I’ve heard these words used to describe people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger. Other words, too – like, “confrontational,” “extreme” and, my favorite, “virulent.” How nasty is that?
I am an atheist. I’m also a teacher. Does this make me one of those dangerous people I read about? When I teach, I teach gently. This is both a philosophy and a matter of practicality. While I love to read Dawkins, Dennett, and Stenger, I do believe that there is a tendency to forget, when dealing with the questions these great men deal with every day, what it is to teach.
Teaching is by its very nature risky. You never know what someone else will take from your efforts. When you teach, when you’re committed to it, when it is what you want to do, you have to accept the reality that your learners might take away something completely different from what you intended. It’s their experience, not yours, and you must allow them to wander.
So, for instance, I might show three skulls – a modern chimp, a modern human, and an A. afarensis. I might show that from the front the modern human skull is very different from the other two. The A. afarensis skull looks remarkably chimpanzee like. These observations come from the learners, not from me.
Now we turn the skulls over. The chimpanzee skull has a hole, the foramen magnum, near the back of the skull. The human skull has a similar hole right in the bottom. What about the A. afarensis skull? Where is the hole? In the chimp location, or the human location? The answer, marvelous and clear, is that the A. afarensis hole is in the human location. Why? Like us, A. afarensis walked upright.
From here I can go into a discussion of just how long ago A. afarensis lived. Suppose one minute was a hundred years. Then three minutes ago (more or less) Thomas Jefferson was born (the actual number is two minutes, 40 seconds). On this scale, the Great Pyramid was built 45 minutes ago. A. afarensis lived roughly three weeks ago! And so on, unrolling the wonder of these things.
Here’s my question for all of you. Suppose the learner looks at this timeline, these artifacts of the past, and says, “Where are Adam and Eve?” Obeying my directive to teach gently, yet maintaining my commitment to teach truth, what do I do? Thoughts?
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 26, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Brent Rasmussen
Woah. That’s a great question. You must tread very lightly in this situation, obviously, if you wish to continue in your “teach gently” mode.
From reading the above post I get the impression that these students aren’t unintelligent. You seem to guide and teach them by allowing them to discover things for themselves, with your encouragement and direction. I think this is excellent.
I also think this is the only way to approach your hypothetical student asking where Adam and Eve are on the timeline. Where would they place Adam and Eve on the timeline, and why? 6000 years ago? 4000? Doesn’t that make them younger or more recent that the Great Pyramids? Let them discover and draw their own conclusions.
But that’s probably how you handle it already, yes?
May 27, 2009 at 2:07 am
stephenwhitt
Honestly, I’ve not had just this situation come up yet. I want to be prepared. I like the idea of redirecting the question back to the learner. Thanks!
May 26, 2009 at 7:14 pm
makarios
‘I don’t know” would be helpful and honest.
May 27, 2009 at 2:20 am
stephenwhitt
Hi Makarios, thanks for the comment. I’ve been enjoying your blog. I hope you come back and comment again. “I don’t know” is certainly honest, but feels incomplete to me. What comes next?
May 26, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Beto Pimentel
The tricky part is that Adam and Eve’s context does not follow the same timeline as your A. afarensis, so it doesn’t really make any sense to compare both contexts in terms of timelines. [And that's probably as good as an attempt answer you can get to your conundrum.] Perhaps exposing this problem (of contexts) is the best way out of the question. ONCE THIS EXPLAINED, I guess it would not be unkind of you to do some maths exercise and show that according to the Bible the Universe (and hence Adam and Eve six days later) would have been created about 6,000 years ago, i. e., an hour ago in your timeline.
May 26, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Beto Pimentel
I guess, though, next question your avid student would pose would be: “But how do you know how old is this skull (or the Earth, or the Universe)?”. It would be a good question, and one that would allow you to be gentle again.
May 27, 2009 at 2:23 am
stephenwhitt
Hi Beto,
Being more of a physics person than a biology person, I would LOVE for that to be the next question. Then I can get out my cloud chamber (OK, not really, it takes 20 minutes or more to start working!), have the guest watch atoms explode, one by one, and describe how scientists can use those explosions to time the universe. It’s one of my favorite topics.
May 27, 2009 at 2:51 am
makarios
Well, the thing about “I don’t know” is that it stops a line of questioning that can’t really go anywhere and it protects you from insulting a student who may be looking to be insulted for personal gain.
May 27, 2009 at 3:07 am
stephenwhitt
Yes, I see your point. If my learner was looking to fight about the different stories told by science and religion, then my presentation is an open invitation. “I don’t know” says I don’t want to fight (which I don’t).
But there are those learners who, like me, don’t yet know about the culture wars, who have an honest question. For me, it was actually just the reverse. I was perhaps five or six years old, and my dad and I were watching a biblical movie (perhaps the Ten Commandments? I’m not sure). Anyway, the beginning told the story of Genesis, and I asked, “But where are the dinosaurs?” This was totally innocent on my part – I had no idea there was a culture war going on all around me. And I really liked dinosaurs!
So what about those learners (and not to sound arrogant, but I’m a good teacher – I can usually tell an honest question from a pick-a-fight question) who honestly are trying to reconcile these different concepts?