Re: [asa] Teenagers and Evolution

Debbie, on God in the public schools, once again let's get the facts straight. Any school administrator who tells a teacher not to mention God in the classroom is flying in the face of the Supreme Court's opinion that schools may teach about religion. Not only may students speak about God in the classroom, and even tell about their own beliefs, teachers may also bring up religious subjects and as appropriate refer to beliefs about God. The only requirement is that teachers be religiously neutral, i.e., they cannot express a preference for one form of religion over another; and students cannot proselytize when they speak of their faith. Neither could say, for example, that if you don't believe in my form of religion you're going to hell.

As for science classes, there is no reason that a teacher cannot say that certain scientific theories are held by certain people to be compatible or incompatible with various religious perspectives; and do so in a non-judgmental way. But they cannot teach as scientific any idea that has been forbidden by law and court ruling, such as young earth creationism. I agree that appropriate discussions about the historical relationship between religion and science should be allowed in science classrooms.

A widely circulated statement on Religion in the Public Schools drawn up by thirty-five religious and public advocacy groups, that sets out the legal dimensions of the issue can be accessed at http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/04-1995/prayer.html. This statement should be required reading for every school board, school administrator, teacher, and PTA group; a lot of confusion might be cleared up.

As for textbooks, the reasons that some of them have not included aspects of religion in, say, history of science textbooks may be varied. If some through a faulty undertanding of court rulings have not included them, that is truly unfortunate. For example, it would be ridiculous to write in an American history textbook about the abolition movement in the 19th century without reference to the fact that most of the abolitionists were Christian clergy and laity acting out of Christian convictions. Textbook writers respond to pressures from the public, teachers, and legislators. It would be entirely proper for the public to demand that textbooks give an accurate, fair and neutral presentation of religious topics to publishers. I see no reason why a science textbook should not include information on the history and social developments of science, since it is a cultural force.

One serious problem is local pressures. It happens regularly that a school board will vote to include in the curriculum a course on world religions, and the adherents of a particular denomination will pressure the course to be dropped because they don't want their children exposed to any religious ideas other than their own form of Christianity.

Bob Schneider
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
  To: deborahjmann@insightbb.com ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 11:01 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Teenagers and Evolution

  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.

  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.

    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.

  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".

    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.

  by Grace we proceed,
  Wayne

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Received on Sun Jan 14 13:17:58 2007