That’s what everyone in this thread has been asking you. Any chance of getting an answer?
Not by a long shot.
I do however think that children, to an extent at least, should be protected from religious indoctrination.
Yeah I know that flies in the face of pretty much all human history. Yet if you think about it the parent is making a rather large and important decision for their child from the day they are born. As I noted in the story of my friend this nearly cost him his leg and if he was really devout would have cost him his life.
Where was his option to be exposed to differing ideas?
Granted a Baptist private school is going to steep the children in their religion. That is to be expected. But do the children need to be so swarmed by the Baptist’s notions of God that it is part and parcel of everything the kids learn? What chance once they become adults do you think there is they may look at other ideologies and choose one? (Certainly some will but it is less likely coming from that upbringing)
And therein lies the harm in my view. Not that being Baptist is “wrong” but that the child and the adult they grow into are denied any effective choice in the matter.
Did the two of you attend a Christian Scientist college together?
So… in practice, that means the government would step in and forcibly prevent private school geometry teachers from telling kids that God created math. Perhaps they would arrest him, or maybe just fine him and revoke his teaching license. Is that about right? How does that not amount to the government banning private religious instruction?
Huh?
Sorry if I was unclear. We were in a non-religious private university together. I grew up with him through 7-12 as well (public schools).
I have no idea what the penalties would be. I suspect a spectrum of possible penalties but not jail time. Probably at the most revocation of the teaching license…perhaps a fine to the school if they were complicit.
And it does not ban private religious instruction because they could still say a prayer before each class and have religious icons up and include classes specifically meant to teach the religion if they so choose (none of which is permissible in public schools).
I think that WhyNot is suggesting that this is where he had his opportunity to be exposed to different ideas.
Ah.
Well, he was not raised in religious schools (he went to public schools). And while his parents were religious they were not extremely devout. They raised him as Christian Scientist but his secular education came way before that in their minds and they saw to it that he was raised to make his own decisions. He dated a jewish girl all through high school and they loved her (in fact he married a jewish woman as well…albeit a different one). Our high school was about 50/50 jewish/christian and frankly no one paid that any attention…just was not important in our school.
Despite all that my friend still adhered to his religious upbringing enough to let his health be seriously threatened. Yes as an adult he made his own decisions about his faith but he was encouraged his whole life to use his own mind and ask questions. His parents would support and love him no matter what (really great folks…his dad was amazing) and he knew that.
Do you think someone who was spoonfed religion at every possible turn throughout their life could as easily decide to look around and make up their own mind the day they leave home for college?
How do you define “indoctrination” as opposed to “instruction”? And you really want some government agent to be looking into our affairs closely enough to make the distinction? I’m not even religious and the idea gives me the creeps!
Yeah they really do overlap. Granted it is arbitrary but I call it indoctrination when you shoehorn it into every aspect of life where it is not really necessary. Discussions of God in a geometry class for instance.
And what government agent? It is already illegal to have religion advocated and taught in public schools. Do you see a lot of agents in the public classrooms? Making the distinction of God not being taught in geometry does not seem terribly difficult to spot. You are or you aren’t. It is a stated part of your curriculum or it isn’t. Seems rather straightforward to me.
As opposed to all the highly-literate, world-wise, steeped-in-history, art-and-the-riches-of-ancient-and-modern-culture altruists our governments schools are turning out by the millions?
Let me pose here the same list of questions I asked on my Livejournal, to very small response:
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When you talk about a person being ‘socialised’, what do you mean by this?
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What do you feel is the institution’s role in fostering healthy emotional development?
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In what way(s) do you believe the institutional setting assists children in learning to form and maintain healthy relationships with their peers? With people of other ages? With their own families?
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If possible, explain why this setting is ideal in assisting children to learn relationship skills.
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How do you feel about the presence of negative pressures (violence, sex, drugs, bullying, different learning styles not being addressed, inadequate funding)? Is there ever a point at which these can outweigh the benefits of the setting in your mind, and what ought a parent to do then?
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What benefits do you think the child gains from the specific relationship-model provided by the teacher/classroom format, in terms of learned response to authority figures, and working with peers?
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If you worry about poor or inadequate socialisation for those not attending large-group schools, what behavioral characteristics do you find unsettling, and how do you feel the institutional setting would correct or improve these behaviors?
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If you feel that institutional socialization is necessary for proper participation in American society, what do you fear will happen to those who have not participated? (ie, Do you fear they will become criminals, leeches on society, political conservatives (ha ha) or more along the lines of weird artist types who talk about stuff you don’t want to hear about?)
Answer me these, and then maybe we can talk. Until then, you’re just throwing around terms like ‘anti-social!’ and ‘self-important!’
See, this is the thing. If you know what you need to learn - if you know where you want to go in life - you can take the steps necessary to learn those things, and get to that place. If you know you want to be an engineer, a doctor, a computer programmer, and so on…then you find out what you need to study, and you study those things however you can. AND this can happen at any age. People do go back to school, after all…once they know what they want to do.
I myself have never needed the pre-calculus skills I learned in college, or for that matter the algebra skills I learned in high school. I never took Trig and to this day have no idea what is is, nor have I ever needed it (including in college, from which I graduated after 4 years), and the only thing I remember from one of my HS math classes was going to the teacher to ask for help after class, only to be told that he’d already explained it, and if I didn’t understand it, it was my own problem, goodbye. These days, on any given day, I might use…addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, and maybe some very simple geometry. In my children’s (homeschool) workbooks…that’s 4th grade.
If a child shows a propensity toward the sciences, then they will understand the value of learning the higher maths, and be more likely to use them, anyway. If a child has no such leanings, then they’d probably - IMNSHO - do well enough being taught how to do basic 4th grade math, plus how to keep a budget, how to keep out of credit card debt, how to recognise a bad mortgage loan offer when they see one, and how to balance their checkbook. And there are a lot of highly-educated people with advanced math skills who can’t do those things.
But it’s only your opinion that it’s unnecessary. What you really want here is for any teaching of religion to be relegated to specific times and places, so that children will have less chance of learning that it matters in every area of their lives. It seems to me that what you’re really saying here is that religious belief is fine as long as nobody takes it too seriously. As long as it doesn’t really have any impact on their thinking.
*bolding mine
And you’re really serious about fines or revocation of teaching credentials for teaching ideas you disagree with?! I can’t even think of a good way to respond to that.
It is not my opinion teaching God in geometry is unnecessary. It is a foregone conclusion. Pure fact. Unless you care to explain to me how determining the diameter of a circle requires a discussion of deities to be understood fully.
Of course. Are you suggesting that a law (any law) have no punishment for violating it? What would be the point of the law? “Hey, it’s illegal to speed but, well, we won’t actually do anything to you if you do.” :rolleyes:
I am only saying IF (read that “if” again) there were restrictions in place then of course you need punishments to back them up.
Perhaps you had a clear idea of what you wanted to be since you were a child but you cannot say that of all or even most people. I know many people who changed their degree track in college once they realized whatever they were on about was not for them. I also know many skills I possess that do not directly relate to my job have actually come in handy.
Further, I think a well rounded education is important. Has my study of art ever been useful in a job setting? Or my classes in music or astronomy? Not at all. Not even a little bit. But I am certainly glad I have that background. I meet all sorts of people doing all sorts of jobs and that have varying interests and I can talk at least semi intelligently with these people because I have at least some basis from which to carry on a conversation.
The “keep God out of private school classrooms” crowd here keeps attacking this straw man. Of course, it’s easy to score points against a straw man: he doesn’t fight back, he just rolls his eyes. Laughs, sometimes. He feels no pain.
FTR, catsix, don’t take this personally. I like you, I like reading your posts. i really do. And I see what you and Whack-a-Mole etc. are trying to do here. It just doesn’t jibe with even the limited standards of freedom of association and freedom of speech that have so far been upheld by the Supreme Court. I’ve yet to see a compelling argument from you guys’ side which even warrants freedom of speech and freedom of association serious consideration. I would dearly love to see one–believe you me, if we could take God out of private schools without stepping on your rights, I would be leading the march.
That’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I happen to support expanded rights for minors, but that’s pretty far outside the scope of this debate, I think. I’d be happy to hear an argument to the contrary, though.
Which makes him capable of choosing any silly bullshit religion that he pleases. Or having it handed down to him, whatever. Your argument against Christian Science is compelling. If there’s an argument in there against mentioning God in geometry class, however, I’m not seeing it.
The plural of “guess” is not “data”, though it may very well be “irrelevants”.
For my part, I cannot figure out which King of Thought Control died and named you successor to his throne.
Awesome! I’m really happy to see you taking this stance. Seriously. Let’s see some exploration. Do you have any ideas?
Cite, for anywhere other than Illinois?
Trying to in this thread. Some are engaging in the discussion. You see fit to toss snarky remarks.
I was going off WhyNot’s earlier post and that was cleared up sometime back. The impression she left me with is this differs from state-to-state but oversight does not sound extensive in most cases.
Want more info ask her…she has some expertise in this regard.
As to the first…no, as a matter of fact, I had a very clear idea what I wanted to be as a child, but that fell all to pieces somewhere in my teen years. To this day, 20-odd years later, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I have many skills and pools of obscure knowledge. But MOST of them I taught myself. I did not learn them in “school”. In fact, in school I rarely had time to do anything other than the requirements, even when having that time would have allowed lateral, supplemental, enriching study.
For example: more than once I was handed a required-reading article in class, such as ‘the use of time in the novel’ which referred to fifteen different classics, none of which I had ever read (because they weren’t part of my HS curriculum - honestly, what HS do you know that teaches James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or his Ulysses?) But I had no time to read those books. I had no idea what the article in question was talking about. And it was pertinent to my class! It wasn’t until AFTER college that I had the time to read a bunch of those oh-so-important novels. You might argue that college taught me how to learn, but it slso certainly prevented me from learning anything but the strictly necessary …until it was over.
As for the second, I don’t disagree with you on the well-rounded education. But there’s a big difference between say…GURs (generally humanities, art, history and the like) and the hard sciences, including advanced maths. Since we’re discussing how awful it is to interject God into everything, and how math should be math, and everybody ought to learn not only identical sorts of maths, but that advanced maths ought to be universally pursued as a matter of policy…when is the last time you heard any average person discussing differential equations, outside of a specific work environment? Seldom? But people frequently discuss music, astronomy, art, history, history-as-it-relates-to-current-events, various classical mythologies (and religions!) as they relate to modern Western society and so on. Even with the GURs, I’m not convinced that universities are the best places to become well-rounded, and there’s an argument to be made that they are mostly, nowadays, a source of excess drinking and careerism. (I’m currently reading The Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education by William Willimon, dean of the Chapel of Duke University, and Thomas Naylor, professor emeritus of economics at Duke, and lecturer at Middlebury College.)
One thing I don’t think you’re getting is that “shoehorning” is only your perspective. From the perspective of the religious, God doesn’t have to be shoehorned into geometry, because he is already there.
No, it’s much more complicated than that for a private school. After all, they don’t have to state it in the curriculum to talk about it in the school…if they have to submit the curriculum to a “no-God-talk” board, they just wouldn’t include it. So who would determine if it was actually being talked about in the class? The students & parents wouldn’t be likely to complain, as they would if it was a public school, so it sounds to me as though they would have to have some monitoring by actual people in the classroom to control it. And you already said that a prayer before class is OK…where does that cross the line? If they thank God for creating geometry is that a violation? If so, does that mean the government will be writing the prayers for them, or telling them what they can and cannot say when they talk to God?
I don’t know, man, it sounds pretty big brother to me.