Do you believe references to "God" in school should be taken out?

[justthefactsplease]

The problem with teaching religion as a cultural study is that it would be difficult to regulate the bias of the teacher. I live in the rural midwest and I'm absolutely positive that teachers would teach christianity as fact and other religions as myth.

I taught school for a long time and at one point I was a special education teacher who assisted high functioning students with learning disabilities in the mainstream classroom. One of the classes I worked in was a biology class and when it came time to teach evolution the teacher flatly refused. She was required by law to teach the information so she simply printed and copied information from the internet, passed it out to the students and sat at her desk while they were given time to read it- which they didn't and which she didn't care. When passing out the copies she told the class there would be no test and called Darwin's (apparently the only scientist who has ever studied evolution) methodology into question without elaborating on these questions or presenting any opposition to them. The principal, superintendent and school board fully supported this method of circumventing the law.

A cultural studies class, introduced in our current environment would play out in much the same way, I'm afraid.

As it currently stands god is rampant in schools unless someone explicitly objects (usually at great personal risk both physically and socially). God is assumed to be fact. And it's different than when I was in school. Fundies weren't so loud then and I was actually teaching school before I learned that there are people who actually don't believe in evolution, despite the fact that I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. That is not the case now- we all know these people exist because they've made sure of it. And they've also made sure that people who formerly wouldn't have given evolution a second thought do now and that these people now feel it is their duty to fight against these "lies". Perhaps someday cultural studies will have their place in our school system but not in the current climate.

[Minimalist]

I live in the rural midwest and I'm absolutely positive that teachers would teach christianity as fact and other religions as myth.

I agree with you. There is little difference between xtians and the Taliban.

[Morganna]

The problem with teaching religion as a cultural study is that it would be difficult to regulate the bias of the teacher. I live in the rural midwest and I'm absolutely positive that teachers would teach christianity as fact and other religions as myth.

Once again, I'm glad that I grew up in the relatively secular Northeast. I can't remember any teacher ever trying something like that with me or with my classmates. We were learning about the Big Bang from sixth grade on!

Perhaps this is my bias as, again, someone who was educated in the relatively secular and liberal Northeast, but I just don't see how you can go about teaching certain portions of history without some reference to religious beliefs. The wholesale slaughter that took place during the Partition of India doesn't make much sense unless you add in the religious differences. ... Of course, narrow-minded people of the sort whom you reference, justthefactsplease, probably wouldn't understand why American students should learn about the Partition of India in the first place. Idiots are idiots. (And anybody who refuses to teach scientific theory and then has the gall to call him/herself a science teacher is an idiot, to say the least.)

Unfortunately, I can't think of a simple solution to the problem that you're naming, unless we get rid of local control of education altogether and switch to a more nationalistic, top-down system. This obviously has plenty of drawbacks as well as advantages, starting with not-too-unlikely possibility of fundies gaining control of the Department of Education for however many years and fucking up education for the rest of the country.

I guess the only hope we have is for freethinking parents or even the students themselves to make a stink whenever they find out about these practices. Perhaps we can milk some good out of our current culture of high-stakes testing, assuming that we can get rational ideas and worldviews into the tests in the first place and neutral graders to highlight the problems with certain teachers and indeed certain parts of the country entirely.

[justthefactsplease]

Perhaps this is my bias as, again, someone who was educated in the relatively secular and liberal Northeast, but I just don't see how you can go about teaching certain portions of history without some reference to religious beliefs.

I agree, and like you I can't think of a simple solution to the problem. I do know that god is accepted as fact here, more so than actual facts. Perhaps if we can finally get a proper science education into our schools then a proper history education can follow. It seems necessary at this point for the two to be addressed together.

[frankiej]

We don't get anything pushed more than other religions in R.E over here. When I was at school we just sat and had discussions about all sorts of things. Christianity was actually the thing we talked the least about despite the teacher being a die hard Christoholic (He then became my philosophy teacher).

As for science, it is rather good here. I remember learning about the big bang when I was 5 or 6 and we got taught a bit about evolution when we were about 8 or 9.

[Annik]

I think this thread should make a distinction between religion from a historical/objective sense and having references to God in a pledge that many are forced to recite everyday.

[justthefactsplease]

I think this thread should make a distinction between religion from a historical/objective sense and having references to God in a pledge that many are forced to recite everyday.

I am less opposed to referencing religion from a historical/objective sense but I still have concerns. The schools where I worked also used historic events to push their agenda. Columbus was touted as a moral christian role-model, for example (so, not even accurate history). I think many people would be shocked if they actually saw what goes on inside schools in regard to aiding religious indoctrination- it goes do far beyond the pledge.

I do think the age of the students matter. Older, high school age, students are better able to understand the difference between studying the cultural implications of religion and actually studying the religion. Younger kids are more inclined to see religious discussion as reinforcement of the ideas as reality.