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

A friend posting this link on her FB wall: http://www.dangerousminds.net/commen...city_gives_up/

The thing that terrifies me is that this is allegedly a *science* book! Here is the scary part:

"Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see and hear and feel only what electricity does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like.

We cannot even say where electricity comes from. Some scientists think that the sun may be the source of most electricity. Others think that the movement of the earth produces some of it. All anyone knows is that electricity seems to be everywhere and that there are many ways to bring it forth.

How would you have to change the way you get ready for school if you did not use electricity?"

Okay, the lies stack up fast and furious in that little excerpt.

1) It is simply not true that scientists don't know what electricity is or where it comes from. In fact, we DO know what it is. An electric current is caused by charged particles.

2) While the sun *does* produce moving charged particles it is NOT the *direct source* of electrical currents on this planet. We do not get electricity 'from' the sun. What happens is that the sun transfers energy to the Earth in the form of sunlight. That energy goes into, for instance, making plants grow. Plant-eating animals eat the plants and are, in turn, eaten by meat-eating animals or they die of other causes. Over sufficiently long amounts of time, the bodies of the fallen get turned into oil and we then drill the oil and use that to make electricity.

3) It is *also* true that the movement of the Earth--specifically the fact that the core of our planet is a core of liquid iron and nickel which is spinning which creates a current (yet more charged particles) which creates the magnetosphere that surrounds the planet and keeps the solar wind (those charged particles coming from the sun) from stripping away our atmosphere. But we don't get electricity from *motion* of the planet.

4) We can't experience electricity directly? If you believe that you've NEVER experienced static electricity (more charged particles) or you've never been on a hill top during a thunderstorm or you've never walked underneath a high-tension power line or you've never inadvertently shocked yourself. All of those are examples of directly experiencing electricity.

Now, lest someone way "yes but we can't see electricity" let me just cut that off quickly. Electricity is just light that is out of the wavelength our eyes are capable of detecting. If there had been ANY need for our ancestors to have developed the ability to see outside of a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum we would have those senses. Light is the same *kind* of 'stuff' as electricity, it's just that our eyes evolved to detect visible light but not, for instance, radio waves.

Cheers
Aj

Ugh. THIS is why I have a problem with private Christian schools. (same goes for homeschooling)

There has to be a fucking minimum standard for education, and there clearly is not.

Christian Science books? :blink: :simplelaugh: :huhlaugh: :superfunny:

Oh, the chapter on the moon is just FANTASTIC! Did you know that the reason why the moon is dark on one side is so that it isn't too bright for nocturnal animals and plants? LOL

Cheers
Aj

Is there no government standard test that the kids have to take each year to progress? Do they not have a government agency like OFSTED http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/ to grade each school on how they are performing, regardless of it being private or public??

Purpose of OFSTED

Problem is there is no national standard in the US that I've been able to determine. In Canada, each province sets the standard but it's pretty rigorous to keeping religion out of making decisions on books unless they are religious class (there are a lot of Catholic school boards and such).

The book is published by Bob Jones University, a Protestant Christian university out of South Carolina.

I think the fact that religious schools are allowed to push this out as acceptable is what is unfortunate. Religion, for those who believe and want to study it, has, IMO, it's place in a religious class. It should not be allowed, however, to transverse over to non-religious classes.

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.

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

Linus:

There are no national scientific standards. There are *barely* national standards on reading and mathematics. One could reasonably go from kindergarten to 12th grade without *ever* having to demonstrate that you understand what an atom is or what it's constituent parts are (I'm not talking about the really small stuff like muons and gluons or quarks, I'm talking about proton, electron, neutron). One can go all the way through college in the United States without *ever* encountering the equation F=ma (Force = mass * acceleration) or having to explain the three laws of thermodynamics.

It's really quite remarkable if one thinks about it.

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.

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!

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.

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

Duh.

Is that step 2?

1. Get underpants
2. Rub great sky balloon
3. Profits!

Eureka! It works! A complete economic theory. Yay!

Cheers
Aj

I was totally thinking of the Underpants Gnomes when I wrote that. :)

I was wondering at what juncture petting a cat that is under blankets in the winter comes into play?