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.

The kind of ridicule you are descibing seems pretty overt to me

>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.

Christian parents file complaints and lawsuits when their children are asked to remove a
cross necklace or a Jesus t-shirt, and when afterschool Bible clubs are prohibited from
using school property. They even threaten to sue schools that put on a Christmas program
that uses the tunes of familar carols with alternate lyrics (even when the musical itself was
authored by the music director in a conservative evangelical church!) The media reports
on those stories. Are they less "sexy" than a teacher publically humiliating a student?

> 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. 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.*

> 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.

Maybe I'll suggest that to the next student I have looking for a thesis topic. I poked a little
bit, in several psychology and education databases, with some reasonably obvious keyword
combos like Bullying and Religious Discrimination. I found almost no specific research; the
few articles that mentioned religion tallked about it in a general context as something to
be included in anti-discrimination policies. Certainly nothing to indicate that hostility
towards Christians in pubic schools has increased over the last 15 years. In contrast, there
were a number of articles reporting widespread bullying of gay and lesbian students.

However, I can relate my own anecdotes... things I saw with my own eyes, as opposed to
hearing it from some unnamed parents. My fifth grade teacher used to beat kid's hands
with a yardstick for misbehavior during her mandatory teacher-led prayers before lunch.
This was over 10 years after the Supreme Court ruled such prayers illegal. It also violated
the school corporal punishment policy, which stated CP was to be used as a last result,
administered privately, in the presence of a witness, etc. etc. I also remember this same
teacher reducing a kid to tears by telling him he was going to the "bad place" for telling a
lie unless she prayed for him.

This school also had weekly Bible classes taught primarily by the students from the local
SDA college; explicitly Christian, complete with prayers, Scripture memorization... far
more demanding than my Sunday School, now that I think about it (they didn't grade you
there, nor was Mrs. Criswell standing in the back of the room with her yardstick.) I still
have my report cards showing the grades I got in them. Parents were allowed to opt out,
but kids who didn't take them were sent to sit in the principal's office for that period. I
remember the lone Jewish boy in my class doing this for 5 years.

I suggest that one reason (though not the only reason) people want Christianity out of the
schools is because Christians have abused their power in the past.

I was also bullied a lot in this school.. not for being a Christian so such as for being a
brainy goody two-shoes. And if I dared complain about it I was told it was my fault for
letting the other kids pick on me.

I see today how much *less* bullying is tolerated in my kid's public school: no Bible
reading, no prayer, no corporal punishment, but name-calling gets an automatic note sent
home to the parents and a single incident of hitting gets a kid sent to the principal.
Granted, my kids are only in elementary school, but my church friends with kids in the
high school seem equally satisfied with that environment.

To quote Billy Joel: The good ole days weren't always good; tomorrow ain't as bad as it
seems...
Received on Tue Apr 4 07:03:05 2006