Exploration

Part 1: Exploration

1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your research project.

The topic I chose is does "creationism" have any place in the public school system.

2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?

My interest in the topic is that I think it is extremely important that truth and facts are taught in school, and creationism goes completely against this.

3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?

My opinion is that creationism has absolutely no place in the public school system, especially in a science class. All of the tenets of creationism and intelligent design have been disproven by the entire scientific community, so teaching it to children would be teaching them lies intentionally.

4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?

I know about the history of the struggle between teaching evolution or creationism in school. I followed a case just a year ago about a public school trying to get intelligent design taught in school, fortunately the court deemed it unconstitutional. One thing I'm curious about is how is it possible this argument is still going on, at least in the United States, Europe has almost universally accepted evolution. With all of the knowledge we have obtained in the past one hundred and fifty years about earth and life on it, it's almost hard to believe it is still going on.

6. Within what scholarly discipline (such as history, biology, psychology) do you expect to do most of your research? How does this discipline approach or study this topic?

The three main scholarly disciplines I will focus on are biology/science, theology and education. Biology because of evolution, theology because of creationism, and education to decide which one should be taught.

7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?

I could go to the Field Museum which has a whole section on evolution, and talk to the scientists there and get their views on creationism. I guess to be fair I could talk to a cleric and get his views on the topic.

Part 2: Focusing
Astronomy is taught in schools, not astrology; chemistry is taught in schools, not alchemy; just as evolution should be taught in schools, not creationism. The reason astronomy, chemistry and evolution are taught in schools, is because all three use scientific inquiry to gather observations and facts, and then are agreed upon by the scientific community at large. Science books in classrooms are then written based on these findings. On the other hand, astrology, alchemy and creationism are all based on ancient superstitions which completely lack anything resembling scientific data to back them up. Now, no one is arguing that astrology and alchemy should be taught in schools anymore, so why should creationism have any place in the classroom either?