Christianizing Texbooks in America...the Religious right's war on education!

[Wickabee]

Nothing for you to be offended about. I am in favour of having christianity and creation discussed in Elementary School, it has to be granted as a subject choice however, it cannot be considered of core subject matter.

Did you have electives in elementary school? Only choice I got was French or Russian and the decision I made in grade 2 decided that until high school.

It must be an elective, and other world's religions must have as much time devoted as christianity and the bible talk does. When the playing field is leveled, everyone is happy.

"Religion" as an elective in high school I like. Any earlier and you risk confusing belief with fact even inadvertently, as many kids would take it as fact simply because it's taught in school. By high school though, kids don't trust anybody, so they can differentiate better.

christians now want their religion taught as core subject matter, they want islam abolished from all talk, and judaism ignored, as well as the religions of the Asian sub-continent like hinduism and jainism, and buddhism. all ignored.

As organizations, yes. As political members and church heads, yes. As an average Christian, it's probably closer to 50/50. Just a guess.

[centrehice]

I am in agreement with High School as well. If you start too early, you risk indoctrination. I've been indoctrinated once in my life, & I would not wish that on any 4 year old, or any child until they are at least teens.

[JustAlex]

really, then show me the undisputed proof of where life came from, where humans came from, how humans evolved. not hypothesis but actual proof, you cannot, but expect someone else to do so.

Evolution is NOT about where life came from, so I'm skipping that part.

Where did humans come from?

They Evolved through natural selection over the course of millions of years from simple celled organisms to more complex organisms.

How do we know this?

We have fossils, we have dna evidence, we have geological evidence, and the model we have constructed for all of this (evolution)....makes sense.

Evolution is not a hypothesis, it's a scientific theory the same way gravity is a scientific theory.

I don't mean the fact that you drop a pencil and it falls to the ground......I mean "gravitational theory", and I bet you don't question that, right?

This of course later goes into general relativity and quantum mechanics.....and to "prove" it to you, it would take a whole course for you to properly understand it.

Unfortunately, I'm not a teacher or an expert to teach such a complex subject.


You see...the beauty about science is that IT WORKS!

All of these models are not the product of guessing, they are the results of observations, experiments, and a combination of facts and theories which are brought together to properly explain what, how, and why the things around us work the way they do.

Before, everything was attributed to god....and science has slowly but surely made those attributions elsewhere.

This is why religion will NEVER get along with science.

[MadMan1978]

It is 2 AM and I just finished watching the full show that the video Alex has posted. I suggest everyone as well as Alex watch the entire show. It is on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series. Side note watch some PBS you will be surprised. This episode as well the entire series shows all the view points within the time frame.


Couple things to note:

-This was filmed over several years-The State of Texas School Board reviewing all the standards of what will be taught in public schools. The aspect of evolution vs creationism was voted and adopted in 2009.

-The Piece to be more concerned about is the change to Social Studies. With a HUGE push to the conservative side of society.

- The hardest impact will be on the textbooks and how they will be written

-The next review of the Education standards is in 2020

Now my thoughts! hehehe
The Texas School Board is over run in my opinion, by the extreme far right of the GOP. I mean really the earth is only 6000 years old? In Science at least they can teach Evolution and the origin of life and Darwinism. The part that really surprise me was the push in Social Studies, they primarily pushed a far right conservative agenda. Nothing but. They have even outlined how the parts of the Constitution are to be taught. However, this is how you change a culture You start with the children. You start with the 5 and 6 year old's and teach them your version of history, science as well as other subjects. Actually a smart move, teach a generation you views and they will change the culture in the long run.

[shrewsbury]

alex, you are confusing evolution with human evolution.

not a hypothesis? again do you prefer Aquatic or Savannah? both are hypothesis on human evolution.

you are correct evolution does not explain where life came from, but you expect religious people to know where their god came from.

and the only reason science does not get along with religion is people like you on both sides

i find they compliment each other quite nicely

[Star_Cards]

Nothing for you to be offended about. I am in favour of having christianity and creation discussed in Elementary School, it has to be granted as a subject choice however, it cannot be considered of core subject matter.

It must be an elective, and other world's religions must have as much time devoted as christianity and the bible talk does. When the playing field is leveled, everyone is happy.

christians now want their religion taught as core subject matter, they want islam abolished from all talk, and judaism ignored, as well as the religions of the Asian sub-continent like hinduism and jainism, and buddhism. all ignored.

great post. I also agree that it could be beneficial to have religion taught in school, but learning about the world's religions is rather different than what most people think of or want when they say religion should be in school. Most people's ideas are simply that christianity be taught like it is in church. That simply has no place in public school.

I think teaching religion in school could create a lot more tolerance for other beliefs and squash a lot of negative stereotypes that people have for religions they just don't know a lot about. It would be more about the history of religions rather than endorsing one or the other. Although I can see issues with individual teachers if they chose to push a specific religious agenda. It's easier to just leave them all out of public school even if an elective.

[Star_Cards]

really, then show me the undisputed proof of where life came from, where humans came from, how humans evolved. not hypothesis but actual proof, you cannot, but expect someone else to do so.

I never learned evolution, as far as who life was created, as an absolute. It's been awhile since I was in public school and there may be classes that do, but what I learned was that most of it was theory. We did learn learn about specific examples of animals evolving well after they were created, but the way life came about had many theories that were presented to us. I can't remember all of the theories that we learned about speculating how the was formed... I believe there were three specific ones and I remember learning that it was up to debate. The main one, The Big Bang Theory is even called a theory right there in the name. It's speculation and taught as such. I know that's not exactly the same as evolution of human life, but not all things of how science tries to explain how we got here is presented as 100% fact.