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Don’t be afraid and teachers and scientists Page 1 of 3
Nobody knows what sound is , or what seeing is , or what smelling is , or what thinking is. Everyone though knows though that teeth and blood and toe nails have never ever relied on a process called evolution.
It seems wrong to tell children that the five toes on the end of each foot are there because of random mutations and natural selection. Each of the toes has a toe nail and then the whole foot connects seamlessly to the rest of the leg and can be wiggled and moved using a thought.
To have anyone to hold the information in their head that they know that evolution with natural selection and mutations etc is fact is not fair on them. They then have to tell other people including children that life and plants evolved through natural selection and accidental body/cell mutations and that it is a true fact. If anyone had to do just that it would have to follow that they would then have to display their knowledge of how anything hears or sees or feels etc. There are no pictures to take into a class room showing that.
Because me and you will if the subject comes up one day have to to tell/argue/think it and/or tell it. But in the main could anyone say to child we have the evidence in fossils and dna. Seems in simple searches on google that the evidence is scant and just does not stand out. And it should do. But it doesn’t. I think i used the ‘don’t be afraid’ to mean ‘don’t think that the evidence is too overwhelming to understand’. It is not. It is the almost non existence of evidence that stands out. A few examples of fossils tell the reader that this or that animal turned into another animal. Then Dna and genes. There is nothing in the complicated reading on it to show that evolution produces brains or toes. DNA and genes might be involved with brains and ears and eyes and toe nails and hair colour in some way but it it isn’t surprising that the DNA and genes can be similar in other animals with those features.
Animals are shown only to have changes in breeding and changing a bit to environment. You will see that all scientists believe it but not all scientists are evolution scientists. They have been told that the evidence is there and don’t have to look at it. They have all been told that the evidence is there and simply accept that as ok. Not fair on them. And certainly not fair on teachers.
Lots of teacher pupil imaginary discussions online on all sorts of subjects. Mine would be imagine walking into a classroom of children and feeling that confident to say we all evolved from a fish or even bacteria and that the evidence is abundant. The children won’t flinch. But one will ask how this is known. Go to the museum and look at the fossils seems to be top scientists advice.
Imagine one child saying “but the two eyes merge each of their images to produce vision with depth in three dimension even when the eyes are moving.” And then the child is informed that this ability to see in this way was naturally selected because life forms with this ability survived while those without it didn’t. And then child asks “how come our stream of seeing/sight isn’t interrupted by the eye lid blinking twenty times in every minute.” No problem. The brains that could ignore that momentarily loss of sight were naturally selected from those brains that produced a blank image every three or four seconds.
The mind boggles. The naturally selected brain keeps us from being distracted by these regular eye lid closures. Surely life knows what it is doing and doesn’t need natural selection. Schools should at least say keep thinking about whether it actually happened. You might come up with something with your own thoughts. And/or you might improve on the evidence of evolution.
Notes. A 23 year old teacher much like me a 62 year old parcel delivery driver will have no evidence to show. We were born with no knowledge of it and science teachers are left on their own with teaching to children about evolution. It’s not fair on the teachers. They would have to accept what they are told, or read a 300 page book and make their own mind up,
Ultimately the children are stopped to follow their own thoughts with the science etc. To leave people thinking it is fact is wrong to do. Even if we do look like monkeys who have eyes and ears and so do lots of other animals.
It might seem obvious to an adult that either animals and plants have evolved through either natural selection or that it/life knows what it is doing. Whatever our thinking as adults, it is certainly a bit of a challenge for anyone to tell a child that it all evolved over millions of years blindly through natural selection, and that any search on google will show you the evidence of it.
This challenge on how to teach evolution to children is being thought about by universities and some are promoting the idea of teaching genetics first. Why not evidence. It is as if an adult can see how evolution has occurred but a child can’t. And it is difficult to get a child to understand how life has changed from a small blob into all the 8 million species of animals that exist today through random mutations , which is put simply that those animals that have fur to stop them from being cold and blood and eyebrows and intestines and a skeleton and thousands of chemicals to hold together the whole body is from something called natural selection.
It seems like some enthusiastic person writes a paper on a few fossils that they come across and those fossils prove that a land walking animal turned into a whale. That persons enthusiasm for their find seems to make it factual that a land animal with legs turned into a whale in the sea. There might be only 10 people in the whole world that look at that one persons evidence of these fossils and then write their own books or articles and then it is almost fact.
If the evidence for evolution and especially natural selection is so solid why is it necessary for pop books to be written about it. They seem to be full of maybies and possibilities and probabilities to the likelyness of the development of the whole of life. They could be written by our neighbours and or me and they have some knowledge that we don’t know. They know that a four legged land animal millions of years ago turned into a sea whale from a few bones.
It’s noticeable that those that could spell it out like those that do study fossils like a paleantologist are very careful about what they think/say. They certainly don’t show the fossils showing a progression of one fossil of say that four legged pakicetus turning into the sea whale. That is because there are none.
And yet those bones found are used by maybe a single scientist to write an article to convince. I’m also wary of what I am saying because i’ve only read google paragraphs and synopses. But again it’s not fair on teachers and scientists etc think have said somewhere else.
But again in the main it not fair on people being instructed to tell anyone else that natural selection and evolution is fact. It can be stuck into any of us , in our thoughts as fact and no more thinking on it occurs after being told. Of course , we all have fleeting moments with thoughts on what life is all about but that natural selection part of evolution needs a big rethink. And maybe the whole evolution idea.
evolution rethink 