Hooray For Quebec (requiring religious schools to teach evolution)

Great Debates
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For what it is worth, the Catholic schools I know of in this area teach the Divine Spark* is from God and Evolution is valid and compatible theory that compliments their religious teachings. I am very comfortable with this method of teaching. They want their students well prepared for good colleges and I believe Pope John Paul II gave a Papal Decree or at least publicly said something close to what I said. Can anyone verify this, I left the Church as a youngster.

I do not know of any Fundie schools in my area. They might not exist.

Jim

  • I believe this means the Soul?
42

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
For what it is worth, the Catholic schools I know of in this area teach the Divine Spark* is from God and Evolution is valid and compatible theory that compliments their religious teachings. I am very comfortable with this method of teaching. They want their students well prepared for good colleges and I believe Pope John Paul II gave a Papal Decree or at least publicly said something close to what I said. Can anyone verify this, I left the Church as a youngster.
[/QUOTE]

That’s essentially what I was taught in Catholic grade school and high school circa the mid '90s.

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[QUOTE=Autumn Almanac]
Sarahfeena, not to hijack the current discussion, but can you expand on the Amish school system and how it relates to general US education standards? I tried Google and only came up with a bunch of articles on the recent schoolhouse shooting.
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I am no expert on the subject, but my understanding is that the Amish are exempt from laws requring formal schooling up to a certain age, and that Amish schools are not subject to whatever curriculm is mandated by state guidelines. I believe that for the most part, for example, girls are taught “homemaking” skills and not academics.

If anyone knows more about this, or finds me in error in any way, feel free to make an addition/correction.

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There’s something I should add to my previous post, as it came to me later but I think it may shed some light on what Sweet Mercury said: that he or she would be outraged if this happened in the US, while acknowledging that things might be different in Quebec. I said that Quebec being a secular society, people are less used to hearing other people request the right not to teach evolution to their children. There’s that (and there’s also the fact that Quebecers mostly have a Catholic background, and for a long time the Catholic Church has accepted the fact of evolution), but there’s also the fact, which I mentioned in previous threads, that Quebecers are more likely than Americans to recognize the concept of collective rights, and consider that in some cases they may trump individual rights.

Americans – in general – consider that individual rights stand supreme. Being “free” is the most important thing for them, and to them, any attempt to curtail their individual rights, for any reason, is wrong and possibly the first step on a slippery slope to authoritarianism. I think most of us recognize that parents have the right to teach their values to their children. So attempts by the government to force religious parents to teach their children about evolution – even while also teaching them creation – would be seen by many Americans as unnecessary meddling by the government in these parents’ freedom. Especially given that many Americans are wary about governments in general.

Quebec society, on the other hand, while of course recognizing the rights of the individual, also recognizes that being part of the society implies some obligations. I think that this is something that is found in some European societies as well. For example, French is the common language of Quebec, and while we recognize that people should be allowed to speak the language of their choice, the language of instruction is French, in order to facilitate the integration of immigrants. (Anglophones also have an English-language school system to recognize their status as a protected minority.) The current issue is basically similar. We have decided, as a society, that knowing basic scientific facts is important to our citizens. So, while we still recognize the rights of parents to teach their religious values and stories to their children, we also require that they teach them those facts.

I think this is something that Americans should keep in mind while discussing what happens in Quebec. Personally, I don’t think that either the “American way” or “Quebec way” is superior, they’re just different cultures. Still, I’d rather live in a society that follows the “Quebec way”, maybe because it is what I’m used to.

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According to the SDMB’s own Lissa, who endured one of those schools, they can be shockingly inadequate in terms of education, at least for anything beyond “madrassa-style” drilling in scripture memorization:

I think that if a society is going to have any compulsory education at all (and I don’t see how a democratic society has a decent chance of surviving without it), that education has to include basic minimum standards about things like math and science.

Making exceptions to compulsory education standards for a particular small community that deliberately stands outside almost all aspects of American culture, such as the Amish, is one thing. Allowing large numbers of more mainstream students to learn practically nothing beyond basic literacy and the Bible, so as not to risk any disagreement with their parents’ religious beliefs, is something else.

As we’ve seen in the case of Muslim madrassas in, say, Afghanistan and Pakistan, when you allow significant segments of society to restrict basic education to sectarian propaganda, it’s not necessarily a good thing for the society as a whole. Individual freedoms are indeed important, but the freedom to remain ignorant of ideas and facts that disagree with your dogma should not be very high on the list, IMO.

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[QUOTE=severus]
I think this is something that Americans should keep in mind while discussing what happens in Quebec.
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Nice summary, FWIW.

47

[QUOTE=Renob]
Not teaching evolution doesn’t hurt anyone.
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Not teaching science to each rising generation is harmful to any society. Biology is a crucially important science, and evolution is its central organizing principle. Omitting it is like teaching chemistry without reference to atoms.

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[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Why on earth should any school have the right to deliberately teach error. Being a private school should not allow for the continuance of ignorance upon another generation.

Jim
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I feel that the answer isn’t for government to “force” the matter, though. In all honesty understanding evolution is not essential to a basic High School education, doubly so if the student has no post-secondary aspirations.

The correct answer is for it to be made clear that students graduating from unlicensed High Schools may have a very difficult time getting in to a good university/college and may have to take remedial biology classes to qualify. I don’t see any reason to take such an authoritarian stance on the matter.

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[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I feel that the answer isn’t for government to “force” the matter, though. In all honesty understanding evolution is not essential to a basic High School education, doubly so if the student has no post-secondary aspirations.

The correct answer is for it to be made clear that students graduating from unlicensed High Schools may have a very difficult time getting in to a good university/college and may have to take remedial biology classes to qualify. I don’t see any reason to take such an authoritarian stance on the matter.
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You are correct. That sounds like a good way to look at it. I did back off of that stance pretty quickly, back around post #9. I obviously over-reacted to **Renob’s ** first post. A poorly made post by me.

Jim

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[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Actually, it is a “crime” that many Fundy parents are allowed to do this. Fundies can teach their ignorant religion, but kids need to learn science and math without religious overtones. I also do not believe a Parent has the right to teach their kids that 3+3=78. If a Fundie wants to teach ID or some equivalent to their offspring along with the accepted Scientific Theory of Evolution that is okay by me. Perhaps they might even want to say that their God created the rules by which Evolution works. However, when Fundies teach kids that the Earth is only a little more than 6000 years old or Man and Dinosaurs coexisted I do think the government should meddle.

Jim
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Why? What is the societal interest. Demonstrate to me that having a subsection of children who don’t properly understand a specific area of biology is a bad thing.

If the reason societies have organized education is for societal gain, explain to me how parents refusing to teach something which will never have any practical or societal use for the vast majority of people is a big enough deal to interfere. Yeah, this stuff is important to persons who are going to receive many types of college education, especially those in the hard sciences and doubly so those in any field of biology. But Jimmy who wants to become a carpenter or Johnny who wants to become an airplane pilot can go through the entire span of his natural life and never need to understand evolution whatsoever.

Furthermore, let’s not pretend that most schools give an in-depth curriculum involving evolution. I’d honestly like to know, of all the Dopers here, how many of you learned in-depth about evolution in a general, non-elective science class in High School. I went to a Catholic School, Grade 10 we had a “general science” course, it was basically a rundown of various different scientific fields. Biology, physics, astronomy, geology. The overwhelming majority of the sections on biology dealt with human and animal anatomy and plant anatomy. The section on Darwin was about three pages out of the textbook* (the exact same textbook used down the street by the public school) and spoke in general terms about the theory itself, earlier theories it had replaced, and some examples of evolution.

I honestly don’t think those three pages remotely made me a better person, and I honestly don’t believe any average High School curriculum does or should teach it any more than that. Save that for the elective classes for people that want to know more about a specific area. I personally think the anatomy, physics, and chemistry sections of my Grade 10 science class were vastly more useful and applicable to the real world than the few pages spent on something that is unlikely to have any practical application for anyone who plans to work outside of the scientific field.

*Not only was it the exact same textbook, but the students at the public High School weren’t even taught from the section on evolution because the local school board did not require and the general consensus among the parents was they didn’t “want their children thinking they came from monkeys.” Interesting how that contrasts with the education received at the Catholic school I attended.

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[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
The correct answer is for it to be made clear that students graduating from unlicensed High Schools may have a very difficult time getting in to a good university/college and may have to take remedial biology classes to qualify. I don’t see any reason to take such an authoritarian stance on the matter.
[/QUOTE]
The reason is in your post - remedial classes would be needed. And depending how long the student has been in a science-poor school, it could mean years of stuff to catch up on - and where would they learn this? Joining a secular school after already having completed school would seem a lot like being held back a year, plus there’s the extra costs for whatever program is designed to get them up to speed (and it’s assuming there are plenty of teachers avaliable and willing to work extra hours teaching people who may be hostile to that teaching). And the students have already gone through the age period that’s most conducive to learning. As I said, in sentiment I agree that there shouldn’t be so much control over what people learn, but in practice I think you’d be condemning students to another year/years of school for a pretty high cost.

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[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I feel that the answer isn’t for government to “force” the matter, though. In all honesty understanding evolution is not essential to a basic High School education, doubly so if the student has no post-secondary aspirations.

The correct answer is for it to be made clear that students graduating from unlicensed High Schools may have a very difficult time getting in to a good university/college and may have to take remedial biology classes to qualify. I don’t see any reason to take such an authoritarian stance on the matter.
[/QUOTE]
Also if you don’t mind forcing the ‘graduates’ of such schools to have no post-secondary aspirations.

If we’re talking about religious schools that do not already teach evolution, I suspect that you are as likely to see them accurately reporting the practical worthlessness of their curriculums as you are to see them teaching evolution in a manner less biased than “Evolution is an alternate, incorrect theory that many misguided souls have been fooled into believing. It denies God’s hand in creation and man’s place in the world, instead believing that men used to be monkeys.”

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[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Not teaching science to each rising generation is harmful to any society. Biology is a crucially important science, and evolution is its central organizing principle. Omitting it is like teaching chemistry without reference to atoms.
[/QUOTE]

There is no way that evolution is the central organizing principle of biology.

Teaching chemistry without making reference to atoms is akin to teaching biology without making reference to cells.

54

Good lord, was that all the science education you had in high school? I had a year of general/earth science as a freshman, a year of biology as a sophomore, a year of chemistry as a junior, and a year of physics as a senior (all between 1979 and 1981). I can’t remember if the last course was elective, but I know I had to take at least three full years of science courses. Are students these days really being fobbed off with one measly required year of “general science”?

Furthermore, I don’t see how anybody can argue that evolution isn’t applicable to the real world, even for non-scientists. Evolution is how living creatures survive, or fail to survive, changes to their environments. This holds true for everything from mutating viruses to mass extinctions caused by climate change. Anybody who’s ever uttered or read a phrase like “antibiotic-resistant bacteria” or “mutant viruses” is dealing with evolution.

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[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
There is no way that evolution is the central organizing principle of biology.
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Yes it is. Biology without evolution leaves one unable to relate any living creature to any other in a rational, predictable way. You end up with a pile of information of uncertain context, uncanny similarities, mystifying differences, and no better explanation for it all than “God did it”. Without evolution, biology is blind and without cohesion. It’s an ecyclopedia of sundry facts, interesting in themselves, but incomprehensible as a whole.

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The schools have a choice, don’t they? They can either teach the scientific theory and be accredited or they can blow off the government and not be accredited.

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[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Yes it is. Biology without evolution leaves one unable to relate any living creature to any other in a rational, predictable way.
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While that’s true, I think you’re missing the point. Brainglutton compared evolution’s place in biology to the atom’s place in chemistry. That comparison is utterly ludicrous; you simply do not need an understanding of evolution to grasp the basics of biology, just as you do not need an understanding of the Big Bang to grasp the basics of physics.

Martin Hyde’s comparison, on the other hand, is exactly correct; biology’s equivalent to the role of atoms in chemistry is CELLS. Biology is cells, cells and more fucking cells. By the second week of advanced biology I was so sick of the goddamned cells.

Evolution is simple fact and there’s no point denying it, but let’s not get carried away here and start claiming it’s the most important thing in high school biology, because it simply is not, as evidenced by the fact that even in more enlightened places where the fundies aren’t running the asylum, it’s simply not given much emphasis in high school. It’s a very minor part of introductory biology.

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[QUOTE=severus]
especially since people tend to be a little wary of non-traditional religious groups.
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You’ve never been to a Raelian meeting, have you :wink:

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[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
The understand & application of evolutionary theory is practically irrelevant in day-to-day life. All of us have some gap or another in our knowledge of the world. Probably 90% of the adults who have been taught about evolution don’t remember a damn thing about it by the time they turn 25, and really couldn’t care less.

[/QUOTE]

You could probably substitute any subject from a typical high school curriculum for the word “evolution” in the above statement, and it would still be true. So why should evolution be more dispensible than any other part of a standard education?

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[QUOTE=RickJay]
While that’s true, I think you’re missing the point. Brainglutton compared evolution’s place in biology to the atom’s place in chemistry. That comparison is utterly ludicrous; you simply do not need an understanding of evolution to grasp the basics of biology, just as you do not need an understanding of the Big Bang to grasp the basics of physics.

Martin Hyde’s comparison, on the other hand, is exactly correct; biology’s equivalent to the role of atoms in chemistry is CELLS. Biology is cells, cells and more fucking cells. By the second week of advanced biology I was so sick of the goddamned cells.

Evolution is simple fact and there’s no point denying it, but let’s not get carried away here and start claiming it’s the most important thing in high school biology, because it simply is not, as evidenced by the fact that even in more enlightened places where the fundies aren’t running the asylum, it’s simply not given much emphasis in high school. It’s a very minor part of introductory biology.
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I think we had this discussion before, but it turned into a question of what exactly constitutes a basic understanding of biology. It also depends on which “sub-fields” would be considered integral to “basic biology”: do we include ecology, genetics, anatomy, developmental biology?

I wouldn’t make an analogy between evolutionary theory and atoms, but I don’t think it corresponds to the Big Bang theory either. To me, studying biology without evolution would be more like studying chemistry without the Ideal Gas Law, or without discussing the underlying principles that govern different types of chemical reactions.