Celebrating Darwin

CELEBRATING DARWIN

Background information

- Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882) was a British biologist, who proved that all species of life have evolved from common ancestors through the process of natural selection. Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it gives a logical explanation for the diversity of life.

- Darwin developed his interest in natural history while studying medicine at Edinburgh University, then theology at Cambridge. His five-year voyage on the Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and the publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he had collected on his voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.

- Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England in 1809. He was the fifth of six children of a wealthy society doctor and financier, Robert Darwin. He was the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s side. When Charles was eight years old, his mother died.

- Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the Shropshire poor. He went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, but was revolted by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who told him exciting tales of the South American rainforest. This experience gave him evidence that “Negroes and Europeans” were closely related, despite superficial differences in appearance. The failure to pursue medical studies annoyed his father, who enrolled him in a Bachelor of Arts course at Christ’s College, Cambridge to qualify as a clergyman in order to get a good income as an Anglican parson.

After his studies, his tutor, Dr Henslow, recommended Darwin as a suitable naturalist for the unpaid position of gentleman’s companion to Robert FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle, which was to leave on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, seeing it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son’s participation.

- The voyage lasted almost five years but Darwin spent most of that time on land, investigating geology and making natural history collections, while the Beagle surveyed and charted coasts. He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge, together with letters including a copy of his journal for his family. On their first stop ashore at St Jago, Darwin found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which set out uniformitarian concepts of land slowly rising or falling over immense periods, and Darwin saw things Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book on geology. In Brazil, Darwin was delighted by the tropical forest but detested the sight of slavery. On the Galápagos Islands Darwin noted that mockingbirds differed, depending on which island they came from. He also heard that local Spaniards could tell from their appearance from which island tortoises originated.

- When the Beagle returned on 2 October 1836, Darwin was a celebrity in scientific circles. His health suffered from the pressure and he continued to suffer from stomach aches for the rest of his life. He returned to Shrewsbury and wrote down notes on animal breeding, on his own career and on his prospects of marriage. Darwin wrote a rather funny list on two scraps of paper, one headed “Marry” and the other one “Not Marry”. Advantages of marriage included “constant companion and a friend in old age... better than a dog anyhow”, against points such as “less money for books” and “terrible loss of time.” Eventually he decided to marry his cousin Emma Wedgwood and the young family settled at Down House, close to London. The Darwins had ten children: two died in infancy, and Annie's death at the age of ten had a devastating effect on her parents. Charles was a devoted father and uncommonly attentive to his children.

- Darwin’s book was half way when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been forestalled, Darwin sent it on to Lyell, as requested, and, though Wallace had not asked for publication, he suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose. There was little immediate attention to the announcement of the theory at first. His On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published in 1859. He put a strong case for common descent, but avoided the then controversial term evolution. As "Darwinism" became widely accepted in the 1870s, amusing caricatures of him with an ape or monkey body symbolised evolution. The Church of England scientific establishment, including Darwin’s old Cambridge tutors Sedgwick and Henslow, reacted against the book, though it was well received by liberal clergymen who interpreted natural selection as an instrument of God's design, with the cleric Charles Kingsley seeing it as "just as noble a conception of Deity". The most famous confrontation took place at the public 1860 Oxford evolution debate during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor John William Draper delivered a long lecture about Darwin and social progress. The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who was not opposed to transmutation, then argued against Darwin's explanation. In the ensuing debate Joseph Hooker argued strongly for Darwin and Thomas Huxley established himself as “Darwin’s bulldog” – the fiercest defender of evolutionary theory on the Victorian stage.

- Darwin was interested by Francis Galton's argument that statistical analysis of heredity showed that moral and mental human traits could be inherited, and principles of animal breeding could apply to humans (Eugenics). In The Descent of Man Darwin noted that aiding the weak to survive and have families was against good breeding practice, but cautioned that withholding such aid would endanger the instinct of sympathy, "the noblest part of our nature", and factors such as education could be more important. When Galton suggested that publishing research could encourage intermarriage within a "caste" of "those who are naturally gifted", Darwin foresaw practical difficulties, and thought it "the sole feasible, yet I fear utopian, plan of procedure in improving the human race", preferring to simply publicise the importance of inheritance and leave decisions to individuals.

- The ideas of Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer which applied ideas of evolution and “survival of the fittest” to societies, nations and businesses became popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, and were used to defend various, sometimes contradictory, ideological perspectives including laissez-faire economics, colonialism, racism and imperialism. The term “Social Darwinism” originated around the 1890s, but became popular as a derogatory term in the 1940s with Richard Hofstadter’s critique of laissez-faire conservatism.

- Note that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's 18th-century theory (Philosophie zoologique, 1809) explained the adaptation of the species to their natural habitat in a different way than Darwin did. Lamarck believed that a change in the environment brings about change in "needs" (besoins), resulting in change in behaviour, bringing change in organ usage and development, bringing change in form over time — and thus the gradual transmutation of the species. Examples of what is traditionally called "Lamarckism" typically include: giraffes stretching their necks to reach leaves high in trees, strengthen and gradually lengthen their necks. These giraffes have offspring with slightly longer necks, which is known as soft inheritance. A blacksmith, through his work, strengthens the muscles in his arms. His sons will have similar muscular development when they mature. With Darwin, the species do not adapt to their environment. Those species that happen to be best adapted to their habitat survive and continue to breed.

- Incidentally tell your students that Darwin had difficulties in spelling English words and would be called dyslectic today.

Pre-reading

-  Tell your neighbour what you know about Charles Darwin.

-  Look up the meaning of the words creationism, Darwinism, social Darwinism and Eugenics.

-  Also look up what George Bush and Sarah Palin said about creationism or intelligent design.

-  Look up what happened in the Kansas education board concerning creationism.

-  Discuss this poster. What does it say about Darwinism? What does it say about the cartoon's author?

Reading comprehension/Speaking: visuals

-  Find the cartoons in your Student's Booklet.

-  Do the cartoons express an opinion? (The cartoons are against creationism and say that creationist ideas are stupid.)

-  How do the cartoons express that opinion? Which emotions do they express? (The first cartoon speculates on the U.S. citizen's fear of being outwitted by the Chinese by suggesting that religious groups in the States make scientific development and progress impossible, unlike in China; the second cartoon shows an ugly Kansas farmer who can't spell (edukashen). There is an ironic reference to Michelangelo's creation of man painting from the Sistine Chapel in Rome; the third cartoon shows some dystopic world in which mankind devolves back to medieval times where the earth was flat, sex education was non-existent, witches were burnt and leeches were used as a medical treatment; the fourth cartoon suggests that children easily believe spectacular quack theories such as alchemy, phrenology, magic and astrology. These disciplines belong to the world of fantasy or some (medieval) past).

Reading comprehension

-  Find the text The Theory of Evolution in your Student's Booklet.

-  What type of text is this? (an article from a newspaper, an article from an encyclopaedia, a story, a comment on a forum … ?) (an article from an encyclopaedia)

-  What does this article say about Darwin's theory of evolution? (It defines and denounces the theory)

-  What are the main arguments against the validity of the theory of evolution according to this text? (The theory was invented by atheists and many people in the US and in Britain believe creationism)

-  Have you paid attention to the source? Identify the authors of this article. (Conservapedia is an encyclopaedia with a politically conservative viewpoint, friendly to creationism and Christianity, and massively hostile to Liberals, homosexuals, and people who believe in the theory of evolution. The site was started in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly and a group of homeschooled children to provide an alternative to the perceived anti-Christian, anti-anti-Evolution, anti-American and anti-conservative bias of Wikipedia. This is how Conservapedia defines itself).

Speaking

What is your own opinion?

-  Should creationism be taught in your school along with the theory of evolution?

-  Do you believe there is enough scientific evidence supporting the theory of evolution? Discuss this with your science teachers.

-  Is this an important discussion in your opinion? Or is it of little concern? Why (not)?

Listening strategy: Webquest

Strategies and attitudes

It is important that our students learn strategies and know how to do communication tasks. We have offered IT-supported methods of vocabulary acquisition, reading and writing strategies in recent years and now focuses on various ways of listening along a listening strategy, advocated by our national curricula.

·  We try to bring variation in listening tasks (global, scanning, skimming, contextual guessing, anticipating, visual representation in mind map or structural organiser…);

·  We introduce socio-cultural aspects and register (formal, informal);

·  We try to start with a pre-listening exercise and round off with a post-listening communicative exercise;

·  We believe critical appraisal is essential within the language acquisition process. Our students are expected to assess their (Internet) sources. They should develop a critical attitude while working with listening materials, see through arguments and express their opinion.

Visuals

Visual materials such as cartoons, images and video clips are types of text that add variation to your teaching practice and enhance motivation. Moreover non-verbal aspects of communication can be discussed in your class while watching the video clips. Evidently the clips will be projected in your class and you need a beamer and a PC for that, with sound amplifier and loudspeakers. Alternatively students can download the clips and listen to them individually, which yields better visual results, but often may lead to problems of downloading capacity within your school's network. Video clips can be captured from sites such as Youtube or How Stuff Works. The clips used in this lesson were taken from Youtube.

Skills and Content/Knowledge

Recent guidelines in didactics stress the fact that content or knowledge should be integrated in the skills exercises. How can this be done? One method that we propose here is to add an explicit description of which grammar structures and vocabulary the student needs to use when he/she does a skills task.

e.g.

Business English writing on Sales techniques (8)

(I can write about a sales meeting. Use pep talk vocabulary of PR and sales and use the future simple and/or the future of intention. Style? Enthusiastic and motivating)

You are a sales representative for Mary Kay. Write a memorandum for your personal assistants in which you talk about a planned meeting with prospective employees of Mary Kay, cosmetics. The meeting will take place in a hotel lobby tomorrow. (Full text, half a page, 8)

e.g.

Writing – vocabulary - Death penalty (8)

(I can write about death penalty, express my opinion and formulate arguments. I can use these words or expressions in my text: capital punishment, execution, executioner, life sentence, … Use at least three different ways of expressing your opinion, which you learned in the writing project on immigration)