Debate (Re: A young Earth/old Earth classroom debate)

Nope. Actually we're homeschooled (private school), and take certain classes at a local church. Our homeschool group is called CASA.Our biology teacher is a college graduate with a degree in biology.

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Our biology teacher is a college graduate with a degree in biology.

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I am curious as to what college your teacher got his/her degree from, and if YEC was taught at that university's biology courses?------------------
holmes

I'll ask her at class on friday.

After class on friday the debate will be over and we will probably not come back on this website. haha But if ninja wants to ok. Anyways thanks for the help.Da kid from cali

Calikid,Good luck to you and Ninja in Friday's debate. Feel free to come back anytime.------------------
AdminAsgara
Queen of the Universe

Good luck to all of you on Friday. Let us know how it all comes out. With our good Holmes providing both sides of the debate in one post above, you should have all the material you need.In any event, I would like to reiterate my invitation to your class and/or teacher to come aboard here and discuss. Especially if your teacher is, as you say, a biology graduate, s/he might find some very stimulating and interesting discussions.

Thank you very much. I will remember to invite my teacher and I'll probably be back on myself (although probably less frequently).

I thought it might be interesting to compare textbooks, so I stole my #1 daughter's life sciences text (I expanded the subchapters that have some bearing on evolution):Life
1. Exploring Life
- Living things
- Where does life come from?
- What is science?2. The Structure of Viruses and Cells
3. Cell Processes
4. Cell Reproduction
- Cell growth and division
- Sexual reproduction and meiosis
- DNAHeredity and Evolution
5. Heredity
- What is genetics?
- Genetics since Mendel
- Human genetics6. Evolution
- Mechanisms of evolution
- - Recognizing variation in a population
- Evidence for evolution
- - A radioactive dating model
- Primate evolution
- Extinction and evolutionDiversity of Life
7. Classifying Living Things
- What is classification?
- Modern classification
- Diminishing diversity
- Identifying organisms using a dichotomous key8. Monerans
9. Protists and FungiPlants
10. Introduction to Plants
11. The Seed Plants
12. Plant ProcessesAnimals
13. Introduction to Animals
14. Mollusks, Worms, Arthropods and Echinoderms
15. Fish, Amphibians and Reptiles
16. Birds and Mammals
17. Animal Behavior
- Types of behavior
- Behavioral adaptationEcology
18. Life and the Environment
- The living environment and the non-living environment
- Interactions among living organisms
- Matter and energy19. Ecosystems
- How ecosystems change
- - Succession
- Land environments
- Water environments20. Resources and the Environment
- Natural resources
- Conservation and wildlife protection
- Maintaining a healthy environmentThe Human Body
21. Bones, Muscles and Skin
22. Nutrients and Digestion
23. The Circulatory System
24. Respiration and Excretion
25. The Nervous and Endocrine Systems
26. Reproduction and Growth
27. ImmunityI think the text was designed for a two-year middle school curriculum (7th and 8th Grades, for us gringos). The treatment of each subject is light, but pretty good for a public school text in Virginia, I have to admit. I am not displeased with what she's being taught in school. (Daniel, Ortleb, Biggs 1997, "Glencoe Life Science", McGraw Hill).

Quetzal:8th grade science textsbooks have come a long way since I attended Middle School in Leland, Mississippi, 1962. I can still remember my science teacher (who also taught physical education and was a football coach), a graduate of Mississippi Southern, who told us to ink out or otherwise deface the one and only paragraph in our entire life science textbook that mentioned the "possibility that life may have originated when a lightening bolt struck a pool of brackish water" and caused some sort of spontaneous animation of single cell organisms. I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel in his temples when he discovered that passage!

I totally agree. Although my memory of long-ago science classes is sketchy (a problem of age, I'm discovering to my dismay), I don't remember a single reference to evolution in any book we used in grade school. I think overall kids are getting more detail earlier in many subjects, not just science. #1 daughter is also receiving "earlier" education in such areas as math and history, some of which I distinctly remember being not being introduced until high school. Of course, it could simply be the Inverse Square Law of Parenting here: for every IQ point your children gain, you lose two.

Amen, Quetzal

Well, the debate came and went; the other team got to choose, and they chose young earth (suckers). We toasted them-it was kinda funny.
They ran out of stuff to say and so they just started talking without notes and inadvertantly started arguing for our side.lol

I'm being "nosy" , how did they argue for your side? How was the outcome decided? Was there any discussion after the debate?Why do you say "suckers"? (I thought you agreed with the YEC side.)

They started talking about how you can still be a christian and believe in an old earth-don't ask me why. I said "suckers" because I had a lot more convincing arguments for OE. There was not really any discussion after the debate.One thing I forgot to add was that we got 75% of a YE class to vote OE.

I'm very impressed that you did such a good job and that they were open-minded enought to vote for something they disagree with. I'm, of course, presumming that you didn't actually convince anyone or yourself.Oops, wrong handle again. Should have been posted under NosyNed[This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 12-12-2003]