Re: Challenges to teaching biology

*What I still haven't seen (and I've looked) is a specific example: Science
teacher X ridiculing Student Y for religious beliefs on date Z in Public
School PDQ as reported by Whatitsname Press.*

And you probably won't find that kind of thing. For one thing,
anti-religious bias often isn't that overt. To a large extent, religious
(particularly conservative Christian) parents aren't filing complaints and
lawsuits, they're pulling their kids out of public school and homeschooling
or sending them to private Christian schools. And, the press really doesn't
care very much about it. The sexy issue is creationism and intelligent
design. That's what gets litigated and reported.

But just poking around for fifteen minutes or so, here's a blog post I found
by someone (don't know the person at all) apparently advocating
homeschooling or private Christian schooling:
http://carla_rolfe.blogspot.com/2005/07/what-kids-are-not.html

Note the anecdotal evidence the blogger provides:

"More and more I began to hear from other parents, that things had changed,
in public schools. Things had changed for the worse. Aggression toward
certain kids was reaching new levels of criminal status, from the time I was
in school. Gangs, drugs, harassment, etc. - this had only started in my
highschool when I left in 82 (and the biggest reason I left a year early and
took GED classes at the local college to finish school), but in 96 was much
worse than I could have ever imagined. A Christian kid being mocked in
public highschool would have been considered an easy day. Things had gone
from mocking, to lovely things like face slams into lockers - destruction of
personal property, getting beat up behind the science labs, open humiliation
from not only other kids, but teachers and staff as well. *Public, classroom
mockery of creation, and a student's faith, right in front of the other
kids.* Christian kids being threatened with a failing grade (and open
mockery in the class) if they refused to participate in certain classes -
like the health class when the teacher was showing kids how to apply a
condom to a cucumber."

Is this anecdotal hearsay evidence accurate? Probably partly yes, partly
no. I'd love to see some serious social science research on this. Wish I
had time to poke around in the literature.

On 4/3/06, Freeman, Louise Margaret <lfreeman@mbc.edu> wrote:
>
> > There are some good resources regarding these things on the Christian
> > Legal Society's website
> > (http://www.clsnet.org/clrfPages/pubs/pubs_overview.phpx). One of the
> > most thorough documents found there, "Religion in Schools: A Joint
> > Statement of Current Law," endorsed by a wide variety of groups
> > including the ACLU, states that "Just as they may either advance nor
> > inhibit any religious doctrine, teachers should not ridicule, for
> > example, a student's religious explanation for life on earth." This
> > suggests to me that such ridicule has been a problem often enough to
> > warrant mention in such a document.
>
> I see where the suggestion comes from. What I still haven't seen (and
I've
> looked) is a specific example: Science teacher X ridiculing Student Y for
> religious beliefs on date Z in Public School PDQ as reported by
Whatitsname
> Press. With so many diverse groups (many with armies of lawyers at their
> disposal) agreeing that such ridicule is grounds for a complaint (or
> possibly even a lawsuit), why can no one document a case?
>
> I'm not talking about equal access issues or Bible clubs or prayer at the
> flagpole. There I agree; examples abound. But a teacher ridiculing
> students for their religious beliefs? I'm still looking.
>
>
>
Received on Mon Apr 3 22:57:32 2006