See Jane Evolve Picture Books Explain Darwin

See Jane Evolve: Picture Books Explain Darwin Peter  Oumanski Evolution  by  natural  selection  is  one  of  the  best  ideas  in  all  of  science.  It  predicts  and  explains  an incredibly  wide  range  of  biological  facts.  But  only  60%  of  Americans  believe  evolution  is  true.  This  may partly  be  due  to  religious  ideology,  of  course,  but  studies  show  that  many  secular  people  who  say  they believe  in  evolution  still  don't  really  understand  it.  Why  is  natural  selection  so  hard  to  understand  and accept?  What  can  we  do  to  make  it  easier? A  new  study  in  Psychological  Science  by  Deborah  Kelemen  of  Boston  University  and  colleagues  helps  to explain  why  evolution  is  hard  to  grasp.  It  also  suggests  that  we  should  teach  children  the  theory  of  natural selection  while  they  are  still  in  kindergarten  instead  of  waiting,  as  we  do  now,  until  they  are  teenagers. Scientific  ideas  always  challenge  our  common  sense.  But  some  ideas,  such  as  the  heliocentric  solar system,  require  only  small  tweaks  to  our  everyday  knowledge.  We  can  easily  understand  what  it  would mean  for  the  Earth  to  go  around  the  sun,  even  though  it  looks  as  if  the  sun  is  going  around  the  Earth. Other  ideas,  such  as  relativity  or  quantum  mechanics,  are  so  wildly  counterintuitive  that  we  shrug  our shoulders,  accept  that  only  the  mathematicians  will  really  get  it  and  fall  back  on  vague  metaphors. But  evolution  by  natural  selection  occupies  a  not-­so-­sweet  spot  between  the  intuitive  and  the counterintuitive.  The  trouble  is  that  it's  almost,  but  not  really,  like  intentional  design,  and  that's  confusing. Adaptation  through  natural  selection,  like  intentional  design,  makes  things  work  better.  But  the  mechanism that  leads  to  that  result  is  very  different. Intentional  design  is  an  excellent  everyday  theory  of  human  artifacts.  If  you  wanted  to  explain  most  of  the complicated  objects  in  my  living  room,  you  would  say  that  somebody  intentionally  designed  them  to provide  light  or  warmth  or  a  place  to  put  your  drink—and  you'd  be  right.  Even  babies  understand  that human  actions  are  "teleological"—designed  to  accomplish  particular  goals.  In  earlier  work,  Dr.  Kelemen showed  that  preschoolers  begin  to  apply  this  kind  of  design  thinking  more  generally,  an  attitude  she  calls "promiscuous  teleology." By  elementary-­school  age,  children  start  to  invoke  an  ultimate  God-­like  designer  to  explain  the  complexity of  the  world  around  them—even  children  brought  up  as  atheists.  Kids  aged  6  to  10  have  developed  their own  coherent  "folk  biological"  theories.  They  explain  biological  facts  in  terms  of  intention  and  design,  such as  the  idea  that  giraffes  develop  long  necks  because  they  are  trying  to  reach  the  high  leaves. Dr.  Kelemen  and  her  colleagues  thought  that  they  might  be  able  to  get  young  children  to  understand  the mechanism  of  natural  selection  before  the  alternative  intentional-­design  theory  had  become  too entrenched.  They  gave  5-­  to  8-­year-­olds  10-­page  picture  books  that  illustrated  an  example  of  natural selection.  The  "pilosas,"  for  example,  are  fictional  mammals  who  eat  insects.  Some  of  them  had  thick trunks,  and  some  had  thin  ones.  A  sudden  change  in  the  climate  drove  the  insects  into  narrow underground  tunnels.  The  thin-­trunked  pilosas  could  still  eat  the  insects,  but  the  ones  with  thick  trunks died.  So  the  next  generation  all  had  thin  trunks. Before  the  children  heard  the  story,  the  experimenters  asked  them  to  explain  why  a  different  group  of fictional  animals  had  a  particular  trait.  Most  of  the  children  gave  explanations  based  on  intentional  design. But  after  the  children  heard  the  story,  they  answered  similar  questions  very  differently:  They  had genuinely  begun  to  understand  evolution  by  natural  selection.  That  understanding  persisted  when  the experimenters  went  back  three  months  later. One  picture  book,  of  course,  won't  solve  all  the  problems  of  science  education.  But  these  results  do suggest  that  simple  story  books  like  these  could  be  powerful  intellectual  tools.  The  secret  may  be  to  reach children  with  the  right  theory  before  the  wrong  one  is  too  firmly  in  place.