Without knowing the actual wording of the assignment, I don’t know that “justify” isn’t a paraphrase. If the OP says otherwise, then I will happily recant and join you in your ire.
Well, I may not be able to deny that the teacher is auditing children for religious belifs, but neither do I know that that’s what’s happening. I was aksed to write all manner of “position” essays in high school supporting one idea or another, some of which I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about one way or the other. I don’t see this as being any different, except in that the topic is perhaps a bit more controversial than many (though it really shouldn’t be).
I agree with this. But I have little hope of that changing any time soon.
[And, on preview, I see that dropzone has responded, probably rending much of what I just said unnecessary…]
Now that the little heathen has tasted what she thinks is forbidden fruit I almost hate breaking to her the “bad” news that ID is a rear-guard action by the High Church sects as they come to accept evolution as fact and that one can be an evolutionist and still be a Lutheran and that Catholic priests like de Chardin and Mendel have been a part of it all along. Takes all the fun out of it, it being respectable and all. And her fundamentalist friends probably figure her for damnation anyway for other theological reasons.
Others have addressed the main points in your post, so I’ll address this one:
The other topics you mention (except Santa Claus) can be logically argued from either existing texts (the consitution, for politics) or scientific studies (environmental concerns). Had the teacher asked the students to discuss a certain aspect of the Bible, or how a certain character in the Bible acts or what that person teaches, there wouldn’t be much of a problem.
Your other arguments are rather confusing.
Since we don’t know what the teacher actaully said, we can only go by what’s in the OP. If you want to postulate another asignment, then of course anything is possible. But “justifying her beliefs as to the origins of everything” speaks, most of the time, specifically to someones religious beliefs.
My point is that we don’t know specifically what the teacher asked. Did you read dropzone’s latest post?
Or, since we don’t know what the teacher actually said, we could refrain from jumping to conclusions. Recall, you’re among those who said the assignment was out of line, without having full knowledge of what the assignment even was. I was willing to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt.
Well, I could argue second hand. If I say to you “x happened to me today” and you relate that to someone else I see just one intermediary. Nevertheless, it is the only hand we have. I guess you could postulate that “none of the above is true” but that would leave us little to discuss. I have read dropzones’s caveat but I think my previous post still holds. Whatever the process, four topics were arrived at, two of which were really the same. Two out of three topics required a religious assertion to defend them. Whether the instructor’s goal was to test how well the students could defend a given position, or simply to test how well they could construct an essay in English, the topics were extremely poorly chosen. Children that young should not have their belief systems challenged as a school exercise. Some students may be able to handle it but others may easily become distressed. The same purpose would just as well have been served by having them defend their choice of music, or favorite sports team, or fashion style, etc. It was too heavy of a topic for this class, in my opinion.
Well, there is no debate in the subject if we don’t make assumptions about what the teacher’s asignment was. What we do know is that the daughter interpretted it as an assignment that had a relgious aspect. Are you suggesting that we debate whether some unknown teacher should give an unknown subject to students to write about?
The teacher gaves the assignment. dropzone’s daughter relayed the information to dropzone. dropzone relayed the information to us. I count two intermediaries.
And are people so eager to discuss something that they will simply jump to conclusions?
No, I’m suggesting that perhaps there is no debate without all the facts in evidence. Are you suggesting that assuming facts not in evidence is proper debate protocol?
The bottom line is neither you, nor I, nor apparently even dropzone knows exactly what the assignment was (and you will note that the OP even called his daughter something of a drama queen). As such, any cries of inappropriateness of the assignment are at best premature. Asking students what they believe is not some grand violation of church and state, nor is it somehow traumatic to students (especially in an supposedly advanced class, where stimulating thought ought to be a goal, not something to be avoided). Actively challenging them on those beliefs, whatever they may be, or advocating one belief system over another, in an English classroom, would be inappriopriate, but I see no evidence that that is what happened, the OP’s daughter’s angry letter notwithstanding.
Whether the topic might be too mature for freshman English students is another matter entirely (and I personally do not feel that it is, again depending on the exact nature and purpose of the asignment). But I see no wrongdoing evident on the part of the teacher.
1.Oct. 23 is a Saturday this year.
2.Joshua did not “make the sun stand still”, God did.
and it had to have been the earth, obviously.
urban legend anyway.
maybe there was an extra 7 years in there…
Does that mean no Halloween this year?boo :eek:
Bah, this teacher sounds like a twit. I say give her a copy of the HHGttG, and have her write up a defense for the idea that the world is a computer created by pandimensional mice in an effort to calculate the Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the answer to which was previously found to be 42.
Either she’ll get an A for creativity, or he’ll try to flunk her for having unorthodox beliefs and you can blackmail him into rigging her grades and writing up really good recommendations for colleges. You win either way.
Or, God could have caused the sun to move matching the rotation of the Earth such that it appeared to stand still. Given God in omnipotent, he could cause any possibility that would explain this phenomenon.
I take the point we don’t know exactly what the assignment was.
Nevertheless I worry that there seemed to be 4 choices: two religious and the other two poorly defined scientific terms and irrelevant anyway.
If the teacher really doesn’t know the difference between evolution and abiognesis, shouldn’t he do some learning himself?
Also I’m not sure how you write 5 paragraphs on why you believe in creationism. After “because I’m a fundamentalist Christian”, what comes next?
And, as she described it, that’s five sentences per paragraph. Required. As I doubt her teacher would appreciate my penchant for both one-word sentences (got a bad grade in Journalism class from a TA who had no appreciation for implied subjects and auxiliary verbs) and sentences that go on and on with no sign of direction nor conclusion or, for that matter, any indication I gave any thought whatsoever as to what I intended to say or that I remembered at the end what I was writing about when I began I would probably have problems with the assignment, too.
Not to mention my one-sentence paragraphs that belong to the previous paragraph but which I isolated for effect.
Or affect.
Nor would he appreciate my addiction to beginning sentences with conjunctions, but that is irrelevant to the discussion.
Anywho, I have no real problem with the assignment, believing that kids, and adults, need their complacency shaken now and then and there is nothing like defending your beliefs and realizing you have no more supporting them than, “The Bible said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” In fact, I realized that while trying to frame this debate and finding that I couldn’t verbalize my objections or even pin them down, thus what turned out to be a pretty poor excuse for an OP in a debate forum. But I appreciate the interesting discussions that grew out of it.
I am disappointed that none of our fundamentalist members got on me for the glee with which I consigned my daughter to eternal torment, though. I suppose I’ll have to take it to a different board for that.
And perhaps the teacher’s wife suggested the assignment, based on something she remembers from grad school, in a conversation with another student. We could hold hands all around the world, but the simple fact of the matter is the daughter is describing something that happened to her. She is a first hand witness.
Well if we are to wait until we have all the facts there will never be a debate, that’s for sure. You were apparently unhindered by lack of information in posts 33 and 35.
Forcing someone to choose between creationism and evolution is hardly “asking students what they believe.”
In posts 23 and 40 the OP asks exactly that, which in my mind makes it the matter at hand.
