When doing this week’s reading, the “Talking Points” page of the Nature of Science article caught my eye — because it was bright green, yes, but moreso because the content seemed to be structured as a teaching aid for (presumably) middle/high school science teachers to explain the scientific method to their students.
What struck me about this was that the teaching aid seemed to focus more on what wasn’t the scientific method, as opposed to what was. Of course, the rest of the article did a great job of comprehensively explaining the scientific method, but that portion of the article (the “white text,” if you will) seemed to have been provided for the teacher’s sake, not meant to be conveyed directly to the students.
The “green text,” on the other hand, appears to have been created with the idea that the students with whom the teacher would be using this teaching aid already have a concrete but misguided understanding of what science and the scientific method are. The green text seems to be dominated with discussion about where spirituality, religion, faith, and morality fit (or don’t fit) within science.
It seemed somewhat strange that the white text could present a description and analysis of the “nature of science” with such confidence and objectivity, while the green text seemed to take on a decided air of defensiveness, in that it seemed to assume that when presented with the mere idea of science being an objective, definitive entity, middle/high school students would undoubtedly question its integrity and/or relevance when held up against faith and religion. Rather than providing a comprehensive, objective, and appropriately nuanced look at the nature of science (which the white text does beautifully), the green text seems to spend more time defending the institution of science — even before the first shots against science have been fired.
I’m puzzled by this approach — do the authors of this teaching aid honestly believe that the world of the science-uninitiated is filled with such unrealistic and stubborn ideals, to the point that the mere discussion of the “nature of science” would automatically be reduced to a debate about evolution versus intelligent design? It’s a somewhat presumptuous approach to assume that “non-scientists” only see the world in terms of religious myth and do not instinctually respond to or accept the objectivity of science. In all, the teaching aid seems overly and unnecessarily defensive, and assumes certain things about its audience that might not ultimately be true.