(June 18, 2012 at 1:27 pm)justthefactsplease Wrote: 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.
"But the gods plainly do exist," said a priest.
"It Is Not Evident," [said Dorfl].
A bolt of lightning lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armor formed puddles around his white-hot feet.
"I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument," said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
"It Is Not Evident," [said Dorfl].
A bolt of lightning lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armor formed puddles around his white-hot feet.
"I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument," said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
