I once argued at a meeting in support of a teacher who kept a Bible on his desk. I pointed to the stated goal of producing good citizens, and asked how students could learn to be good citizens if they never got to see religious liberty in action? I noted that there was also a Roman Catholic teacher, a Hindu, and a Buddhist, and that allowing each to engage in private religious behavior visibly would teach a solid American value.
I didn’t expect the firestorm I set off, as some exploded with the insistence that the U.S. is supposed to be Christian, so Bibles should be allowed but nothing from any other religion.
Turned out there was also a Mormon teacher and a Ba’hai, which provided enough diversity that my view prevailed, so not just that one Bible but other evidences of faculty members’ faith started showing up. A big side effect was that students said they didn’t feel afraid to wear their own religious emblems.
It worked great until the state decided that no religious symbols were to be allowed at all, even ones mandatory for certain religious believers.
I forget what course it was in, but I remember reading a study that showed that of something like sixty school districts in southern California, there was a strong correlation between such diversity and overall student success. The leading district in both was one with so many minorities represented that there was no majority ethnicity or religion.
There was a Lutheran school near where I attended university that wanted to add grades 7 - 9 to the existing K - 6. The addition was approved but with the proviso that attendance had to be financially possible for any applicants. It took as long to build the trust fund that made that possible as it did to finish the additional buildings, but they managed it.
Usually, the counter to this is framed in terms of separation of church and state, and that is sufficient grounds to preclude presenting YEC dogma in public schools.
Just as fundamentally decisive in that discussion, however, is that YEC is gibberish. To teach YEC is to deliberately teach children factual lies when they are supposed to be learning geology, astronomy, biology, and ancient history. Nor does this really equip students to think for themselves, as such discourse should be grounded in facts and reality, and YEC is not a serious rational alternative. To allow YEC to be taught in public education would be an egregious miscarriage of its fundamental mission.
Just FYI: I will be attending a conference for a few days soon and may be much slower to respond to folks here. I’m glad people aren’t hesitant to throw in their two or three cents! I will read everything contributed, whether or not I respond to a given post at some point.
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
87
I would like to think I would have the same views on eugenics then as I do now. Eugenics fails at the most basic level because it falsely converts a scientific description into a moral prescription. It is Hume’s Is/Ought problem, or the Naturalistic fallacy. As I have noted in similar discussions, eugenics is the same as throwing people off of buildings because Newton’s laws demand that they fall.
I think we could also easily make a non-religious moral argument that a person’s worth as a human being is independent of what alleles they may be carrying. Banning science books that push eugenics wouldn’t be a religiously based ban, at least in my eyes.
I’m glad you had that experience. I know what you mean about “a previous life.” Haha. The same thing applied to Dallas County schools prior to court-ordered busing and federal oversight by Judge Barefoot Sanders. (One of the all-time great judge names.) You’re a historian. I don’t have to explain what happened next.
Fast forward to today, and Dallas County is 42% Hispanic, 26% White, 24% Black, 8% Asian, and the rest mixed. DISD is 70% Hispanic, 21% Black, 6% White, and 1% Asian. The only white kids left are poor. The rest have chosen other educational options. It’s not a monopoly for the middle or upper class.
You taught at a Christian school in the public school system? Sorry, it’s hard for me to imagine such a thing. I’m for the strict separation of church and state. Public dollars shouldn’t fund religious schools of instruction. Deviation from that principle leads to a state-sponsored religion, which is good for neither the state nor religion. Christian nationalism is heresy. Just sayin.
I can’t follow you here. There’s a trend toward public schools being more secular, but you define secular education as state sponsored? That’s existed for a long time.
Anyway, religion has no seat at the table in public education of math and science. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition – either give every religion a seat at the table, or give no religion a seat at the table. There is no in-between of giving the Christian religion a seat with a nod to Judaism. The only solution is to leave religious instruction to parents and whatever institutions of worship they might attend. The devoutly religious can opt out if they choose.
Where you and Neuhaus miss the boat is K-12 education in the humanities, and the practical matter that public school teachers are drawn from the community. The vast majority of us, like the American public at large, are Christians. As a high school English teacher, I intentionally picked provocative texts that would prompt the kids to think, and quite often the questions they asked were of a religious nature. Even in a public school setting, I have the freedom of speech to answer honestly and give my opinion. I’ve also sat in New Mexico history classrooms as a SPED observer or a last-minute sub and had to answer questions about Spanish missions and the enslavement of native peoples from students who were Native Americans. (Incidentally, every Native American I’ve ever known, student or adult, was a devout Catholic. There’s a real tension there.)
Religion isn’t banned from discussion in the public square of public school classrooms. It takes place every day.
Note: I should add that I’ve also been in a middle school orchestra class when the teacher answered a question why Bach signed his music SDG – Soli Deo Gloria. It was glorious.
2 Likes
SkovandOfMitaze
(Intellectually Atheist Emotionally Christian )
89
I fall into the camp that I think religious wisdom that ties into the discussion should be blended into the narratives being taught. Such as in science when river ecology is being taught I think we should blend in
Psalms 104:10-13
He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
Surah Az-Zumar 39:21
Do you not see that Allah sends down rain from the sky and makes it flow as springs [and rivers] in the earth; then He produces thereby crops of varying colors; then they dry and you see them turned yellow; then He makes them [scattered] debris. Indeed, in that is a reminder for those of understanding.
Things like myths from the Iliad about the river angry over being polluted by waste and corpses. How Plato said rivers are the veins of earth same as how ancient druids or in the The Druidry Handbook.
Sayings like “ i am the river, and the river is me “(Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au” which was chanted when the Māori helped get the Whanganui River recognized as a legal being in honor of Tupuna.
We can look at river ecology as a series of facts, or we can use facts and myths and stories to help create a narrative that means something to people resulting in action.
You misunderstood me, Jay. I taught at a private Christian school that was similar to a magnet school, insofar as it drew students from many parts of Philly. It wasn’t a neighborhood school, like the public and Catholic schools then were. So, the demographic was more similar to that of a public magnet school (of which there were only a small number then), than an ordinary public school.
Perhaps that’s true where you live, Jay. It’s not true in many parts of the mid-Atlantic and the NE regions. Certainly not true in Montgomery County, MD, from which came the recent SCOTUS case against a school’s decision not to allow parents to remove their children from classes where LGTBQIA+ books were read to them. That case was brought by a religiously diverse group of parents (Muslims, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Catholics) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/opinion/lgbtq-books-supreme-court.html.
We entirely agree about the failures of eugenics, and like you I would like to think I’d have opposed it had I been living in 1925. Bryan’s objections to it were religiously based, only insofar as his basic moratlity was based on his belief that all humans are created in the image of God. Many of his moral beliefs would have been shared by non-Christians, even non-theists, at the time. Indeed, some reliable sources state that the agnostic attorney Clarence Darrow, who supported Bryan politically to some extent, also opposed eugenics. I know little about Darrow; if I have that wrong, please correct me.
More to the point, you’ve dodged my question. You’re obviously against eugenics, but in the 1920s many elite scientists either endorsed it or even actively promoted it, including some of the pamphlet authors. I noted that the composition of the AAAS committee against Bryan, and the content of certain biology textbooks (I haven’t surveyed the whole pile, only those directly relevant to my project), strongly implies that teaching evolution included teaching eugenics.
So, how would you answer the question in the thought experiment. Would you have opposed using those standard textbooks in high school biology, for moral reasons? If so, then you might have more sympathy to my view on genuine pluralism than you’ve let on. If not, why not?
Only because the powers that be have decreed that religion annot be taiught in public schools other than to those who decide to make it part of their qualification. Scince, however, is mandatory.
In my country (Finland), that is possible, although with some limitations.
Here, the vast majority of kids go to public schools and all the best schools are public schools. Some parents do not like the limitations and atmosphere within the ordinary public schools, so they would prefer to have an alternative, like a Christian school. Basically, there are two options for a Christian school:
a privately funded school that operates according to the guidelines of home schools. That gives the most liberty but would demand lots of donations from the parents - no financial support from the government. Most Christian parents are not rich.
an alternative is to apply for a permission to establish a new school that operates within the public school system but with a background ideology like Christianity. The demands for the curricula are as tight (limited) as in an ordinary public school, with the exception that the background ideology is allowed to become visible. For example, there is a possibility to have Christmas or Passover celebrations with religious elements, or discuss the viewpoints of the background ideology in such teaching where the viewpoints may open wider insights to the subject. An accepted Christian school may get financial support from the government, as the other public schools.
Operating within the public school system gives the possibility to hire enough of good teachers without the continuous support of rich parents.
The disadvantages are that it is not easy to get such a status (few applications have been accepted) and the teaching needs to follow the curricula of ordinary public schools.
The Christian (public) schools usually have an atmosphere where the children can more easily feel that they are accepted. That has been a blessing for many kids that have faced teasing and bullying in the ordinary schools because of their handicaps or deviating opinions.
The parents should tell their kids to walk out if they object.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
96
And they were wrong. Scientists are humans like anyone else, so it is both unsurprising and saddening that they echoed the worst impulses of their society. Regardless of religious belief, this type of racism was pervasive in many Western cultures.
I’m not sure what you are specifically describing as genuine pluralism, but I am a big fan of the separation of church and state. This means the government neither promotes nor inhibits religion (again, the Lemon test gets a lot right in my eyes).
I also think age should be considered. As adults we are much more capable of understanding the power dynamics of authorities in our lives, but children have a much harder time with this. This is why parental rights are what they are. I do agree with a much sharper line for the separation of church and state in the setting of public primary schooling, but have no problem with religion making its way into the halls of our public universities as long as all religions are treated fairly by the university. Chaplains in the military are another good idea that I have no problem with.
If we are talking about our approach to laws and morality, the general rule I follow is a law should have more justification than “because my religious scriptures say so”. Any law or policy should be founded in our shared sense of inner morality which can also be informed by many religions, traditions, and histories. The issue with a ban on evolution is the only argument against it was religious in nature. Eugenics, on the other hand, can be argued against by a shared sense of morality that isn’t solely based on religious belief.
My mistake. I’m still glad you had that experience. Not many retired profs can relate to the challenges of K-12 education.
It’s fair to say my evidence is anecdotal, but I’ve taught in a deep Red state (Texas) and a blue state (New Mexico). But my point was that teachers are drawn from the community they serve. I looked up Montgomery County, MD. It’s the third-most religiously diverse county in the US, according to the 2020 PRRI census. I don’t have county data, but Maryland is tied for 22nd in the country for the “most religious” (devout) population at 54%. Others tied for 22nd: Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, Wyoming. Not exactly hotbeds of secularism.
I remember the Texas Textbook Wars when the pre-MAGA Tea Party took over the state board of education and started changing standards to include culture war topics. Science textbook publishers refused to make changes because the authors (scientists) refused to make revisions. Texas capitulated. On the other hand, we wound up with a history textbook that called the slave trade “immigration” to the US. It’s important because big states like Texas drive the textbook publishing industry.
I’m not surprised it was a religiously diverse group, given Montgomery County’s population, but the thing that unites them all is animosity toward LGBT+. I have a hard time seeing how this applies to diversity of ideas in the public square. In the end, aren’t they the ones impoverishing the discussion and quashing pluralism?
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but here’s my answer:
I can only compare it to a present situation. A few prominent scientists these days – Dawkins, Coyne, Pinker – promote the idea that biologically there are only two sexes. That’s outside the mainstream consensus, so I would oppose such language being included in textbooks for secondary science. Such questions are better left to colleges and universities. I would also oppose it on moral grounds as violating the basic human rights of students sitting in my classroom, denying their existence and erasing them from discussion.
Regarding your thought experiment, “implies” does a lot of heavy lifting here: “the content of certain biology textbooks… strongly implies that teaching evolution included teaching eugenics.” I can only guess exactly what that means, but I interpret it as saying the textbooks didn’t explicitly endorse eugenics. Even assuming they did, how would I have reacted?
I’ve known a handful of teachers in my career who simply had the kids read the textbook and fill out worksheets. For the vast majority, the textbook is simply a resource, not something to be followed word-for-word. As a teacher, I decide what’s important to cover and what can be safely skipped. Eugenics isn’t important to the teaching of evolution, and I find it morally questionable from a human rights standpoint, denying the right to existence of “inferior” persons and erasing them from consideration, so even if it was in the textbook, I would’ve skipped that part. Happens every day.
My question for you: What was actually happening in classrooms during the Scopes trial era? Were teachers teaching rote memorization from the textbook, or did they have freedom to create their own lesson plans?
I’m sure none of us would have ever owned slaves had we been born long ago. We are much too good for that. I’m sure none of us would have supported racist ideology, promoted segregation, thought women shouldn’t vote or subscribed to eugenics, a fiercely supported scientific position of the day, despite repeatedly touting consensus over and over again on the Biologos forum. Not us. No way. Never. The delusion is real.
Vinnie
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
100
That is a good bit of self reflection. It is always good to remind ourselves that we are a product of our current society. I very much doubt that I would have been amongst the tiny sliver of the population in those times that held something akin to our modern sense of morality. This is also why I don’t like the current movement of judging historic figures against our modern sense of morality.
At the same time, eugenics had plenty of detractors at the time.