Forcing? It’s school. Most kids would opt for staying home and playing Nintendo left to themselves. School is mandatory so I suppose that implies forcing them but not as I think you mean it.
As for demonstrating harm I am not sure how you could. My friend (that I described above) was almost seriously harmed by the religion his parents brought him up in. I know his parents well, great people and they love him madly. He is a great guy and they did a great job. I think it is more unintended consequences. I think most parents think they are doing the best for their kids. So you come out of geometry and know the subject well. Great. But I think believing there is an underlying mysticism to geometry does not serve someone well.
You may be right and it has occurred to me the “solution” could well be worse than the problem. I do not think that should inhibit talking about it though. It may be there is a reasonable solution out there but we’ll never know unless we explore it.
That they teach geometry I have no doubt but as I stated before I think invoking God in geometry is pointless and muddies the water. Again, that they could use the precision and wonders of geometry as evidence of a divine being is fine. I can even go with that. But do it in the relevant classroom. You do not need God to understand how to calculate the volume of a box.
Actually that is exactly what I am saying. I see no problem and no stepping on freedoms for the state to tell a school that they teach Geometry in Geometry class and leave extraneous stuff out of it. You do not need to invoke God to understand math. The school (private) is quite free to have a religion class that discusses how you can find God in mathematics. That is the appropriate place for that discussion. Likewise Creationism should be left out of science classes entirely. It is not science by any definition. Again if in a bible study they want to propound creationism fine. As a private school that is their own lookout.
I have no issue with people being dodgy about the medical system and approaching it with caution and/or seeking alternative treatments. In this case he was obviously in serious need of medical attention (at least it progressed that far). If I pull you seriously injured out of a car wreck I am not going to think of alternative medicine. I am going to think of getting you to an Emergency Room ASAP. Modern medicine has its faults but when your health is in serious jeopardy they are still provably your best option and I’ll go with that. You can sue me after you get out.
What is provable harm? I guess I would ask at what point do you think “harm” has crossed the line? Is a kid in the mid-east who is indoctrinated to the point he straps a bomb to himself and blows up a school bus been done provable harm? I am sure some over there would say no…it’s just great what he did.
You’re right. I am more about exclusion…to an extent. As mentioned above keep God out of the math class. Talk about him all you want though in your theology/philosophy class.
And that is great but he did so on his own. Not because some adult told him so as a matter of fact.
No, you don’t. But you haven’t demonstrated what harm it does. All I have gotten out of this discussion so far is that you have a vague feeling that it does harm, but you don’t know exactly what it is. And private schools are supposed to set policy based on that?
True, but it’s not like this hasn’t been explored. As I said above, we don’t allow religious schools to teach kids to murder people. There are limits, and we’ve been defining them for over a century.
You don’t see that violating the 1st amendment is “a problem”? That’s where you’re losing us… Doing as you propose would absolutely be a violation of the free exercise clause of the 1st amendment.
Yes, I think that if his school taught him that he should do illegal things and kill other people and himself, they’ve crossed a line.
Same for kitten torture, hate crimes and whatever else you’ve what-iffed.
Finding a reflection of the glorious ineffability of the Creator in the constant ratio of the radius of a circle to its circumference is not illegal, not murderous and not suicidal. So it doesn’t meet my “harm” rubric*, nor that of most reasonable people.
I’m sure Christopher Hitchens would agree with you, though.
*Which may include other criteria and I reserve the right to modify with further what-ifs, but will do so far for everything you’ve mentioned, I think.
That’s exactly right. This sentence from the post you quoted is beyond scary to me:
The 1st amendment protects the most precious freedoms we have. The idea that anyone would recommend violating it merely because they have the idea that God is out of place in a math class is stunning to me.
I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court has held that government can pass laws restricting religion where it feels there is a “compelling interest”. IANAL so I do not know the ins and outs of it but the notion that a right in the Constitution is absolute and unassailable is simply not true. Restrictions on Constitutional rights are allowed.
Personally I would say the education of the nation’s children is a compelling state interest.
Yes, but there is nothing “compelling” about keeping God out of math class other than you don’t personally like it. The SCOTUS has been quite restrictive in what the states can do to limit religion in public schools. In fact, Wisconsin v. Yoder established that Amish families can pull their kids from school after 8th grade. That’s pretty lenient.
A compelling state interest in ensuring that they can’t mention in math class that math is an excellent illustration of the wonder of God’s creation? Really?
Again, I agree that teaching them basic math, reading and how our government works is in the state interest. I don’t see how muzzling teachers from teaching them that God is Cool and Part of Everything is in the state interest. (In a religious school, of course. I’d be totally with you if this were a course description from a state funded school.)
I’m struggling to understand why teaching that math is “God’s wonderful creation” in math class is any different from teaching that math is “God’s wonderful creation” in a religion class. Either way, the kid is learning the same thing.
But nothing we see in this case obstructs the education of the children in question. They aren’t trying to deny or change any facts about geometry. They’re just augmenting it with a religious aesthetic. It’s not like creationism, which actually falsifies facts. I’m certainly no fan of religionism but I think you’re way off base on this.
I can also tell you that from what I remember of Catholic school, the “praise God” overlay to everything pretty much goes in one ear and out the other for most kids.
Contrary to what the OP seems to be afraid of, I think Catholic schools suck religion right out of people. Here’s another atheist who went to Catholic school!
My husband had his 12 years worth, and although he’s not an atheist, it’s a bitch to get him to mass on Sunday.
Well IMO the door has been left open far too wide.
We have established there is very little to no oversight of private schools.
From what you have written it seems your criteria for an ok school is as long as they actually teach math and reading pretty much anything else is ok (as long as they are not overtly teaching something actually illegal).
I am suggesting society take a closer look at this. In my example earlier of the suicide bomber in the mid-east I doubt they offer Suicide Bomber 101 classes in their schools. That said the schools I would wager are part of an indoctrination process that sets these people up to be open to doing it. If you polled the people around there I think you would find they are more than ok with it. Indeed they are proud of and revere the people that do this (they even have the equivalent of baseball trading cards for these guys).
So where is the harm? I think the harm is in the extreme indoctrination of these students (if the written curriculum is to be believed it is in absolutely everything). I am not saying these kids will commit crimes or blow people up but the indoctrination is along the same lines. That they are in a private school devoted to religion I’ll get but I do not see the harm that they get to learn geometry just as geometry. They can get the religious stuff many different ways still but allow at least some avenue of, “Hey, this is just knowledge…nothing more, nothing less.”
And while you dodged the bit on creationism and how the school teaches it (fair enough…you’d want to verify to be sure) I think that certainly is a red flag. I do not know but I am willing to bet creationism is taught at that school and evolution is marginalized if not outright put down. And this in a science classroom.
I actually founnd out I was an atheist at Catholic school. I did go one semester of my sophomore year of HS at a Catholic school. In an after school discussion I was having with my History teacher, he convinced me I was an atheist. (Probably he said “agnostic”, but that’s pretty much the same from a Catholic’s perspective.) It really hadn’t occurred to me before that. Funny thing is, he was very encouraging about it. He was one of the lay teachers, btw.
Saying that someone might at some point become a suicide bomber as the result of “religious indoctrination” is not a compelling argument. The state does not have a “compelling interest” in eliminating everything that might cause harm to someone. Some people have used a car to run over and kill another person, but we don’t ban cars. Instead, we make it illegal to run over and kill people. You can even write a book that describes how to do it or post on an internet site how wonderful it would be to run over and kill someone with a car.
Rather, it sounds like you just hate the idea of people teaching religion in math class, and you’re making up excuses for the state to step in and take some action.
“To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own.” --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2: 546
