On 10/26/05 8:10 AM, Lars Petzke's electrons arrived as:
> I would like to put out a request to any people who have dealt with
> Creationists or Intelligent Design folks in their museums and have
> some advice or techniques to share with the museum field.
Lars -
In case you didn't see it in one of the recent outpourings on this subject,
below is an excerpt and link to a NY Times article on the question you're
asking.
Stephen Nowlin
Director, Williamson Gallery
Art Center College of Design
http://xrl.us/stephennowlin
---------------------------------------------------------
September 20, 2005
Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back
By CORNELIA DEAN
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering
as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a
group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum
exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for
dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so
thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she
recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training
session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff
members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear
advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with
visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
Similar efforts are under way or planned around the country as science
museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges to the
theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes
aggressive.
One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even
offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature.
Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions.
So officials like Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University
of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, are trying to meet such challenges
head-on.
Dr. Diamond is working on evolution exhibitions financed by the National
Science Foundation that will go on long-term display at six museums of
natural history from Minnesota to Texas. The program includes training for
docents and staff members.
"The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able
to handle them as they come up," she said. "Museums, as a field, have
recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education."
Dr. Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an
affiliate of Cornell University, began the training session here in
September with statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not
believe that human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost
half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.
"Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective," he said.
Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious
fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules
of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature, they look
for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation in the
material world, and they understand that all scientific knowledge is
provisional - capable of being overturned when better answers are
discovered.
Full Story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/20doce.html
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