Annotated Bibliography

Cracraft, Joel (2004). The New Creationism and Its Threat to Science Literacy and Education.
Bioscience, 54 (1). Retrieved October 31, 2007, from
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=104&sid=877c77c5-183f-48e1-b23c
faf66d5436d8%40sessionmgr102

This short article out of the journal Bioscience deals with creationism and gives a brief explanation of the problems that teaching it in public science classrooms poses. The author mentions in the beginning that there is a large percentage of the population of the United States who buys into pseudoscientific theories, whether it is UFO landings, astrology, or séances. But obviously from the title the author’s main focus is creationism, or as it is beginning to be called in a desperate attempt to appear scientific, intelligent design theory. He talks about the intelligent design (ID) movement and how, when all the appearance of science is stripped away, it is a calculated attempt to get God and religion into public science classrooms and impose a state religion, which of course clearly violates the First Amendment. The author shows that there is hope for the future though. He references some statistics that the percentage of people who accept the theory of evolution is on a continuous rise. Also that a substantial majority believes evolution should be taught in schools, and another substantial majority that believes evolution is not incompatible with a belief in god, which seems to have always been a main argument by creationists. Since this article is from a journal called Bioscience, the author is obviously happy about the fact that acceptance of evolution is on the rise. As he says in the last paragraph, “A religious worldview, under the pretext of science, should not be imposed on children in the public schools--hence the need for science education that deals squarely with the nature of scientific inquiry.” Since the article is brief it will not be my main source. It does not further expound on the quote above, about how educators can confront the problem of scientific illiteracy in the United States. I will be able to pull out some main facts from the article though, such as the rise of the percentage of Americans accepting evolution which I mentioned above.

Wapshott, Nicholas (2005). A New Age of Unreason. New Statesman, 134 (4762). Retrieved October 31, 2007, from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=104&sid=877c77c5-183f-48e1-b23c-faf66d5436d8%40sessionmgr102.

This article uses the trial in Dover between evolution and intelligent design as an example to illustrate a larger point of scientific illiteracy. As the author of the article says, "It is evidence of a wider malaise, the emergence of a new age of unreason which glorifies the irrational and dignifies ignorance." The article also briefly mentions what the harm was when American schools did not teach evolution and other scientific theories in the first half of the 20th century. This refers to 1957, when the Soviet Union launched a satellite into space before the U.S. That was an extremely humiliating moment for the United States and Eisenhower, and it was after that, that our government investigated science teaching and issued new textbooks that were based on real science. This included putting evolution firmly at the center of biology class. The author also touches on how most European countries are no longer having this debate; the majority of them accept evolution. This could be why most of the nobel prizes for scientific fields have gone to Europeans in the past two decades. Overall, this was a really good article that had many statistics I will be able to use in my paper.