The attack on public schools seems to be growing, and let to some extent by those who reject science. Strange stuff. It seems to all be related to the societal divisions we have developed. I was reading about the attack on public schools in our state that are occurring that follow this nationwide trend, and it is very disturbing
Ham didn’t mean his cartoons to be such, but I can’t think of a better endorsement of a good public school education that this.
Public school vs. homeschool arguments in the US always look a bit bizarre from this side of the Atlantic. It often feels like white-middle-class privilege run amock. Most UK families would need be raking it in to afford to homeschool their kids. And Christian schools are not a thing in the same way they are in the US.
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Perhaps this would be a good topic for the forum in anther post. Will try to move and start one discussing how public education and the faith and science world interconnects.
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Absolutely! Many of the private Christian schools in the South were founded after the public schools were forcibly integrated. And the animosity directed at critical race theory is just racism.
But that thinking is only found in certain areas here.
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The big push here in Texas is to move to a voucher system where parents came get funds for private schools or homeschooling that ultimately come from what now goes to the public school system. Traditionally, homeschool organizations opposed this, as they know that with funding comes control, which they opposed, but now with the control being in the hands of like minded science skeptics, it seems it may come to pass, which may well adversely after the public school system.
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Hark, an echo from not too long ago: Christian Nationalism isn’t Christian.
True. The UK has no separation of church and state. And the citizens are less religious than their American counter parts. One good thing about that is that there are probably few fundamentalists trying to push creationism into the science classroom, which is a big problem here.
My church runs a Christian boarding school for our boy choristers. The boys are wonderful.
As far as I can tell, Michigan public schools are holding their own in real science education. Although, I have done some research at work for one of the Forum participants in the past year, and finding information is much harder than I anticipated. I even contacted one of the statisticians in the Michigan Department of Education to see if anyone at the state level is keeping track of exactly what science curricula are being taught. No can do. Local control. We live in a very conservative area, but the science teachers are doing a great job teaching standard (real) science.
I have looked at the science curriculum standards that Michigan recommends (but can’t enforce the use of), and they entirely independent of faiths.
I guess I could take this opportunity to pull out my soapbox regarding the establishment clause. I am always a bit baffled that there is so much concern about promoting a version of Christianity attached to science, not just any faith that a group decides would be important for students to learn and comprehend (and believe), so students could grasp the real and true understanding of human origins, evolution, cosmology, etc, etc, etc. How welcoming would school boards be, if science teachers started pulling in their alternative theologies, attempting to work them in with science education, much less any other part of education that would be relevant to that faith? We have the establishment clause to prevent exactly this kind of thing and prevent any religious group from claiming the right to favoritism.
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I’m betting this is partly due to the UK having more accessible childcare. I’ve known many families where having a stay-at-home parent made the most financial sense because after paying for childcare, another car, and whatever else they needed for both parents to work, there would have been very little left from that second income.
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Yes. I feel even more strongly about that, having grown up as a tiny minority in a vastly Muslim country (where the political ideologies were quite strongly in favor of sharia, especially next door in Nigeria; many people are currently affected adversely by Boko Haram there now, as well as Al Qaeda. Interestingly Niger’s constitution had separation of faith and state built into it on independence from France–which is different from Nigeria, I think.). What baffles me a bit, though, is the mixing of church and state in the UK. It seems to be accepted, and I would be turned off by that, given my history, as an infringement on the rights of minorities. I realize it seems to be more of a vaccination against belief than anything else, but I still don’t feel comfortable with it (while respecting the UK tremendously).
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