Description:
This book illuminates a dark educational corner in today's America--students' classroom experiences as they consider, or are illegally prevented from considering, evolutionary theory. It attests to the existential anxieties the theory's cogency can engender.
Review Quotes:
From the reviews:
"Long's volume is an account of a single research project: an ethnographic study that looks in some detail at the teaching of, and reception to, a key scientific topic. ... There are chapters and passages that will largely be of interest to the scholar or graduate student ... . it has resonance for anyone teaching science in communities where some students may object to evolution ... . This is a good read on a complex and important topic." (Keith S. Taber, Teacher Development, February, 2014)
"As those who teach evolution in public schools or at secular universities are well aware, it is a sharply polarizing topic. David E Long conducted ethnographic research as to why such polarization occurs, and in his Evolution and Religion in American Education he addresses a set of underlying challenges for those who teach evolution. ... strength of this book is Long's identification of a conceptual clash between competing epistemologies (systems of knowledge)." (Steve Watkins, Reports of the National Center for Science Education, September-October, 2012)