(1) Re: Christian schools and YEC
In the late 1970s, I taught mathematics and science at
Cedar Grove Christian Academy in north Philadelphia.
It was (and still is) a strongly fundamentalist school;
they see themselves as Bob Jones in style, except for
the laudable fact that they strongly differ with Bob Jones
on racial attitudes, so that the school had a significant
"minority" student population (which is now even larger).
Yet I was not asked to teach YEC, which I did not believe:
I was at that time a Ramm-style progressive creationist, and
I advocated that view in a month-long unit on Science and the
Bible that I taught at the end of 11th grade chemistry.
In fact, I knew almost nothing about YEC, which at that time
was not that widely publicized. And what I did know about it
was enough to discredit it as ridiculous.
One of my colleagues, a Bob Jones alum (who, ironically,
was not welcome on campus because she married inter-racially),
taught YEC in her classes. So we made an interesting pair.
I learned about Ramm from the ASA, which I learned about from
a science teacher at one of our sister schools, Delaware County
Christian School. The teacher was Frank Roberts, who is still
active in ASA but was extremely active then as leader of the
now-extinct (?) Philadelphia section. At DELCO, students were
exposed to the full range of views on creation/evolution by
a man with a doctorate in geology and a Dallas Seminary degree.
I don't know what views are taught at DELCO now; Frank has
retired.
In thinking about the issue, it occurs to me that one might
expect to find differences between schools that pre-date the
1960s (such as DELCO), which tend to follow the Stony Brook
or CRC models of positive integration of faith and learning,
and schools that have been founded more recently, which often
(not always) are founded out of fear of the public schools and
have a much more negative agenda with regard to science (and
lots of other things). A classic example of this would be
those schools that use ACE and other self-paced curricula,
which are in most cases intellectual disasters: students
learn by rote, not by thinking, and use scripture in absolutely
trivial ways that I find insulting. I can't think what
justifies this sort of "education" except deeply held
fear of public schools, so that any alternative that calls
itself "Christian" is perceived as better. These schools
are almost inevitably hotbeds of YEC.
(2) Gould and ideology.
Michael Ruse's book, Darwinism Defended, was originally
to have contained a chapter or section about "Marxist"
theories or something to that effect. I base this statement
on advance advertisements for the book, which (alas) I no
longer have. I recall looking for that part of the book
when it appeared, but it wasn't there. I presume from this
that Ruse once intended to go after Gould and Eldridge in
his book, but decided for some reason not to -- perhaps
because it would be unseemly to air dirty linen in public
with creationists popping up all over the place? "Closing
ranks," as Tom Gieryn called it?