s responses. In retrospect , I should have seen it coming. When I introduced Darwin and evolution, Twyla seemed to bristle. Her visage darkened and she stopped taking notes. On the first test I asked the requisite questions designed to elicit my students’ understanding of how evolution works. One of the questions was: “Use the reasoning of natural selection to explain how a flying bass might represent the beginning of a new species.” The answer is that the bass would be the progenitor of a new species only if its flying ability gave it some survival advantage over bass that could not fly. Twyla saw it differently. She wrote: “God made the bass. There is no such thing as a flying bass.” So. I had no choice but to note on her test, “Your answer does not relate to the question.” I did not give her any credit for what Scriptural p 117 she had written. There were a couple of other answers in the same vein—invoking the deity in lieu of scientific reasoning. For these she also received no credit. Curiously, when I returned her test, Twyla had no response. She simply left the room at the end of the period. At this point I had a choice: leave it up to her to approach me, or make an honest pedagogical inquiry into the results of the test she had barely passed. Curiosity inspired me to do the latter. In a quiet moment after one of the ensuing classes I took Twyla aside and asked her if she had read the questions she had not really answered. She said that she had, but went on to explain that she had no patience with trying to, as she phrased it, “translate God’s plan into the language of science.” It was an interesting response. Although I thought Twyla was misapprehending the whole intent of science, her comment was articulate. Be this as it may, the question being begged was why she was taking biology if she thought that science contravened the wishes of the Almighty. I put this question to her. She shrugged and told me that her program of study required one science course and mine seemed like the easiest to pass. I looked at her and said two words: “Brace yourself.” In previous semesters I had had students who were so uninformed about science that it was as if I were asking them to read Sanskrit. Others had talked themselves into the impossibility of their being able to learn science. But I had never had a student who mounted a preemptive strike against it. Until Twyla. Having such a student in class was stressful, because I knew that Twyla was hearing—and rejecting—almost every word I uttered . How did I know? Because she had ceased taking notes (if, in fact, that was what she had been doing in the first place) and simply sat there, slowly shaking her head, the message being, “Surely, Professor Klose, you of all people must know how terribly mistaken you are.” Inevitably, a second test rolled around. It dealt with ecosystems : plant and animal relationships, who eats who, where 118 p f o r b i d d e n f r u i t s energy goes, etc. After the last student had left the room I closed the...