“I don’t want to make anyone an atheist,” says Adam Laats, a professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership at Binghamton. “No public school should have that as its goal, just like no public school should be trying to teach kids any religious idea, which would include creationism.”

Laats’ new book, Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution, was published in October by Oxford University Press.

“Creationism is a private issue, and most Americans are some kind of creationists,” Laats says. “Most Americans have some sort of belief that, you know, all this didn’t just happen.”

A Gallup poll last year found that 40% of American adults believe God created humankind within the past 10,000 years. Another third of those polled said humans evolved over millions of years with God’s guidance. Just 22% said they thought humans evolved without any divine intervention.

“Most people who are creationists want their kids to learn evolution in schools,” Laats says. “It’s not a problem.”

The problem arises when people insist that their particular religious beliefs form part of the curriculum. Laats sees two key characteristics of what he terms “radical creationism.”

The first is that it disputes the legitimacy of mainstream science. “Radical creationists say mainstream science is entirely wrong,” he says. “Evolutionary science can’t be right.”

The other part is that radical creationists try to impose their beliefs into the public square. That includes public schools, but also questions such as: Should there be a prayer before a public meeting? Should people say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays?

A former middle school and high school teacher, Laats says researching this book helped him understand certain anti-science attitudes present in the country today.

“The 2020 political moment, this crisis-fueled moment, has parallels in the history of creationism,” he says. “Understanding that history helps people understand how it is possible that some large number of Americans have confidence in these statements that seem, to me, patently false.”

Laats says there’s a pattern going back to the 1960s of aggressively dissident, competing science that today is expressed when someone labels facts as “fake news.” It’s not that someone like Scott Atlas, a physician and advisor to the White House coronavirus taskforce, hasn’t heard what epidemiologists are saying about the pandemic. “It’s that they dispute the legitimacy of the people with whom they disagree,” Laats says. “And we’re experiencing an acute outbreak at the very top. It’s very easy for people to dismiss what seem like they might be obvious in-your-face truths if you dismiss the source of those ideas.”

Although debates surrounding creationism have certain elements in common with controversies about climate science, Laats says it’s not a fair comparison.

“They get lumped together because they’re the two most prominent science denialism issues out there,” he says, “but they actually have both different histories and different trajectories. Climate change denialism is a lot more like tobacco science.”

Large, well-funded tobacco companies paid to have scientists go over peer-reviewed reports in the 1950s and ’60s and issue statements highlighting the limitations of findings about the dangers of smoking. Some people who cast doubt on climate science have similar financial motivations, Laats says.

“It’s a deliberate, well-funded, intentional, cynical attempt to spread ignorance, or at least doubt about established science,” he says.

The creationism debate isn’t rooted in money, for the most part.

For science educators, this has been an issue for 50 years. And for many of them, it feels outlandish, Laats says. “How can there be a debate? It’s not a debate. There’s science. And then there’s this other thing.”

He’s optimistic that American schools will continue to teach mainstream scientific principles related to evolution. “Even the most ardent anti-evolution groups, like Answers in Genesis, want their kids to learn evolution,” Laats says. “They just don’t trust people like me to teach it to their kids. They don’t want their kids to learn from people that they don’t trust, including secular, politically liberal, union-member types. So it’s not evolutionary theory anymore that they actually have a beef with their children learning, even though they think it’s incorrect.”

From a public policy perspective, that needs to be the end of the discussion, he says, even if some people view that as accommodating science deniers. “Let’s stop fighting,” he says. “Let’s agree to stop talking right there because the rest of it isn’t our business. The rest of it is culture war talk. The way that I think of it is that Americans don’t disagree about evolution. We just don’t like each other. Or maybe a more polite way to say it is we don’t trust each other.”

Laats is the author of three other books about the history of American education: Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education; The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education and Fundamentalism; and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars. He earned a doctorate in U.S. history at the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 2007. His next project focuses on the first systematic attempt at urban school reform in the United States.

When a high school math teacher saw a need for education reform, she ended up in the perfect position to make a difference.

Amber Simpson went back to school for her doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction in mathematics education at Clemson University. Now she’s an assistant professor of math education at Binghamton University.

“I had no idea what a PhD actually meant or required,” Simpson says. “But I started taking research classes and my world just flipped. I loved how you can contribute to the education field through research, and so that was a huge eye-opening experience for me, almost by happenstance.”

At Binghamton, Simpson says she has focused her research and coursework on changing the stigma associated with math education.

“Most students think of learning mathematics as, ‘Let me sit at my desk, listen to the teacher present procedures and do my homework,’” Simpson says. “But there’s a lot of research that supports the idea of inquiry, allowing kids to brainstorm ways to solve the problem through various approaches and having classroom discussions about their strategies.” 

In spring 2019, Simpson designed and taught a service-learning course called Making and Tinkering — an education class focused on design, physical creation and problem-solving. Students worked in groups to develop youth making programs. They implemented them in the community through a partnership with the Windsor Central School District and Your Home Public Library in Johnson City, Simpson says.

“Makerspaces provide a place for anyone to just go and make things, and tinker with things,” Simpson says. “Making can including high-tech tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters, low-tech tools such as makey-makeys and arduinos, or upcycled materials such as cardboard and yogurt containers. All of it has a huge presence within STEM education and as part of my research, I examine the role of making and tinkering for young children and educators.”

Jose A. Morales Collazo, a doctoral student in the department of teaching, learning and educational leadership, has worked with Simpson since she came to Binghamton in 2017. He attributes much of his success to her guidance.

“I was very intrigued by Dr. Simpson because she was this energetic person that was coming in with this fire,” Collazo says. “I waited a little bit, but then I just went to her office and knocked on her door and asked if I could help. … We started with just a smaller project that she was working on. And currently we are working on four projects involving STEM identity and meta-analysis.”

Simpson has published work in identity research, particularly STEM identity research, which is driven by her fascination of what people experience and their stories, she says. 

Aside from developing unique curricula, Simpson is involved in community research. She was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant to work with families and engineers on considering the engineering design process in their own home and/or community. Simpson says families are guided by local engineers and students on how to come up with solutions or prototypes for something they see as a problem.

“The family engagement piece is sort of a newer interest of mine,” Simpson says, “and I always try to build in identity research and making and tinkering into my projects. So this particular grant has all three of my research studies coinciding.”

While conducting research during graduate school at the University of Maryland, she saw firsthand that most students with disabilities weren’t getting the education they needed because the United States faces a shortage of special ed teachers, and worse, they’re often not assigned to the classrooms where they’re needed.

“For students who have more significant learning and behavior needs, we put them into the special education schools and they need specialists,” says Mason-Williams, who joined Binghamton’s Graduate School of Education in 2011. “And they’re not necessarily getting that.”

Instead, they get well-meaning teachers who might not have training in special education. Often the factor is the relative wealth of a school. Teachers tend to want to work in well-resourced schools, so children with special needs in high-poverty schools are missing out.

“The uneven distribution of SETs (Special Education Teachers) continues, especially among hard-to-staff schools where high rates of school poverty, high minority enrollment, or the geographic location of a school make it difficult to attract and retain qualified, prepared SETs,” she wrote in a 2015 paper. “The uneven distribution restricts meeting goals of educational equity for all students with disabilities.”

Mason-Williams’ research relies on the Schools and Staffing Survey, conducted by the Department of Education every four years, and is descriptive rather than prescriptive. She does have some ideas about how to solve the problem, however.

“We need to think of appropriate policies, appropriate programs that can both increase the supply, but then also incentivize or better recruit to more difficult settings,” she says, noting that there won’t be a one-size-fits-all policy. Instead, policy makers should concentrate on professional development opportunities aimed at teachers who don’t have the special education qualifications, but who are accepting these positions, and work with the teachers so they can be trained quickly. There should also be incentives for special education teachers to work in “more difficult situations,” she says.

“We need to think about the working conditions of the teachers and these settings,” she adds. “Things like class size to help the situation.”

Mason-Williams says she doesn’t expect her research to have any immediate impact, but she does believe in the value of data to show just how significant the problem is. It’s a crisis.

“The term that’s used is a chronic long-term shortage,” she says. “It’s something that’s been a problem for more than 30 years. So it’s not new, but it is a significant problem.”

In his book Brain-Powered Science: Teaching and Learning with Discrepant Events, Thomas O’Brien, director of Binghamton’s Center for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, uses this counter-intuitive event to illustrate that air has weight and exerts pressure, even if we don’t normally feel it.

The book, written for science teachers and the educators who train them, contains many demonstrations that shock students into pausing and pondering.  By engaging students and encouraging them to explore their misconceptions about the world, O’Brien intends his book to change the way students and teachers think about science.

“The power of the motivated learner is something that K-16 education has not fully unleashed,” said O’Brien, a former science teacher who is now an associate professor in Binghamton’s School of Education. “What if students came to class, whether it’s kindergarten or freshman biology, anticipating that they were going to experience and discuss surprising stuff and be challenged in their own thinking?”

Janice Crowley, a high school chemistry teacher and former secondary science methods instructor at Wichita State University, is enthusiastic about the book. “What makes it exceptional,” she said, “is that it breaks away from the typical text and uses lab activities that get our kids hooked on science.”

In order to get students “hooked,” O’Brien said, we also need to rethink what it means to teach, and what it means to learn.

“Knowledge is not a fluid that can be transferred from the teacher to the student,” O’Brien said. “Learning that lasts is much more active and teaching needs to be much more interactive.”

Every science activity in his book, designed with fifth through 12th grades in mind, doubles as an analogy that encourages teachers to explore the “unanswered questions” of their teaching philosophy and psychological assumptions.

Understanding how the human brain works is an important aspect of good teaching, O’Brien writes. Activities that use novelty and changing stimuli, require the use of multiple senses, connect to what students already know or engage them emotionally will capture and hold their attention longer. Armed with this knowledge, teachers can take advantage of these natural tendencies to make learning more effective.

The demonstrations and considerations suggested in the book don’t have to cause additional strain to teachers or school budgets, either. They are inexpensive and easy to use, Crowley said.

O’Brien points out that they can save time in the school year because they are more effective ways of teaching and learning. “Most teachers spend a lot of time reviewing at the end of the year,” he said. “And why do they need to review? Because the students forgot so much of the content. They forgot it because they never learned it well in the first place.”

O’Brien said that although he commonly employs these “minds-on” approaches in the context of science teaching, their underlying principles apply to all disciplines.

Brain-Powered Science is O’Brien’s second book. As a doctoral student, he was part of a team that wrote Chemistry in the Community for the American Chemical Society. The high school textbook emphasized chemistry in students’ daily lives and the broader community, and was the first edition of a series that continues to be widely used.

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommends Brain-Powered Science as being “among the best available supplements for science teaching.” It has ranked in the top five of NSTA’s bestsellers list since its release in mid-March, and a second volume is under review.

O’Brien said his main concern is that the ideas the book supports spread. “Many conventional science teaching practices are mis-educative,” he said. “So the real discrepancy is, why are we still teaching in ways that fail to engage students with the wonders of science?”

“I was amazed at how naïve I was: I thought everyone was basically the same as me,” said Laats, now an assistant professor in the School of Education at Binghamton University. “But parents were hawks, as they should be, about what was being taught in the classroom. Things I thought we agreed on, such as evolution, still raised their ire.”

During graduate school, Laats turned his attention to Protestant fundamentalism in the 1920s. He found that the movement has had a major effect on the American school system and also helped lay the foundation for today’s culture wars.

“The trenches were dug in the ’20s for the fights that still go on today,” he said. “The positions and even the names — including ‘fundamentalist’ — began in the ’20s.”

Laats was one of 20 scholars to receive the prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2009. A book based on his research, Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars, will soon be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Unlike other movements of the period, fundamentalism did not arise in the 1920s because of new ideas. Instead, Laats said, it was a reaction to new ideas in schools, religion and culture, such as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“The fundamentalist movement came about in part because people felt their basic beliefs had been dismissed by educators,” said Laats, who considers himself secular. “Fundamentalists worried that students were being taught dangerous ideas. In the 1920s, two ideas of what schools should be doing came into conflict. All of a sudden, schools seemed to be teaching ideas that were turning students away from their faith.”

The confrontation came to a head in a courthouse in tiny Dayton, Tenn.

In 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in place of the Bible’s account. Teacher John Scopes agreed to challenge the law by violating it in the classroom. The so-called “monkey trial” drew a firestorm of publicity and featured two leading orators — William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow — on opposite sides.

Scopes was convicted and the anti-evolution movement sought similar laws in other states. But fundamentalists lost the battle for public opinion. Darrow’s questioning of Bryan’s biblical views on the witness stand helped the media and evolutionists portray fundamentalists in stereotypical terms, such as barbarians, bigots and ignoramuses, that resonated across the nation.

The trial and its aftermath proved to be “a shock to the fundamentalist system,” Laats said. Fundamentalists were especially stunned that they were not seen as having the moral high ground of the debate.

In the wake of the trial, the fundamentalist movement became a smaller group that cared little about what mainstream America said. In fact, Laats said, fundamentalists embraced the fact that they would not win over the opposition.

“If they wanted to have control over education, they had to start their own subcultural institutions,” he said.

Fundamentalists did just that by founding Bob Jones University, becoming active at schools such as Wheaton College in Illinois and forming Bible schools and radio stations across the country.

“It’s that environment,” Laats said, “that nurtured people like Billy Graham, who re-emerged in the 1940s and 1950s and said, ‘We hold our beliefs, but we need to re-engage with mainstream America.’”

Bob Jones University became instrumental in the rise of Christian day schools and home schooling when it started a series of textbooks in 1973 written from a Bible-based perspective.

These influential books brought the work of 1920s-era fundamentalists into the latter part of the 20th century, Laats said, energizing a new generation.

“If you had not had this turning inward of fundamentalists and the building of educational infrastructure, you couldn’t have had the explosion of home schooling and Christian day schools in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “You can’t have schools without books; you can’t have Christian schools without Christian books.”

The dissension and debates that exploded in the 1920s are still a part of today’s public schools and society, whether focused on evolution, sex education or saying the Lord’s Prayer in the classroom, Laats said.

“Some of the venom of today’s culture wars comes from this divide in basic beliefs about who humans are and how humans fit into the universe,” he said. “If you think what’s being taught in schools is hurting children, it’s difficult to say, ‘It’s more important that we all get along’ than to do something about it.’”

Whether it is in schools or society, Laats believes the impact of fundamentalism in the 1920s cannot be overestimated.

“I sensed this was a story that hadn’t been fully explored,” he said. “Most of the literature that looks at the roots goes back to Billy Graham in the 1950s instead of the 1920s, where a lot of the direct beginnings come from. I thought the topic would be interesting, provocative and important not just for historians, but for all kinds of Americans.”