[asa] God in education - was Teenagers and Evolution

Wayne
I'm layering my replies below in Italics.

  Deborah,

  Thank you for offering some examples. However, your title
  was evolution, so I thought this was raising issue with the
  contents of biology textbooks. What you mention below does
  not pertain to that.

  The issues pertain to both evolution and history and to other subjects as
well. Evolution begs for discussion. History provides clearer examples of
the way in which ignorance of religion has become the educational method of
choice. Religion has been purged at the expense of rewriting history. 'Under
God' may have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the 50's, but the
early documents of this country and all western European countries contained
references to God from their inception. These references should not be
'bleeped' like cusswords.

  I do consider history a "hard to do science", and in this
  respect, science and faith apply. History is a hobby for
  me. Do any of the real historians on the list here find
  the quote below to be mildly distorting the history.

    History textbooks censor speeches and documents:
    "Gentlemen may cry peace!peace! but there is no peace! Is life so dear
or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery...I
know not..."

  Missing is 'Forbid it Almighty God'

  There are many such examples.

  There is the question of "relevance" which is subject to
  individual opinion when one choses to quote something.
  It also may be the point the author was trying to make.
  But I might agree that this "abridged" form of the text
  is sliding down the slippery slope.

  The only words deleted in Patrick Henry's speech were those referring to
God. The relevance is the fact that God was accepted to be a part of
everything. God permeated existence. Taking God out is like changing a color
movie to black and white. (I like colorized). The facts may all be there,
but something is missing. We are not portraying things as they were.
  Evolution makes us question God's role. People learn from questioning and
from seeking answers. Censorship restricts both.

    Teachers are told to not talk about God. God is a part of many
discussions. One cannot go through research material and censor out all
references to God and religion and provide an equitable view of either
history or science or life in general.

    Our school systems are enforcing ignorance of religion. This is wrong.
It is very difficult to enforce true freedom of religion. However, I believe
what we are doing is closer to the total lack of freedom of religion of the
USSR than it is to the freedom of religion of the Bill of Rights.

  Perhaps I am mistaken here. However, on of the things here was
  probably that if we mention Christianity, we would be obliged
  to mention Moonies, gurus, and who knows how many crackpot wackos
  who make a claim on it. In a study of religions, maybe that is ok.

    The basic questions transcend the particular religion. I have read that
the fundamentalists of today would not embrace the religion of many of our
founding fathers. The persecution of the early Quakers is rarely mentioned
(to my knowledge) in school. Any historical discussion about religion would
include some pretty ugly stuff. "Without knowledge of history, we are
destined to repeat it." I am not saying that there needs to be preaching in
the schools - I am saying that our religion is a fundamental part of our
being and it should weave in and out of the textbooks and discussions as it
does, or should do, in life itself. It is being surgically removed and this
is wrong.

  Religion was the 'reason' for the war in Bosnia - current events. Is this
being discussed in the schools? Is it being expressed that the Moslems
behaved with much more dignity than the so-called Christians? What about
Northern Ireland? Is it being taught that the Catholics and Protestants
prolonged a war of hatred that had very little to do with what they actually
believed and a lot more to do with a Hatfield and McCoy situation that kept
people struggling with each other for jobs and resources?

  This is where we are. These directly pertain to the important issues of
today.

  Evolution is right in there - people start hammering at each other and
spouting partial evidence as the end-all definitive word without going into
the facts. Kids think they are being disloyal to God and man if they listen.
When you censor the questions, you keep people from hearing the answers.

  I'm not saying that I like the situation a lot. But teachers do
  have some duty to be careful about preaching in class. If the
  teacher were a Buddhist, you might not like it if they try to
  persuade your kids to join some Buddhist chant session. So to
  some extent, the easiest policy for the school is to say, "no",
  and "say nothing".

  Again, I am not a proponent of practicing religion in school. I am a
proponent of religion not being treated as something to be censored. If an
English class is studying Rudyard Kipling's Kim then a short discussion of
Buddhism is in order. A little knowledge on the subject is necessary to
fully grasp the book.

    I know that it has been determined that there can be religious clubs at
schools. I also know that speaking of religion in a classroom can get a
teacher disciplined or fired. Even if the students start the discussion,
the repercussions for the teacher can be severe. This is wrong.

    Now that we've rooted out the evil of blind religious teaching, we need
to move towards true religious freedom - which includes exploration and
discussion where this is natural. Maybe in the science class it would only
come up for a grand total of 2 hours out of four years - fine. That 2 hours
of discussion shouldn't be censored. In the history class, it would be a
great deal more - still maybe only 1% of the time spent in the classroom -
but it is a significant part of people's lives and motivations.

    We are rewriting history a la the communists.

  But now we are back to the science classroom. Science would
  not have much to say about religion, since it studies processes
  that involve material. So a larger fraction of the science
  discussions really would have little reason to discuss God.

  If you can mention a textbook that you find offensive, maybe
  we can discuss that, but I don't know right now because I have
  nothing to look at.

  When it comes to evolution, I don't know that the textbook needs to even
mention God. It really depends upon how it is approached. If the authors can
refrain from handwaving and expostulating on the gaps in the theory, then
they don't need to provide an alternative approach for those gaps.
Certainly, there is enoughscientific evidence for the authors to just stick
to scientific facts.

  I object to the fact that teachers are frightened for their jobs if they
promote exploration of the topic. It is school policy that is the issue in
regard to evolution more than the textbooks. Textbooks are an issue when it
comes to censorship of historical documents and events.

  The big issue is the overall philosophy of education being thrust upon the
American people. It reminds me of the discipline of children ,"If you can't
play nicely with that, then I will take it away."

  But taking all reference to religion out of the schools is like taking an
essential nutrient out of our diet. It isn't healthy, and we'll pay for it
later.

  by Grace we proceed,
  Wayne

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Received on Sun Jan 14 12:57:28 2007