Book Review: The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins

Book Review: Francis S. Collins The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. 2006. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.


The science curriculum is the battleground for one clash after another over creation and evolution. Nearly every school board must engage the issue; it is only a matter of when. If they exclude creationism, they risk alienating parents. Most school boards opt for a consider-all-sides approach which pleases no one. Creationists object to what they perceive as an attack on God. Evolutionists object to the inclusion of creationism on any terms because creationism is not science. Declaring, “No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution,” Dr. Collins comes down firmly on the side of evolutionists, and fervently wishes certain Christians had not packed the word “creationist” with so much unnecessary baggage.

While finishing up a doctorate in physics, Dr. Collins changed his major, earning a doctorate in biology and becoming a physician. His ideas incubated in both sterile laboratories and the social messiness of the hospital. He is a committed Christian who believes a “satisfying harmony” is not only possible, but preferable. As an unimpeachable scientist, his views may help peace break out.

When Dr. Francis Collins stood with President Clinton before cameras and microphones, the president said of the Human Genome Project, “today we are learning the language in which God created life.” Dr. Collins seconded, adding, “...we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.”

Presidents invoke god all the time for political purposes. But a world-renown scientist? It turns out Dr. Collins is in good company. In a 1997 survey, 40% of his colleagues in biology, physics and mathematics professed belief in a God “who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer.” It is common knowledge that 40% of Americans consider themselves Christians. Belief in a personal God is as common among scientists as the general population.

Dr. Collins asks, “Is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and the spiritual worldviews?” He wrote this book to explain why he believes the answer is a “resounding yes!”

Very few scientists have the status to address the question. Other scientists have attempted only to be dismissed as intellectually dishonest or worse. Dr. Collins establishes a ground rule, “Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world...”

Dr. Collins was raised with an apathetic attitude toward religion, first identifying himself as agnostic, and then under the influence of university, turned to atheism. He became convinced, along with 60% of his colleagues, that “everything in the universe could be explained on the basis of equations and physical principles,” concluding that “no thinking scientist could seriously entertain the possibility of God without committing some sort of intellectual suicide.”

Eventually, he realized his atheism was based on weak “school boy” constructs. As a scientist, he determined to seriously investigate God. A Methodist minister suggested he read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. The book changed his life. He could not escape the implications of “right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe.” He considered sociobiology's postulate that what we call morality developed to aid biological survival. Yet the theory could not account for sacrificial altruism, someone who willingly gives on behalf of someone else, with no foreseeable benefit to the giver. The argument that altruism provides indirect evolutionary benefit did not stand up to scrutiny. From there he boarded a logic train and, as he stopped at station after station, he arrived at a place where “faith in God now seemed more rational than disbelief,” throwing him into a quandary. He paced the landing platform. “It seemed impossible either to go forward or turn back.” Finally, he took a leap of faith and thereby started an inner “war of worldviews.”

His inner war occurs on at least four battlegrounds, the same fields of doubt all of us have crossed at one time or another.
1. Isn't the idea of God just wish fulfillment?
2. What about all the harm done in the name of religion?
3. Why would a loving God allow suffering in the world?
4. Can a rational person believe in miracles?

Dr. Collins struggles as we do, as laymen on the same spiritual path, struggling with the same issues. He does not stand, as theologians and generals are wont to do, on a hill overlooking the battlegrounds. He shares the trenches with us, his readers.

We laymen are awed by the starry night sky, the intricate dance of the honey bee, or the blooming of a rose, and suspect the Psalmist may be right that “creation displays the handiwork of God.” But what awed Dr. Collins was the elegant beauty and simplicity of mathematical representations of physical phenomenon. He wonders, “Are these mathematical descriptions of reality signposts to some greater intelligence? Is mathematics, along with DNA, another language of God's?”

First, Dr. Collins establishes a miracle as a “singular, exceedingly improbable, and profound event in history” that science is incapable of explaining. Then he considers the Big Bang and the question science has been unable to answer, “What came before the Big Bang?” Considering it more than a creationist gotcha question, Dr. Collins agrees with astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world...the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”

Dr, Collins demonstrates that the big guns, including among others, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Hawking and Albert Einstein, firmly established “the existence of a universe as we know it rest upon a knife edge of improbability...our universe is uniquely tuned to give rise to humans.” Then he surveys the present state of scientific knowledge in physics, biology, chemistry. He makes a point that bears frequent repeating. If there is a God and “if God is truly Almighty, He will hardly be threatened by our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural world.” When believers act if they must defend God they make God small indeed.

The corollary of improbability, “the God of the Gaps,” is a dangerous shoal for the ship of faith. If the gap is filled, where does that leave God? One tempting gap is the origin-of-life gap “given that no serious scientist would currently claim that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life is at hand.” Another is the “woefully incomplete” timeline of the fossil record. Nevertheless, implications of the Human Genome Project, which he headed, makes a common ancestor a virtually inescapable conclusion.

The book is powerful if not original. Many authors have proposed a similar harmony of science and faith. In fact, Dr. Collins quotes some of them. Critics have a field day with many of these other authors, on the grounds that they are not true scientists, or if they are, they must be bad scientists. Dr. Collins' credentials are impeccable. He is well-armored against the spear of idiocy flung so carelessly at other scientists who have attempted to make many of the same points.

After making the case for evolution, Dr. Collins sympathetically refutes three current options in chapters every parent and school board should read:
1. Atheism and Agnosticism
2. Creationism
3. Intelligent Design

He proposes a fourth option he calls “BioLogos,” science and faith in harmony, concluding, “[God] can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate,and beautiful---and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.”

Finally, Dr. Collins bears his heart in an account of his own spiritual journey and personalized messages to believers and nonbelievers. In an appendix, he explores several current ethical dilemmas in science, and again argues that the very existence of these perplexing dilemmas indicates the universality of the moral law. For him, a harmony of science and faith is essential to optimal resolution of these dilemmas and any others that may come later.

Science for Preschoolers?

I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.

The change in Mr. Hoff’s room, and in a handful of other classrooms like it around the country, stems from growing interest among academic experts and educators in teaching science to preschoolers.

A handful of other classrooms? Just a handful in 2010? When my kids were in preschool twenty years ago, there was tons of hands-on science. Oh wait, they went to preschool in Japan.

But still, Montessori preschools, even in America, have provided hands-on science for decades. Every preschool has a sand and water table. The Methodist preschool, where I sub occasionally, provides a rich selection of science opportunities for the children. I guess lots of preschools have stuff, but do not use what they have.

“Most teachers will have a science area in their classroom, ... and if you look on plans, you would see something listed as science but, in reality, there would be some shells, some magnets, and maybe a pumpkin, or a book about animals in winter,” said Nancy Clark-Chiarelli, a principal research scientist at the Education Development Center, a research group based in Newton, Mass. “But those items are not conceptually related, and they don’t promote children’s independent exploration of them.”
If preschool teachers had water tables in their classrooms, Ms. Clark-Chiarelli and her EDC research partners found in their work, they were often turned into bathing areas for plastic dolls rather than used as science-teaching tools.

Yeah, come to think of it, I have seen the children bathing dolls.

Ironically, a call for more science in preschool has its critics, those who believe science is just one more academic subject crowding out what little playtime is left.

New efforts to teach more science in preschool come at a time when early-childhood educators worry that a growing emphasis on academics during those years is crowding out the playtime that children need for healthy development.

Is it possible those early-childhood “experts” really do not understand that science IS play, or can be, if handled properly? Science also provides a great context for building language skills and acquiring number sense in a realistic context. Science can be the ultimate content integrator.

American need to abandon the assumption that academics must be work requiring pencil and paper. Think of all that children learn about language and number and the way the world works by observing and testing hypotheses from the day they are born.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that providing science experiences for young children would be easy. But if it is not, there is help. A new book is out, entitled Preschool Pathways to Science (PrePS): Facilitating Scientific Ways of Thinking, Talking, Doing, and Understanding, that should help.

Special Report on Calculator Research Released

Announcing the release of the special report, Calculators and Math Reasoning Skills in Primary Students: Moot Point Without Skilled Math Teachers.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has gone on record recommending use of calculators in the earliest grades, thereby precipitating a debate on such use within the academic community and among school-based practitioners. In this survey of studies, research critiques, case studies, and editorials, the most generous conclusion to be drawn is that calculator usage need not hinder the development of math reasoning skills, but it may in fact do so. Educators should not be expected to adopt NCTM recommendations based on such skimpy research.

NCTM’s recommendation that calculators should be introduced under the guidance of skilled teachers is inadequate given the documented shortage of skilled math teachers at even the primary level. Until the first prerequisite is met, that is, upgrading the quality of math instruction by upgrading the quality of math teachers, the issue of calculator use in the earliest grades is largely irrelevant to math achievement, math reasoning skills, or problem solving skills.

This special 78-page report reviews a huge selection of published sources on calculator use in elementary schools. What does the research really say? Read this special report to find out.

See the sidebar for ordering instructions.

Discovery Good, Lecture Good, Too

Lecture doesn't have to be a dirty 7-letter word. One of the things we are learning about education is that we do not know what we think we know. See the new research on learning styles. Another surprise: lecture is not necessarily bad. Check out this powerful lecture method.




Sometimes lecture is not only the most effective, but also the preferred medium. Honestly, has anyone else sat through a three-hour “hands-on” professional development workshop, only to walk out wishing the presenter had lectured the material and saved everyone two and a half hours. We could have gotten some serious grading done instead.

TED:Ideas Worth Spreading relies on lectures with a strict twenty-minute limit. Some of the most effective talks last less than five minutes. It stands to reason that direct instruction, a time-honored method, has to work. It is fashionable to deride lecture as the tool of choice for control freaks. However, nobody considers the TED presenters domineering.

Why do people persist in framing every issue as a polar dichotomy? Left-right, phonics-whole language, direct instruction-constructivism. Dichotomies close down possibilities that are more likely to lead to effective strategies. With phonics-whole language, the common sense approach turns out to be the best. Phonics is a powerful tool for decoding the words students need to comprehend in order to derive the maximum benefits of whole language.

Likewise, when researchers compare direct instruction with constructivism, direct instruction generally gets the nod. When adults are the audience, direct instruction usually means old-fashioned lecture. Few classrooms actually exhibit a separation between direct instruction and constructivism. Most teachers blend both approaches every day for maximum effective learning.

For more Power Teaching videos, search "power teaching" in the YouTube search window. Notice how well prepared the teacher is. He has written everything on the board before he began. I tried out the technique this past summer in a "Finance 4 Kids" class with mixed results, probably because I need more practice. The students were receptive and active. Here is a less intense example of Power Teaching, also known as “whole brain teaching.”

Review of Rosetta Stone

There are any number of online reviews of the popular language learning program, Rosetta Stone. Reviews are mixed. Some reviewers love the product, other loathe it. At around $500, nearly everyone complains about its high cost.

Most reviewers evaluate software as consumers, and their input is valuable. However, they generally have no linguistic training or foreign language teaching experience to inform their reviews. I would like to contribute to rectifying the lack of professional review.

Using the demo available on the Rosetta website, I evaluated the software in several second languages that I speak with varying fluency from barely familiar to highly proficient. I also tried a couple languages from scratch.

Learning through Immersion

Most reviewers really want to learn to speak a foreign language and hope that Rosetta Stone lives up to its implied promise, that you can learn a foreign language though immersion just as easily as a child learns his native language.

The company literature exploits a common popular misunderstanding of the process of second language acquisition. Babies did not learn their native language “easily.” They typically spend a whole year or more collecting linguistic data and testing hypotheses before they even venture to try single words. Eventually, they progress to two-word utterances. It takes five years to attain the child-level fluency. Most adults want to progress a whole lot faster.

The consumer should be very happy the company has no intention of recreating a “fully immersive environment” comparable to that experienced by the totally naive child. Instead, the software begins as it should, given the premise, with single nouns. Furthermore, a linguistic adult (age 10+) brings a ton of previous understandings about language and its construction. The linguistic adult knows how language works.

Elimination of Translation and Grammar Rules

In fact, many of the negative reviews hinge on the fact that Rosetta Stone purposely avoids exploiting the learner's present knowledge. The advantage adults learners possess is the ability to cut to the chase. Babies and toddlers have to encounter a bazillion instances of “add -ed to make past tense” before they can work out both the rule and the exceptions. Adults do not have the patience for a bazillion examples while they flounder.

Another major problem, once the learner proceeds beyond simple nouns to phrases and sentences is that it is not always clear what the pictures intend to convey. The sentences make sense if you already know the language. Did they say “the boy is above (or over) (or on) the airplane?” Or did they say “the boy is below (or beneath) (or under) the airplane?” In English at least, on, over, and above mean different things. Is the girl “reading” or “holding” a book? Did they say “there are three flowers (or did they mean roses)?” Or did they say “the flowers (or maybe roses) are red?”


Carefully Designed Learning Sequence

As a curriculum designer, I found serious flaws with the sequence of learning. The design is a one size fits all languages, cookie cutter model. It does not matter which language, the course presents the learner with the exact same series of pictures and sentences. An appropriate sequence in one language will very likely be inappropriate in another. Of course, the advantage of this approach is that one Rosetta Stone course can serve as an translation key for any other Rosetta Stone course. Once I had gone through the Japanese (a language I already know) demo, I “understood” the Turkish (a language I had never heard before) demo.

One thing second language learners discover quickly is that languages are equal only in the most rudimentary way. For example, the word the Japanese would use for a cookie is also applied to other treats English speakers would never call a cookie. Chinese has a word for “comfortable” but Japanese does not. What is a simple conjugation in one language may be multi-syllabic or non-existent in another. For example, did you know that Japanese conjugates its adjectives?

Another flaw with the sequence is the worthlessness of some of the sentences. The language learner who ever has a reason to say “the boy is under the airplane” would more likely be screaming and pointing, and would have forgotten that sentence entirely. Just speaking for myself, in my whole life, I have never had an occasional to say, “the woman is jumping off the ladder.”

Rosetta Stone has a terrible customer service reputation. I had originally composed this post with links and blockquotes. The reports of some of Rosetta Stone's draconian practices alarmed me. After reading their terms of agreement, I decided the terms were not reviewer friendly. I removed all links and blockquotes. I cannot recommend Rosetta Stone.

*Gratuitous disclosure: No one has paid me to review Rosetta Stone.

No Evidence for Learning Style Optimization. Educational Apocalypse?

Cognitive scientists* reviewed over a thousand studies, but first, they thought it necessary to give the reading public a primer on basic research design. In the abstract no less.

First, students must be divided into groups on the basis of their learning styles, and then students from each group must be randomly assigned to receive one of multiple instructional methods. Next, students must then sit for a final test that is the same for all students. Finally, in order to demonstrate that optimal learning requires that students receive instruction tailored to their putative learning style, the experiment must reveal a specific type of interaction between learning style and instructional method: Students with one learning style achieve the best educational outcome when given an instructional method that differs from the instructional method producing the best outcome for students with a different learning style. In other words, the instructional method that proves most effective for students with one learning style is not the most effective method for students with a different learning style.

The learning style theory is so ubiquitous and so taken for granted, we sometimes forget how research is supposed to support education philosophy and practice. There is not a single education student who does not “know” they need to tailor their lessons to the particular learning styles of their students.

“Proponents of learning-style assessment contend that optimal instruction requires diagnosing individuals' learning style and tailoring instruction accordingly.

Sounds great, but now I feel empowered to confess a deep dark secret. As a classroom teacher, even now with over three decades of experience, I was never sure what learning style went with which kid. So I covered my bases. I made sure my lessons incorporated a mix of learning styles. Something for everyone.

My confession is even more damning. When I tutored one-on-one, I still could never be sure. Again, I covered my bases, going at the same material with a variety of approaches. When the light bulb snapped on, I never knew if it was because I had, at that moment, managed to match learning styles. So many variables...not enough control.

Exactly how was I supposed to determine individual learning styles. The diagnostic instruments may employ fancy verbiage, but it all boils down to one simple method: ask the student.

Assessments of learning style typically ask people to evaluate what sort of information presentation they prefer...Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them.

Ask the student? Gee, to think all these years I had been racking my brain, observing students and trying to draw valid conclusions so I could teach them the way they learn best when all I had to do was ask them?

The only problem is education has put the pedagogical cart before the research horse.

Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education.

Besides, it is entirely possible students do not know their learning style.

Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.

Nevertheless, it is premature to abandon learning styles.

However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all. Further research on the use of learning-styles assessment in instruction may in some cases be warranted, but such research needs to be performed appropriately.

How many other “facts” of education are open to dispute? How might these unexamined “facts” be undermining true education reform?



*Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, Robert Bjork. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Volume 9, Issue 3, Pages 105-119. © 2009 Association for Psychological Science.

Teachers with Masters Degrees Not Worth Their Pay?

Schools are having trouble paying the bills. The extra pay teachers get for having a Masters degree costs schools nearly $9 billion per year. One college of education, the University of Washington, has proposed a strategy: “decoupling” extra pay for teachers who earn Master's degrees. Besides, what are the schools getting for the extra pay? By all accounts, teachers with Master's degrees do not get any more academic achievement out of their students than teachers not so well endowed.

Not surprisingly, the recommendation went over like the proverbial lead balloon. In fact, the original link has disappeared.

The authors expected push back from teachers, and got it. However, it was the the reaction of their colleagues from other colleges of education that seemed to take the authors most by surprise. Think of the revenue the colleges of education would lose. If teachers do not get paid for their Masters degrees, maybe they will not bother to enroll for Masters programs.

Okay, first, I would not like to think that the colleges of education would even come close to suggesting fixing their research recommendations around self-interested revenue considerations. Nope, I would not like to think that. So I will put that thought away for the moment and press on.

The University of Washington researchers concluded that students of teachers with Masters degrees in math or science posted achievement gains. Strangely, a separate study found teachers with degrees in math or science had no advantage, at least at elementary and middle school levels. No wonder practicing teachers declare a pox on all their houses. Guidance from the ivory towers is pretty fuzzy.

The University of Washington researchers believe that part of the problem is 90% of Masters degrees are in education, and everybody knows how worthless those degrees are, including the teachers who hold those them. You can hardly spend five minutes in a teacher's lounge without hearing someone complain about what a waste of time, educationally speaking, their Masters was. But at least there is the monetary compensation.

The researchers have an answer. They suggest tying extra pay to student outcomes as if they have completely missed the merit pay debates swirling around them. The most common, yet questionable, proxy for student achievement is test scores. Teachers have no control over many of the variables that influence academic achievement. Merit pay proposals perennially fail on the question of equitably evaluating teacher efficacy. The study authors would convert Masters pay into merit pay. Furthermore, colleges of education must surely bear some responsibility for the worthlessness of their Masters degrees.

But I see the issue another way. In my experience, it is usually successful, practicing teachers who go back to school for their Master's degrees. They have already proven themselves in the classroom. So it is not surprising that research fails to correlate increased academic achievement (whatever that is) with acquisition of a Masters degree. The chronology is backwards.

I do not begrudge teachers their “masters pay bump.” When it come to education, society has arrived at very little consensus on anything, except agreement that teachers are paid too little. If schools want to save money, they might start by laying off a few overpriced and unnecessary administrators. I know of a county with population 50,000 and eleven separate one-school districts with enrollments around 150 pupils per “district.” Each “district” has four expensive administrators: superintendent, assistant superintendent, principal, and vice principal. Talk about overkill.

Another thing the researchers do not understand is that the Masters degree can become a mill stone around the necks of teachers who change districts. It may even render them virtually unemployable. Schools routinely reject the applicants with the most education and experience. I have advised graduate students that if they get a Masters, they better plan on never leaving their district.