We are now making available a leaflet/resource sheet that analyses and exposes the false claims and misrepresentations that the book contains.
In this leaflet we explain that the book is in fact a Creationist text that promotes non-scientific notions as alternatives to the fundamentals of scientific biology, in direct contravention of the National Curriculum and relevant OCR guidelines.
The leaflet is designed for use by school librarians, teachers and students and is freely downloadable from here.
The leaflet is a 16 page pdf that covers the following areas;
- National Curriculum
- Government Teaching Guidelines
- Comment from OCR
- “Truth in Science”
- Who are they?
- What are their motivations?
- Scientific Controversy vs Social Controversy
- More from one of the authors
- Creationist Material in a Scientific Disguise
- Creationist tactics;
- “Teach the Controversy”
- “Mystery Critics” of Evolution
- Enquiry-based Learning
- What is wrong with the science?
- About the BCSE
- Useful Information
- Recommended reading and web resources
Coverage of the errors and scientific misrepresentations is necessarily brief but still takes up pages 7 to 15. There are a lot of them.
We have designed the leaflet to help in the following circumstances;
- For a quick introduction to the issues. Read page one and skim pages two and three. This will tell you who TiS are, what they did, and why it is wrong.
- Want to know a little more about the basic tactics creationists use then read pages four and five.
- For a rebuttal of all the false claims, corrections to the misrepresented science and a much better grasp of the problems with the pedagogical approach then see pages six to fifteen. Bear in mind that there are so many problems with the science content that we can do little more than list the errors and explain the actual evidence so we do also give you links where you can look into things more deeply if you prefer. These sections should be particularly useful as a starting point if you are a science teacher unfortunate enough to have your class distracted by the misinformation in the book.
The leaflet is designed to be comprehensive enough to be useful as a ready reference for teachers who might be asked questions about the book, but small enough to be easily emailed.
Our thanks to the NCSE for their kind assistance in the preparation of the leaflet which is principally based upon their more comprehensive analysis which can be seen here.
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We are also today publishing an open letter to all school librarians.
In the letter we explain briefly about the book, the National Curriculum and Teachers Guidelines.
We end the letter as follows;
We would therefore advise you to show the book, together with this letter and our leaflet, to your senior biology teacher or your head of science, before deciding whether this book has any place at all in your library. It seems likely that OFSTED would object to the book being classified as “science”, and, if you place it in another section (such as religion or history of ideas), we would respectfully urge you to include a copy of our leaflet, in order to alert users to its many gross scientific errors.
This letter can also be downloaded as a one page pdf here.
If you are a science teacher or a school librarian then please tell your colleagues and professional bodies about the letter and the leaflet.