@TedDavis, thank you for sharing your opinion about public schools. I suppose it’s valuable to know that there are educated people out there who really do think this way.
In an ideal world (whatever that would be) I suppose your suggestion would make sense, that tax-payers get to determine what their schools teach.
Have you spent time talking to school superintendents about this matter and the various demands that tax-payers make regarding curricula of local schools? I think if you did, you would speak differently about the matter.
There is no end to the variation of nonsense that parents would like to see taught in public schools. Likewise, there is no end to the variety of things parents do NOT want taught in public schools (like robust human biology that teaches kids about their bodies and the realities of reproduction). Many school districts have nearly non-existent sex-ed programs, based on “abstinance.”
Sex ed program: “Don’t have sex before marriage.”
Kid: “What is “having sex?”” “What is marriage?”
I’ve been to enough school board meetings to know that there are many loud parents out there who should have nothing to do with decisions about public school curriculum.
The ongoing argument between “Nanny State” and “Educator”. Politics can impinge on many aspects of life, be it religion, science or Sex. Civil law decrees what is decent or acceptable but even then there is the argument over what can be done consensually behind closed doors or in the sanctuary of your own castle. Domestic abuse is a very grey area.
Unfortunately all this is symptomatic of communal living and to a greater or lesser extent consensus. Nudity being a prime example of where to draw the line, if at all.
The problem of today is that Christianity used to be the guiding light of the Western World but is no longer. We condemn Islamic dominance but only because their values do not match our own. I do not think Science has reached the pinacle of authority that religion ever had but that does not stop the scientific community from trying it on.
I have said it before and wil repeat it: there is an uunhealthy arogance and certitude within the Scientific community despite its claim for being balanced and fair. The egos displayed on this forum and the speed to take offence are symptomatic of this.
Sort of. Regionally. Denominationally. Racially.
In the U.S. alone Christianity was used both to support slavery as well as demonstrate it as the evil that it is.
Christianity running culture also made it impossible for most women to support themseves or do business in “christian societies” as well. Until there weren’t enough men around to do all the work, at which point women could be temporarily liberated to pick up the slack.
There is not one single, authoritative “christian” voice.
And the one speaking has often been dead wrong.
“Science” could not, as it makes no claims that affect one’s eternal state, or that carry the weight of God’s backing.
Science itself has no authority nor makes any authority claims. “The Scientific community” (Does such a unity even exist?) makes claims or statements with the authority of the current state of evidence. “The Scientific community” may not be able to say what definitely will be future most current understanding, but it is very good at eliminating wrong explanations of natural processes.
In regard to the teaching of science, we don’t need schools to put the guise of academic authority behind religious explanations for natural processes. We need students to understand how scientific study works, experience it and learn the basics of what is understood today.
It’s unfortunate that you see my disgreement with you and TedDavis as an indication of arrogance and unfounded certitude. Particularly without having investigated or even asked about the specific examples I have in mind from real school board meetings where real parents and other members of the community make curricular demands of the schools based on emotional or erroneous claims.
My concerns related to the developent of school curriculua extend well beyond the teaching of science.
Teaching at a private school as I do, It’s pretty nearly a mantra around this environment that “education is ultimately the parents’ responsibility”, and that our institution exists “as an extension of their home”, and at their pleasure. Words very nearly like those are in fact written into some of our core documents and values statements. That said, we also have in our mission statement that it is our responsibility to “educate in truth…”. So there is that too - and what to do if those two things will be in tension as they often must unavoidably be? I think it’s pretty easy for well-off families who are hyper-involved and hyper-invested in their own kids’ education to jealously guard that control they have in regards to their own. But when their control over “their own” expands into further control over many others considerably beyond “their own”, it gets dicey; and even within our own sheltered enclave that issue will not be absent.
How much more so in the public sphere where divisions over important stuff presumably gets wider yet? Surely there is a set of “foundational stuff” that the vast majority of reasonable parents across all major religions and partisan lines could agree that “yes - any good education should be including at least that!” Things like how to read, how to do math, basic understandings of how the physical world works, etc. Whatever that “basic foundational stuff” includes should be held sacrosanct and protected from any attempted removal by whatever loud voices are intruding themselves. That space should be the “civil education for all good citizens” space that ought to be freely available to all - as the spirit of public education in our country has held. Getting beyond those foundations, how far, and in what directions is where things get dicey and answers seem a lot fuzzier to me. I’m with you that basic sex education (at the appropriate age levels) should probably be part of those basics. But I also recognize that any widespread agreement about even just that (and what all should be included in that) has evaporated. I don’t know the answer to that in any widespread societal sense except to say that the education of the many should not be held hostage to the whims of the radicalized few (whichever side of the aisle they may hail from.)
It sounds ideal, until we try to impliment it. RIght? As soon as you start to bring in reading, for example, it gets dicey. What should kids be allowed to read? Who decides?
My inclination with my kids has been “Whatever they want; with some very basic oversight from me.” I don’t want them to be afraid of reading, or books. And I want them to develop good judgement on their own. And they have!
Absolutely every text worth reading can be controversial. Too much this. Too little that. I’ve heard absolutely absurd claims made about books. For that parent, maybe, the book is about self harm. But no one else shares the background that that parent has that would lead to that claim.
“Beloved classics” often shamelessly demonstrate the racist norms of the past. They must be treated as such, not as “wholesome American literature.”
Try to have THAT conversation with “The Public.”
I think this is important to keep in mind.
One of the first questions church people ask around here is whether one homeschools (The GOOD answer) or sends their kids to public school (The TELLING answer). I got so sick of it. I finally decided, as I usually do, that the binary is nonsense. “We do both.”
However one’s kids are formally educated, we are also teaching our kids at the supper table and out in the yard or garage. And that is how it should be.
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
63
Adding to that, the long held principle used by public schools is that the basics should reflect the consensus of the experts in any given field. I think this has two main benefits. First, it allows for the inheritance of the knowledge we have gained as a human society. Second, it gives students a basic educational footing should they choose a career in that field. For biology, YEC offers nothing in the way of preparing students for a career in the biological sciences. Learning about evolution does.
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
64
There are people who have dedicated their life to promoting creationism, and they don’t engage with the scientific community. They don’t gather data, write it up, and present it in peer reviewed papers or scientific conferences. Most of us conclude it is because they know their claims won’t stand up to the scrutiny of experts. Instead, their work is mainly focused on convincing non-experts.
The attorney representing the Amish, the late Bill Ball, was a devout Catholic from the Harrisburg are who argued many cases before SCOTUS. I met him once at an event on Messiah’s campus.
I wasn’t refering to you. There are those in the community who can probably identify themselves, if they wish to.
I have no problem with certitude, but I do have a problem with insistance and assertion.
That is preciseley the smug arogance I am critcising.
I mainly agree, and said so succinctly (the first sentence) in something I wrote elsewhere (below), where I give some information about funding education that Americans know but non-Americans probably don’t know.
“Can these deep disagreements over books and curriculum in public schools be solved? I doubt it. No single solution is likely to satisfy all parties. For a long time, Americans have been of two minds when it comes to funding education with taxes. On the one hand, students and their families can take federal or state grants and loans to almost any college or university of their choice, including institutions that hire only faculty who hold specific religious views. On the other hand, religiously affiliated primary and secondary schools can receive only strictly limited quantities and types of funding from governments. In short, when students do not have a choice (since education is mandatory to a certain age), they do not have a choice about where their tax dollars can be spent. When they do have a choice (whether or not to attend college), they have a choice about where their tax dollars can be spent. Pre-college public education is monopolistic on that score.”
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
68
I’m fine with that criticism. It only furthers my point. Instead of rallying scientific evidence we instead have people who attack the attitudes of certain people.
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
70
Monopoly seems to be a poor description since that applies to businesses, not governments.
On the whole, public schooling has been supported by the tax payers because of the obvious benefits. The drastic increase in literacy rates when public education was introduced is the classic example. I also blanche at the thought of what our society would look like if there wasn’t public education, if access to education was controlled by corporations and businesses. Capitalism works in many instances, but it doesn’t work well when the commodity is something that is nearly a requirement for living in society. The cost of health care in the US is probably a good comparison.
In a previous life (or so it often seems), I was a science and mathematics high school teacher in North Philadelphia, where most public schools (other than the very few magnet schools then in existence) were either mostly white or mostly black–because they were still basically neighborhood schools. The kind of “diversity” I want to see would extend well beyond “racial” or ethnic diversity, but extend to philosphical and religious diversity. By religious diversity, I mean schools that are not “secularist,” which is increasingly (IMO) the trend in “secular” education. Secular (state sponsored) education need not be secularist (the view that religion has to have a back seat, or no seat at all, in the public square). This is of course a conversation that goes way, way back in American history (and similarly in many other nations). The fundamental question I’m asking, is, do we want a “naked public square”? The Naked Public Square - Wikipedia
Perhaps not so incidentally, the school where I taught was a Christian school, and thus sort of a magnet school. It was indeed very diverse “racially” and ethnically, including immigrants from places like the Ukraine (when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union) and Brazil, as well as African-American missionary kids who’d grown up in Haiti. Many students went on to college. Generally speaking, very few public schools in Philly matched it in that kind of “diversity,” and obviously none of them could touch it in philosophical/religious diversity.
Obviously I mean monopolistic in a different sense. There’s just one pre-college educational option for spending one’s own tax dollars. That’s now changing in many states, which is something I never anticipated owing to changing jurisprudence about the First Amendment.
1 Like
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
74
Completely agree. Schools should be similar to “polite conversation” or “bar rules” where we just don’t talk about religion and politics, be it in the positive or negative. One of the prongs of the Lemon Test (which I understand is no longer precedent, but nonetheless) says that the state should not unduly entangle itself in religious matters. I’ve always liked the neutrality of that statement.
And I fear it will lead to the collapse of public education in general as it receives less and less funding which may be the goal of those pushing for school vouchers. It also has a strongly classist vibe to it since we already know that vouchers will likely only pay for a part of a private education. There is no financial incentive for private schools to make education accessible to everyone.
Here’s a thought experiment that gets at the public education piece Bryan was so upset about. Again, I’ll quote something I wrote elsewhere: “If you had been a contemporary of Scopes, would you have sided with Bryan and his fundamentalist friends to ban the use of books like those by Goldsmith and Hunter in public schools?” (See the paragraphs immediately following the racist image from Osborn.)
Just curious to see where folks stand on this. I know those books wouldn’t be allowed as public school texts today, but Hunter’s book was the standard text in Tennessee and some other places–it was supplied to the HS in Dayton by the chair of the county school board, whose day job was running his pharmacy. In other words, if the scientific and educational establishment provide those ideas as integral to teaching evolution, do you opt in or out? Do you want to get rid of them? Do you want to have more control over what your chidren are being taught?
True, but students at private religious colleges and universities can receive federally funded grants and loans just like students at local community colleges. At least, as long as FAFSA is still operational pending the shutdown of the Dept. of Education.
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Jay, you may have misread me here. You state facts I was actually thinking of when I wrote that.
I added a lenghthier point below, this morning, on this very point, highlighting differences between how tax dollars are treated in pre-college vs college situations.
Intolerance and violence are not values to be admired.
Nor in geology.
When you’ve read a hundred papers from a small community with a unified philosophy, and they are all trash, it is not arrogant to expect that the next paper from that community will also be trash.
I visited a town in Mexico where the public school were so bad that three corporations got together and set up their own school. The approach was to teach the basics for any job that could be had with one of those corporations, which meant a very robust curriculum.
I think if it had been run by just one company things wouldn’t have worked well, but with three, having clerical and tech and sales and manufacturing and other positions the education was necessarily broad-based.
It was interesting talking to people who were proud of some big companies for providing serious education.