"Science" textbook for Christian schools can't even explain electricity

[Dominique]

I hope this isn't a derail. The city of Pittsburgh puts its school board meetings on the public television channel. So while I sit and watch and listen, I am using the lap top to check the credentials of our school board members. Some are very qualified. Without going into what each brings to the table, not one was a former teacher. I found that alarming. And how about this. One was a high school drop out. It did not say if he picked up a GED along the way. But still......what does this say about public schools?
So as to not make it a sweeping statement, I'll add in my city?

These are elected positions.

[Abigail Crabby]

My daughter attended a Christian School from grades 1 - thru 8.

She was never fed this drivel.

She learned the same georgraphy, history etc etc ad nauseum as did her cousins that attended the local public school, yes her faith was also explored on several levels as well, that's why I enrolled her there. To be sure she saw both sides of everything. Being Christian I wanted her to know that in my opinon that God has a hand in everything.

To say that all Christian schools teach this adgenda is IMHO predjudical and ludicrous. It's like saying all Preachers picket soldiers funerals.

Of course this is my opinion,and I don't support what I've read this particular school teaches, and no one in my family would attend such a school.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Abigail Crabby

My daughter attended a Christian School from grades 1 - thru 8.

She was never fed this drivel.

She learned the same georgraphy, history etc etc ad nauseum as did her cousins that attended the local public school, yes her faith was also explored on several levels as well, that's why I enrolled her there. To be sure she saw both sides of everything. Being Christian I wanted her to know that in my opinon that God has a hand in everything.

To say that all Christian schools teach this adgenda is IMHO predjudical and ludicrous. It's like saying all Preachers picket soldiers funerals.

Of course this is my opinion,and I don't support what I've read this particular school teaches, and no one in my family would attend such a school.

No one is saying ALL Christian schools. However, what one is taught in a sectarian school may very well depend upon which religion runs the school. Catholic parochial schools, just to take one example, are *less* likely to teach this kind of thing than some Southern Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist Christian Academy. If the school is run by some evangelical sect in the United States, the chances are high that students will get a *very* skewed science education that barely rates being called either scientific or education.

The larger point is not about the specific school it is about the fact that Christian schools are using texts written at Christian universities where the faculty either does not realize that electricity is a rather well-understood phenomena (in which case they have no business writing a science text) or they know but are lying in the text to further their religious agenda (in which case they should not be writing *any* academic text). If they can't get the small concepts correct, how are they going to get the big concepts correct? The simple answer is, they aren't.

Cheers
Aj

[Abigail Crabby]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

No one is saying ALL Christian schools. However, what one is taught in a sectarian school may very well depend upon which religion runs the school. Catholic parochial schools, just to take one example, are *less* likely to teach this kind of thing than some Southern Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist Christian Academy. If the school is run by some evangelical sect in the United States, the chances are high that students will get a *very* skewed science education that barely rates being called either scientific or education.

The larger point is not about the specific school it is about the fact that Christian schools are using texts written at Christian universities where the faculty either does not realize that electricity is a rather well-understood phenomena (in which case they have no business writing a science text) or they know but are lying in the text to further their religious agenda (in which case they should not be writing *any* academic text). If they can't get the small concepts correct, how are they going to get the big concepts correct? The simple answer is, they aren't.

Cheers
Aj

I agree Aj - which is why I said no one in my family would ever attend where such drivel is being taught.

Sounds very odd that anyone with any education would write this, and pass it off to unsuspecting children.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Abigail Crabby

I agree Aj - which is why I said no one in my family would ever attend where such drivel is being taught.

Sounds very odd that anyone with any education would write this, and pass it off to unsuspecting children.

It doesn't strike me as odd what-so-ever. It makes perfect sense given that there is an agenda within certain sects of American evangelical Christianity to undermine the credibility of science in their own domains. Saying "scientists don't understand what electricity is or where it comes from..." is a prelude to saying "and we all use electricity so if they can't even explain something as everyday as electricity, how can we possibly believe them when they say we came from monkeys?" It's the prologue to the longer riff of "we're just trying to teach the controversy with Darwin". The problem is is that there isn't a controversy.

No serious biologist questions whether or not evolution happens. There's disagreement in the field about levels of selection (is it *all* gene-level selection or does selection happen at the gene and individual and group level) and there's disagreement about what role sexual selection plays into things but all of this takes place on the basis that evolution *happened* and what we are pursuing is understanding of how it works, not whether or not it did.

Cheers
Aj

[Linus]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

It doesn't strike me as odd what-so-ever. It makes perfect sense given that there is an agenda within certain sects of American evangelical Christianity to undermine the credibility of science in their own domains. Saying "scientists don't understand what electricity is or where it comes from..." is a prelude to saying "and we all use electricity so if they can't even explain something as everyday as electricity, how can we possibly believe them when they say we came from monkeys?" It's the prologue to the longer riff of "we're just trying to teach the controversy with Darwin". The problem is is that there isn't a controversy.

No serious biologist questions whether or not evolution happens. There's disagreement in the field about levels of selection (is it *all* gene-level selection or does selection happen at the gene and individual and group level) and there's disagreement about what role sexual selection plays into things but all of this takes place on the basis that evolution *happened* and what we are pursuing is understanding of how it works, not whether or not it did.

Cheers
Aj

It also seems to go hand-in-hand with many of those "sects" decision to make a more "Conservative" bible and remove references where Jesus was seen as helping the poor and referencing the "Golden rule" and such. The more of this that I see, the more that I find the "Religious Right" to be a cult than a religion.

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Electricity is created when the Great Sky Gnome rubs the Great Sky Balloon on his head to make his hair stand up.

Duh.

[The_Lady_Snow]

When I attended Catholic school my parents decided to switch me mid year to the better one in another neighborhood, I was dragged into the office by my ear, it also left a huge mark from the nail when I ducked all the way to Mother Superior's office because I shouted out in science class that we do not come from spit and ashes and some dudes rib.

My father came in asked for his tuition back and reported the school to it's Archdiocese. It turned out they had been targeting kids from non Catholic backgrounds or kids who thought differently.

While I looked into schools for the Worm the Christian schools here have a curriculum to fight the gay agenda and evolution. Thank goodness I got him into a Charter School. It's scary what is allowed cause these kids go into the world ignorant, unprepared, and without knowledge!

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

No one is saying ALL Christian schools. However, what one is taught in a sectarian school may very well depend upon which religion runs the school. Catholic parochial schools, just to take one example, are *less* likely to teach this kind of thing than some Southern Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist Christian Academy. If the school is run by some evangelical sect in the United States, the chances are high that students will get a *very* skewed science education that barely rates being called either scientific or education.

The larger point is not about the specific school it is about the fact that Christian schools are using texts written at Christian universities where the faculty either does not realize that electricity is a rather well-understood phenomena (in which case they have no business writing a science text) or they know but are lying in the text to further their religious agenda (in which case they should not be writing *any* academic text). If they can't get the small concepts correct, how are they going to get the big concepts correct? The simple answer is, they aren't.

Cheers
Aj

SOME Christian schools are using religious texts written at Christian universities...

My sister (Pepperdine university professor) would DIE before she would send her children to a Christian school (which is where they go) that was not of the highest quality.

Getting back to the "some" word would be appreciated, folks!

<--- had planned to stay out of this thread when it first surfaced

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

SOME Christian schools are using religious texts written at Christian universities...

My sister (Pepperdine university professor) would DIE before she would send her children to a Christian school (which is where they go) that was not of the highest quality.

Getting back to the "some" word would be appreciated, folks!

<--- had planned to stay out of this thread when it first surfaced

My apologies. I should say that very specific Christian schools are using very specific textbooks written by faculty at very specific institutions that, for lack of any better word, are called universities. These very specific schools that are using said textbooks written at said universities should not be teaching from these textbooks because they are ultimately hobbling their students in the long run. These kids will grow up to be adults who will be profoundly confused about science and will find themselves almost entirely unable to evaluate political issues with scientific content. The point here is not that kids going to Christian schools will be hobbled. Rather, if the school in question uses textbooks from Bob Jones, Liberty or Regent's universities (I think this is safe to say) then it is vanishingly improbable that they will have received an even adequate scientific education because they will not have learned the basics of the scientific method.

Textbooks that come from BJU, LU, or RU and are used at schools that have some kind of sectarian connection to those institutions and/or are feeder schools for those universities and/or are otherwise in theological agreement with those universities, will have the science diluted because it will be filtered through a specific theological point of view wherein scientific truth must *first* pass a litmus test adhering to a specific interpretation of very specific passages within the Bible. As I said earlier, the whole point of the statement about scientists being entirely ignorant about the nature of electricity is to sow seeds of doubt that scientists know much of anything thus allowing them to suggest that intelligent design is a viable scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution.

I want to make it clear that the issue is NOT that the teaching is occurring at Christian schools. In 2005 the school board of Dover, PA had a blistering decision delivered to them from a Federal court judge because they were using a textbook titled "Of Pandas and People" which had been developed by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that tries to push the idea that scientific ideas must first pass a theological litmus test. The edition of Pandas was so shoddily edited to remove all references to 'creation science' (which was ruled as being just creationism given a face lift in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillar case in Louisiana) that there were passages that had been subject to find-and-replace where one would see creationintelligent designscience" in order to try to get it to pass Constitutional muster (specifically the so called Lemon test). Now, the Dover school board was a *public* school board that had approved creationist curriculum for instruction in public school. So the issue is, again, not Christian schools. It is teaching non-scientific concepts in science classes.

Cheers
Aj