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5
Broadening the Target Audiences
O
ne session of the convocation was devoted specifically to consid-
eration of the intended audiences of evolution education. High
school and college students are of course a major audience, but
many other audiences were mentioned, from preschool children to legisla-
tors. And for all of these audiences, including students, how to deal with
opposition to the teaching of evolution is a major consideration.
STARTING YOUNG
Richard Potts from the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Pro-
gram of the National Museum of Natural History reported on an informal
survey conducted by a colleague of where ninth grade biology students
hear about evolution. Number one was family and friends; number two
was church; number three was television; and number four was school
and science classes. These results suggest that people develop an under-
standing, or a lack of understanding, of evolution from many different
sources, Potts said. Thus, evolution education needs to articulate with
messages and information for many other audiences, from church groups
to the broad public.
John Staver from Purdue University said that understanding starts
in infancy. From an early age, many young people in the United States
absorb negative views about evolution. Turning this situation around
requires talking about more than science; it requires talking about reli-
gion. “The most important factor in learning anything new is what the
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40 THINKING EVOLUTIONARILY
learner already knows. And in many situations, the learner already thinks
that she or he knows that evolution is evil and that you’re going to go to
hell in a hand basket if you believe in it.”
Debra Felix from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute agreed that
“by college, it’s far too late.” Children need to start learning important
concepts even before they enter school. “Three- and four-year-olds are
extremely curious and extremely capable, and we waste those years by
not trying to teach them some of these things.” In part, this means reach -
ing out to parents.
POTENTIAL AUDIENCES
Allen Rodrigo, the director of the National Evolutionary Synthesis
Center (NESCent, which is described in Chapter 6), discussed some of
the many audiences that NESCent is trying to reach. It has a program in
evolutionary medicine, a K-12 outreach initiative for minorities who are
underrepresented in science, a Darwin Day program, a road show that
goes to rural communities, and an ambassador program that extends
overseas. “These are constituencies that we feel are important, but we’ve
developed this with an almost intuitive gut instinct that these things
are going to be important.” As Ross Nehm’s argued (see Chapter 4), an
important question is how to measure the effects of these programs and
any trickle-down effects they have on other groups, Rodrigo observed.
Other important target audiences are parent-teacher associations,
boards of education, park rangers, and boy and girl scouts troops. Par-
ticularly influential groups include advertisers, public relations firms,
entertainers, and game designers. For example, the National Academy of
Sciences has an office in Los Angeles called the Science and Entertainment
Exchange1 that works with entertainment industry professionals in Hol -
lywood to help them better understand science in the context of television
shows and movies.
Rodrigo noted that journalists are another important audience. Ses -
sions for editors, producers, and reporters could introduce them to the
issues and show them how omnipresent and important evolution is in
everyday life. A more diverse audience is the group of people who use
social networking. The conversations occurring over these networks could
be leveraged to have a broad impact. Blogs, short films on YouTube, sci-
ence cafes, and other forms of new media, and especially social media
could all be used more effectively to convey information about evolution.
An important model for outreach and communication is the work
done by Michael Zimmerman, who has been convening the Clergy Letter
1 Additional information is available at http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org.
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41
BROADENING THE TARGET AUDIENCES
Project and promotes Evolution Weekend, which provides an opportunity
for congregations to discuss the relation between science and religion on
the Sunday in February closest to Darwin’s birthday.2
DEALING WITH OPPOSITION TO EVOLUTION
Many people have been exposed to very negative ideas about evolu -
tion, said Nancy Moran, William H. Fleming Professor of Biology at Yale
University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member
of the organizing committee for the convocation. In talking with such
people, “the worst thing to do is immediately draw a line in the sand and
start talking about evolution versus religion,” said Moran. “Immediately
they’ll clam up and feel that somehow they’re doing the wrong thing.
Many of them have deep-seated feelings that they’re doing wrong by
learning this.”
One productive way to engage in such a conversation is to get peo-
ple interested in the science—in mutations, alleles, how genetic variants
spread in populations, how they contribute to human disease. “You have
to go around them rather than confront them directly,” Moran said. She
added that it is useful to cover some of the scientific controversies in evo -
lutionary biology where biologists currently disagree. That allows people
to see that “it’s not a big conspiracy. . . . When they see that, they trust
the science more.”
In contrast to some of the statements offered by other participants,
Connie Bertka, former Director of the Dialogue on Science Ethics and
Religion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science
who now teaches a course at Wesley Theological Seminary on science
and religion for students studying to be ministers, observed that people
inevitably bring their worldviews to discussions of evolution, but reli -
gious worldviews are not necessarily a problem. “There are actually a
lot of people in religious communities who are eager to incorporate what
science has learned about the world into their theologies. The scientific
community ought to be looking at the ways to do everything we can to
help . . . because in the long run the message has to come from within
those communities. We can’t come from the outside and tell people how
to reconcile what they see as conflicts, but we can support people within
those communities who are trying to do that.”
From a Christian perspective, said Bertka, people who grapple with
these questions are “doing the same thing that Christians have done
throughout time.” Christians continually have had to struggle with the
2 Additional information is available at http://theclergyletterproject.org/rel_evolution_
weekend_2012.htm.
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42 THINKING EVOLUTIONARILY
tenets of their faith in light of new scientific knowledge and understand -
ing about the natural world. Religious traditions change over time, said
Bertka, and science needs to engage with this change. “There’s no magic
bullet here.”
Carol Aschenbrener from the Association of American Medical Col-
leges stated that educators need to help parents see why it is important for
their children to understand evolution. “There have to be some concrete
and very pragmatic examples of why it’s in their best interest and in their
children’s best interest to understand that.” She said that she was the
product of a parochial education, yet she studied evolution every single
year after the fourth grade. “It was not a contradiction. It was an impor-
tant part of understanding the complexity of creation.”
As Ida Chow from the Society for Developmental Biology and a
member of the organizing committee said, “The majority of the people
in the country are reasonable. They just don’t understand. Here is the
opportunity for us to talk to them in a non-threatening way and explain
what evolution is and make it relevant to their lives. . . . It is not an easy
task, but I think we can all do it if we put our hearts and minds to it.”
