Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Education

  • The Problem with Public School Bible Classes

    I have noted before that while Bible classes taught from an academic perspective have been ruled constitutional, I still think they are very bad ideas. Including the Bible as it applies in literature and history classes is appropriate, though it should be proportional to its importance to the field, and should be taught in a way that is neutral.

    While problems may arise in such classes about the way in the which the Bible is taught, there is at least a good basis for setting the boundaries–the standards of the field in question.

    Chris Heard at Higgaion tells of a community college teacher who has been fired because his teaching of Genesis 1-11 offended some of his students. You see, he taught what would be regarded as the academic mainstream view of these passages, and thus didn’t take them as narrative history, which his students would have preferred. Now this was in a western civilization course.

    Imagine what would happen if the course was a High School Bible course, and someone taught critical views of these passages? That is what many, many academically trained teachers would do, and it would certainly be a violation of church and state separation to have teachers required to teach a particular sectarian view of the passages. Remember that it is not even the majority Christian view that these passages should be read as narrative history. (No, I will not be impressed by arguments that involve saying that Catholics aren’t Christians, and thus don’t count for the “majority.”) Such a class taught to high school students would result in an uproar in the Christian community. At the same time, they will try, as they have through the truly National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

    The best way to teach young people the Bible is for the individual churches to provide their own instruction. I would suggest that instruction be broad and include an overview of how other people understand the texts. The young people can be introduced to more academic views in civilization and literature classes.

    If the Bible is to be taught in public schools, the approach must be academic and critical, and must include all those views to the left of fundamentalism. Most of the parents aren’t even aware of such views, and will be shocked at what happens in those classes. Their hope is to get NCBCPS curriculum accepted and put it in the hands of underqualified teachers who will accept it as it is.

  • Creation-Evolution Links 9/24/07

    Here are a few links related to the creation-evolution controversy that I saw over the weekend, with only short comments.

    • Besides consorting with prostitutes and lying about it, Senator [tag]David Vitter[/Tag] of Louisiana appears to have taken up the cause of federal funding for creationists. Now we not only get to have our public school science curriculum corrupted, we get to pay those who corrupt it.
    • Some followers of convicted felon and creationist [tag]Kent Hovind[/tag] would like to prevent his videos from appearing on YouTube.
    • Case Luskin appears unable to comprehend that just because some materialists are evolutionists does not mean that all evolutionists are materialists. I know logic is tough, Casey, but give it a try. (HT: The Panda’s Thumb.)

    I’ve got a couple more, but I want to comment on them a bit more extensively.

  • Barbarians? What Barbarians?

    Mark Olson responded to my post Why the Creation-Evolution Controvery is Important with a post of his own, Barbarians at the Gate. It appears that was his gentle way of telling me that I’m a bit over the top, at least about my comment on the assault on the integrity of science. Kudos to Mark for method! I don’t see any barbarians, or at least I see only barbarians acting in a very civilized way, but I do see some danger.

    I would first like to point out that I said what I said in the context of the case of Dr. Richard Colling at Olivet Nazarene University (start with Where Teaching the Controversy is Prohibited). I didn’t specify that in my own post, because I was responding to some of the responses I received to my posting on that issue. Where precisely is this “assault on integrity” going on? I believe it is happening in Christian churches.

    I’m not, however, talking about the dearth of Biblical knowledge, though I do think that is a problem. I’m talking about the way in which some Christians try to pressure other Christians into accepting a war between religion an science–a war which is quite unnecessary. The most guilty parties are advocates of young earth creationism, but old earth creationists join in when the target is theistic evolutionists, and the ID crowd joins right in.

    I’ve already expressed by view on this a few times before and particularly in more recent discussions of the situation at Olivet Nazarene University. But I lived this in my own life. There was certainly no effort to “teach the controversy” in my Seventh-day Adventist education. The entire effort was to indoctrinate me as a young earth creationist. I had very little idea what evolutionary theory actually was even after I received my graduate degree.

    But there is something faintly amusing to me about getting painting as one proclaiming there are barbarians at the gates. The ID movement is one of the noisiest “suppressed” movements out there. They are truly claiming that the barbarians are at the gates–in this case “Darwinist” barbarians. But is that cry justified?

    I think it is not. First, of course, they seem to have an abundance of ways in which to make themselves heard. Second, they are not taking the appropriate road to scientific recognition, which is the production of science.

    There are two ways to obscure truth. On the one can attempt to suppress those who speak it. But on the other hand we can present so many untested things as truth that it’s hard to determine what is valid and what is not. In order to prevent the second of these, we have peer-reviewed journals and we have results that can be replicated by other scientists. Those are the proper gateways through which thing should pass to become part of the general body of science.

    As a counter to that restriction we have free flow of information generally. The ID advocates who feel that they are being suppressed can write and publish books, they can write blogs, and everyone who wants can read. They can assault the gates of science all they want. That is freedom of speech. But it is essentially also freedom of speech for those scientists who peer-review the literature and who try to replicate results to say, “No, this doesn’t meet the standard.” The rest of us get to decide who we will believe.

    Someone is bound to ask then why I don’t think Olivet Nazarene University is within their rights to suppress Dr. Richard Colling? Of course they are within their rights. They are a privately funded university, and they can set their own standards. They might fall afoul of accreditation committees, but that has not proven too much of a problem for many, many schools who would not allow the teaching of evolution as valid.

    But this is the church. You see, I care more about the church than I do about the rest of the world. I’m a Bible teacher. That’s where I live and work. It’s important to me. When I see there’s a problem with integrity in the world, I am concerned. When I see it in the church, that’s striking close to home.

    People who have gone to secular universities rarely understand my point on this. They feel that they spent their lives fighting for recognition, and that any religious ideas are suppressed in that atmosphere. Personally I suspect them of being a bit over the top, but I can’t be sure. You see, I never spent a day in a public school classroom. I’m part home schooled, part private schooled, and all Christian schooled.

    I would like Christian education to be ahead of everyone else, and to represent the very best that there is to offer. I’d like to see better training in all fields, but especially in science. If there is any place where Christians should demonstrate a sound education, rather than a thorough indoctrination it is in our church educational systems, from Sunday School to church sponsored universities.

    To do that we need to model free inquiry. Exploration not indoctrination.

  • Where Teaching the Controversy is Prohibited

    I have suggested many times before that before one believes what IDC (intelligent design creationism) advocates say about their goals, one should look at the way they handle the matter where they are in control. I’m sure that I will be accused of unfairly lumping ID and creationism together, but if they don’t want that to happen they should make efforts not to look so similar.

    While names have changed, and a slogan like “teach the controversy” has become popular only more recently, I can recall the same theme from my own childhood to the present. Evolutionists need to allow the teaching of creationism along side evolution. It’s only fair. At the same time, evolution was never given a fair presentation on the church side. I never heard in Sabbath School (I was raised Seventh-day Adventist) that there were such people as theistic evolutionists, nor did I learn anything about how they would view God as creator. It was always a war between light (creationism) and darkness (evolutionism), the first God’s own truth, and the second the devil’s deception designed to lead one to hell.

    Today I found this column from the forthcoming Newsweek, that tells about Richard Colling, who has written a book Random Designer. Now I haven’t read his book, though I will certainly set out to get a copy now. By the description it sounds very much like he and I would be on the same page philosophically and theologically. He’s a professor of biology at Olivet Nazarene University, where his book is now effectively banned. He doesn’t get to teach a basic biology course he has taught for years, and his book can’t be assigned reading.

    This action shows some of the destructive potential of ignorance, but it also removes any fig-leaf of respectability from the “teach the controversy” argument. The advocates of creationism generally do not want the controversy taught. They want to win. If they were to win a court case allowing their materials into the public school classrooms, their next move would be to prevent critical examination of those ideas, and then to prevent the teaching of evolutionary theory itself. I simply don’t believe the public propaganda. I never have, but the evidence that it is pure propaganda just keeps building up.

    And here I would note that while I oppose inclusion of intelligent design or any other variety of creationism in high school science classes until such time as it becomes mainstream science (don’t hold your breath), I’m perfectly happy to have any theory discussed in higher education. It should be critically discussed, which, in the case of IDC, would mean that it should be thoroughly shredded.

    But at Olivet, apparently, they don’t even want students to have to read about the views of a theistic evolutionist. I believe that the Olivet example is what theistic evolutionists such as myself can expect from the ID movement. They want to shut us out. They certainly don’t want to “teach the controversy” about ID, a controversy that is very much alive amongst Christians.

    You see, “teaching the controversy” is good when you want to wedge your way into the public schools, or force your way into universities. It’s not so good when someone wants to fairly examine the controversy inside a Christian school. They want a “heads we win, tails you lose” situation.

    Hat tips go to Metacatholic and Higgaion, both of whom have excellent comments on this story themselves.

  • Great ID Cartoon

    It’s at Faith and Theology, with hat tip to Metacatholic. Enjoy!

    Also, I’ve added Metacatholic to my blogroll, and my RSS subscriptions. I’ll probably be linking there more in the weeks to come.

  • Practical Ideas for Teacher Training

    Well, Clix went and got all practical on me after she commented on a previous post here. She expressed some discomfort with my call for teachers to be one of the highest paid professions. What about people who are just in it for the money?

    Her post is about practical ideas for better teacher training and for teachers who want to make themselves better. I think it would be great to have quite a number of such posts and to see a discussion of improving teacher education, teacher quality, retention, and respect.

    In my professional life I deal mostly with volunteers, such as Sunday School teachers and small group leaders. It’s nice to have those who are professionally involved speak out!

    Go check it out.

  • Stupid Actions in Church-State Cases

    Ed comments on a bizarre church-state case on which he agrees with the ADF, as do I.

    There are cases in which there is some significant doubt about the correct set of actions. I sympathize with school administrators who must deal with close calls. But most of these cases are very clear, and I have a hard time understanding the motivation of the school administrators. Perhaps there is an overreaction to the perceived law. I know that many, many Christians I come in contact with truly believe that it is illegal for children to pray at school. They are surprised when someone points out that it is quite legal for their children to pray–student led, voluntary, non-disruptive times of prayer, worship and study.

    It would be very valuable for both parents and educators around the country to educate themselves on what the law actually is. Most of the litigation could be avoided with a little care and attention. I know that one way to challenge the law is to push the edges, but one should be aware of where those edges are and have some hope of accomplishing their goal before spending taxpayer money in that fashion.

    One document giving general guidelines can be found here, along with contact information for organizations that can provide more detailed and up-to-date information.

  • Education as a Priority and Teacher Quality

    Way back in the pre-blog days for me (April, 2005), I wrote an essay for my Energion.com web site titled Make Education a Priority. You can type that rather uncreative title into a search engine and you’ll find that many dozens of politicians are using it as a slogan, but I don’t see that priority on the campaign trail being translated into real improvements at the classroom level. In that article I put first on the list of my suggestions: High quality, motivated, and informed teachers.

    I want you to understand that I don’t believe in minor, incremental changes in education. I think that we need to recognize that education is an investment in infrastructure–people. Spending on good education is not money down the drain. It is going to produce in less costs in other areas, such as welfare and crime, and it’s going to pay in greater economic productivity. Unfortunately, the American people generally don’t want to pay for good education, so they don’t get it.

    Now I know some folks are going to talk to me about waste, or lack of accountability. Those are good topics. Unfortunately, the people who talk about them generally (not always) don’t want to pay for a top notch educational system. They want to get the biggest apparent bang for the smallest investment possible. I believe strongly that we should make teachers one of the highest paid professions, that we should make schools be among the best built and best maintained facilities, and then and only then we should hold the educators responsible for providing us what we pay for.

    Right now we’re treating our teachers much like our soldiers overseas. We argue about their funding, we send too few of them to accomplish their mission, we can’t make up our minds about the goals, yet we expect them to produce. In both cases, our military and our teachers, they do produce to a remarkably high standard despite the problems.

    I still believe that this high quality educational system, led by highly trained, motivated and compensated teachers would be the most important single thing we could do for the future of this country. Thus I was gratified to encounter the article The Blackboard Bungles, subtitled “Three authors take us inside today’s classroom. These flies on the wall reveal how we might fix our schools” on MSNBC/Newsweek.

    From the first author, a teacher writing about his rookie year:

    It’s not good for kids. (“I would not want my kid in my class,” Brown writes.) It’s not good for teachers or the school. Brown does try, but struggles to control his class and resigns after a year. In his book, we see that good teachers are the linchpin to solid reform. Too often, poor schools become dumping grounds for green teachers. And children are the ones who pay the price.

    From the second, a journalist:

    Teachers spend most of the year drilling kids in order to help them perform well on exams.

    I believe we need teacher accountability, but there’s a key to effective accountability–you need to test the results you want to have. If you want your kids to be good a multiple choice tests, training them for the tests is a good idea. But life rarely comes at you in the form of multiple choice tests.

    I commend this entire article. This is a topic we really need to get working on. We need to insist that “make education a priority” becomes not just a campaign slogan, but a reality in government.

  • Teach the Controversy about Geocentrism

    In my previous post The Danger of Teaching the Controversy, I suggested that one of the problems with teaching the controversy was just which controversies one should teach. There are always plenty of crackpot theories floating around not to mention sound attempts to modify existing theories. These need to be tested by scientists using scientific methods with accountability through peer review.

    In discussing this, I said the following:

    More importantly, however, let’s consider how this “teach the controversy” principle would work in public schools. Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? I know some people are just about to explode on that one. “Nobody believes that any more, or at least only a few kooks.” Well, that may be true, though I believe there’s even a kook with a PhD who tries to teach geocentrism. But this does illustrate the problem. We argue for teaching the controversy on creation and evolution or on intelligent design and evolution, but we are unwilling to invoke the same phrase for all controversial issues.

    And to prove my point, one Mark Wyatt posted this comment:

    “…Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? …”

    Yes.

    And Here are the recommended text books.

    Mark

    Well, well, well. Though I will often debate with people who probably should be ignored, even I will not bother debating geocentrism. But I think my point is made. Theories need to be tested scientifically before becoming part of the curriculum. No exceptions should be made, even for especially controversial ones, or we will dilute education. There really isn’t any idea so stupid that it can’t find advocates somewhere!

    For those who believe someone is being suppressed here, note that even a person so far out there as to advocate geocentrism has two books published and a web site. It’s getting very difficult to suppress ideas. The problem that creationists and others have is that it is also getting extremely difficult to blunt criticisms of dumb ideas.

  • Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent

    I’ve written a great deal recently (here, here, and here) about the use of the term “worldview” to attempt to create a level playing field, particularly for young earth creationism. I don’t have a problem with the term “worldview” in a strictly limited sense. If we exclude particular possibilities a priori, and refuse to reexamine those assumptions, we can be locked into a worldview.

    One of my major problems with common use of the term “worldview” is that it tends to be used in a binary fashion. I don’t mean that there are only two worldviews, seen as mutually exclusive, but rather that each worldview is seen as totally exclusive of all others.

    Don McLeroy, newly named head of the Texas Board of Education (Hat Tip: NCSE, the Texas Freedom Network, and The Panda’s Thumb) gave a speech in 2005 that illulstrates some of my points very well, even better than I stated them. In a somewhat incoherent and disjointed speech, he managed to lay the boundaries of intelligent design creationism (IDC), to justify the inclusion of “creationism” in that label, to employ the scriptures extensively in support of his position, and to claim that it was all scientific.

    As a theistic evolutionist, I found his discussion interesting, and it affirms the most negative comments I have made about the intelligent design movement. There have been intelligent design advocates who have tried to include me in their camp, saying that theistic evolution is really a form of intelligent design. I disagree; so does McLeroy, thought it seems for different reasons.

    I want to focus just on McLeroy’s definition of the “big tent” of IDC, and just what it is he says they are in opposition to. Look at the following quotes from the speech:

    . . . And one other thing about these lessons, big tent, and this is, uh, in the big tent of evolution we all have disagreements, but we’re united in one thing, and we’re united in what we oppose. And you’ll see this later. This is the power of the deductive argument, but nature is all there is. We’re united against the fact that that’s a true statement.

    . . . and . . .

    . . . Actually, in intelligent design we are focused on a on a bigger target, and in the words of Phillip Johnson “the target is metaphysical naturalism, materialism or just plain old naturalism. The idea that nature is all there is.” Modern science today is totally based on naturalism, and all of intelligent design’s arguments against evolution and chemical origin of life it is the naturalistic base that is the target. . . .

    . . . and . . .

    Now I would like to talk a little bit about the big tent. Why is intelligent design the big tent? It’s because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design. And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church actually is a smaller, uh, tent than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole. Because we are all Biblical literalists, we all believe the Bible to be inerrant, and it’s good to remember, though, that the entire intelligent design movement as a whole is a bigger tent. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about some of the, all of the side issues. And that’s one thing that I really enjoyed about our group is that we’ve put that all in the big tent, we’re all working together.

    So what we have here is a big tend of IDC that includes just about everyone out there. Young earth creationists, old earth creationists, more general ID proponents, and one guesses even those who hold the gap theory. Thus on one side of the debate we are supposed to see people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and those who believe it is 4.5 billion years old. We are to combine people who believe there was a global flood and those who believe it was just a very large localized event. Within that range we have giant differences between the evidence required for each option.

    This is not the picture of a scientific movement. It is the picture of a political movement, involving a temporary religious alliance. I would warn the old earth creationists to beware. Should this “big tent” ever succeed in its goals, the young earth creationists who now accept IDC (and many of them do not) will be after you guys in a minute.

    But what is the goal of this diverse group? The defeat of naturalism, what else? Now notice that if naturalism is defeated, there will be some form of supernaturalism to take its place. In a philosophical sense, I’m fine with that. I’m a supernaturalist myself, on which more later. But let’s continue:

    So what is naturalism? It’s the idea that nature is all there is. . . .

    So now McLeroy makes it explicit. In his big tent belongs everyone who is opposed to naturalism, and he defines naturalism as the belief that nature is all there is. Now forgive me for being dense, but as a theist, I would think that I qualify as someone who does not believe that nature is all there is. In fact, every so often one of my atheist friends reminds me of that “weakness” in my thinking.

    So perhaps the main thing that keeps me out of McLeroy’s big tent is the fact that I have a hard time seeing how young earth creationists and old earth creationists belong in the same tent. From the scientific point of view, they don’t. At a minimum, one must recognize that different arguments are required against each one.

    But I would be wrong to think that’s the problem. Now let’s look at what is not included in the “big tent.”

    I’d like to make a quick comment about the option of theistic evolution, and it’s a very poor option. There’s not anybody in our group that’s advocating this. Because Darwinism doesn’t allow God to do anything. Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.” And so no one in our group represents theistic evolution, and the big tent of intelligent design does not include theistic evolutionists. Because intelligent design is opposed to evolution. Theistic evolutionists embrace it. So, you know, there are some in the Christian camp that just say, “Well, I am a theistic evolutionist.” And there are some bright minds that are that way, but they aren’t part really of the intelligent design group. It just doesn’t fit.

    I hope you read that paragraph carefully. The problem is not whether God exists or not, or whether there is something other than nature–no matter how much someone tries to tell you other wise. The issue is about detecting and measuring God’s presence scientifically. If I say that the world exists because God brought the universe into existence, and that life appeared in accordance with God’s natural laws and then further diversified in accordance with those laws, I am not welcome in this big tent.

    The reason cannot be that I’m a naturalist. I just said God (something other than nature) is the cause of all of this. The reason is that I don’t believe that God’s fingerprints can be found where he tinkered with the processes. Unfortunately for my welcome into McLeroy’s big tent, I believe that the process God created to produce life and diversify it actually works, and doesn’t require periodic adjustments.

    This issue is not naturalism or not. The issue is whether the scientific method is to be called upon to measure the supernatural. I don’t think that will ever work. In fact, I would be unsurprised if in the scientific sense we ever found the point at which we say “God did it” because I believe that “God did it” in such a comprehensive and consistent way that we’re never going to find the seams or the fingerprints.

    One can wonder why I’m a theist, in that case, a point which I’ve discussed elsewhere, but in terms of science, “God did it” is never an answer, and should never be used as a stop sign for scientific effort.

    That’s why I totally agree with McLeroy that I belong outside his big tent, but I do so by disagreeing with the common element. It is not that they are supernaturalists. It is that they believe God must have left fingerprints on nature. They can’t agree on just what he left and where, but they’re willing to get together to push the rest of us out of the way.

    To me engaging naturalism does bring religion into the equation, though I think by bringing in scientific method some of the points – I hadn’t thought about that, so I really gotten a lot out of this discussion. That you can do it without bringing religion into it, so I think you can go both ways. . . .

    And this is simply ridiculous. Of course the intention is religious. The intent is to make sure that we get God into the equation. All this stuff about unidentified intelligent designers is a smokescreen, though the smoke is so transparent that everyone other than those generating the smoke are seeing through it. It is only the IDC folks who think that they have covered something up when they refer to an undetermined intelligent designer. The rest of us know who they’re talking about.

    McLeroy invokes the matrix in accusing evolutionary scientists of being hopelessly deceived by their worldview. But there is nothing about a methodological naturalism that prevents one from seeing any sort of evidence. I would suggest that the filter is much in evidence inside the big tent. It’s a filter that removes the abundant evidence of common descent. It also prevents people from seeing new evidence found regularly that advances our knowledge of evolutionary processes.

    I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong, for someone to find God’s fingerprints showing his tinkering. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m open to such evidence. Thus far, none has been forthcoming.