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

[imperfect_cupcake]

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

Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. We report directly to Parliament and we are independent and impartial. We inspect and regulate services which care for children and young people, and those providing education and skills for learners of all ages.

Every week, we carry out hundreds of inspections and regulatory visits throughout England, and publish the results on our website. To find an inspection report (for a school - my edit), go to the Find an inspection report page.

The aim of all this work is to promote improvement and value for money in the services we inspect and regulate, so that children and young people, parents and carers, adult learners and employers benefit.

[Linus]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

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.

[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

[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

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

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.

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

[tapu]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

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

Historically it has been states that set their standards in all content areas. (In accordance with the doctrine of "States' Rights.") It is true that recently a set of National Standards for math/LA have been developed. These are called the "Common Core." States may decide whether or not to adopt the Common Core. It is projected that, eventually, there will be National Standards mandatory for all states. One of the reasons Science Common Core lags is precisely because of Christian vs. Scientific disagreements among states and among various Boards of Education within a state. It is very doubtful that private schools' leeway in teaching religious alternatives would ever be affected by public school curricula, at least in those areas. The standards, National or State, will have to be met, but "add-ons" like religion will remain privately determined in those schools.

[betenoire]

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, I don't even like the Catholic school board. They are publicly funded by property taxes just like the public schools are (in Ontario) and so far as I am concerned no school that gets government money should be allowed to teach religion.

I want to know, during that hour a day that kids are in religion class, what education are they missing out on that Ontarian public school kids are getting?

(Threads about education in the US always confuse me. I don't get what is so bad about public schools. In Canada hardly anybody goes to private school (why would they?) and the few private schools I'm aware of are either religious, french, or all-girl. And I don't know anybody who went to one.)

ETA - I actually want to know, during that hour (or whatever a day) that kids are in religion class anywhere in North America - what education are they missing out on that non-religious schools use that hour for?

[The_Lady_Snow]

In *my* area where I live it was safer, better education, better extra carriculars, smaller classrooms, more nurturing environment and preparation for college if he do chose. I felt this way about Columbus public schools cause of the area we lived in..

[JustJo]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, I don't even like the Catholic school board. They are publicly funded by property taxes just like the public schools are (in Ontario) and so far as I am concerned no school that gets government money should be allowed to teach religion.

I want to know, during that hour a day that kids are in religion class, what education are they missing out on that Ontarian public school kids are getting?

(Threads about education in the US always confuse me. I don't get what is so bad about public schools. In Canada hardly anybody goes to private school (why would they?) and the few private schools I'm aware of are either religious, french, or all-girl. And I don't know anybody who went to one.)

ETA - I actually want to know, during that hour (or whatever a day) that kids are in religion class anywhere in North America - what education are they missing out on that non-religious schools use that hour for?

This probably varies dramatically depending on the state, the school, etc.

When I was in upstate NY I had looked into a Catholic school for Rooster because it had an outstanding reputation for academics.

There were religion classes, but they were offered before the "official" school day started...so kids not attending religion arrived an hour later, and then all students did the academic day together. There was also bible study/catechism (forgive me, I'm not up on Catholic terminology) during lunch hour as a sort of "lunch and learn"...which was purely optional.

Honestly, I would have sent him there, but the waiting list was years long, and our name never came up before we moved. I probably needed to list him at birth.

There were other religious schools in the area that delivered a truly sub-standard education, in my view, but the Catholic school system (at least in my area) was quite different.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, I don't even like the Catholic school board. They are publicly funded by property taxes just like the public schools are (in Ontario) and so far as I am concerned no school that gets government money should be allowed to teach religion.

I want to know, during that hour a day that kids are in religion class, what education are they missing out on that Ontarian public school kids are getting?

(Threads about education in the US always confuse me. I don't get what is so bad about public schools. In Canada hardly anybody goes to private school (why would they?) and the few private schools I'm aware of are either religious, french, or all-girl. And I don't know anybody who went to one.)

Part of what happened to public school in America is that it became desegregated. I'm about to step into a minefield so I'm going to try to be very careful here.

When it became abundantly clear that public school desegregation was here to stay, Christian academies* (sorry Dapper but that is the term that the people who STARTED these schools used so I have to use that term) sprang up like mushrooms in the Southern United States. In the USA you can discriminate in pretty much any manner you choose if you are a religious institution AND you do not take public funds. This allowed these Christian academies, which were all Protestant and, given the locales, largely (but not exclusively) Southern Baptist to continue to discriminate on the basis of race.

As the culture wars heated up, these schools became more about generically teaching a curriculum that was amenable to specific parts of specific denominations of Christianity. Specifically, these schools became core to teaching a version of American history that would lead students to believe that America was founded on theocratic lines (it wasn't) and that the Earth is much younger than it is (6000 years old as opposed to ~4.5 billion years old) and that while 'mistakes were made' slavery was, on the whole, good for blacks because it brought them to the United States where we could learn of Christianity. That much the same thing could be said of the Native Americans.

It is important to note that I am talking here about schools started by Protestants who were largely Southern Baptists or Methodist with some scattered Presbyterian and Lutheran sects thrown in. I am very specifically NOT talking about Catholic schools because while Catholics are, for any reasonable definition, Christians the schools run by various Catholic diocese were not part of this movement. Nor am I saying that all Christian schools were started for these reasons.

The homeschooling movement is an outgrowth of what happened. Because many of the sectarian schools under discussion here were started on a segregationist basis they have had to avoid taking Federal funds lest they have to open their doors to all students. This has made them more expensive. So families that might not otherwise be able to afford these Christian academies (again, I am using the term because that is the term that the founders of the schools used at the time and I am deferring to their nomenclature) but did not want their kids getting a 'secular' education where they might learn that the United States is a secular nation with a majority Christian population, as opposed to a constitutionally Christian nation, or that human beings are very closely related to chimpanzees, gorillas, pygmy chimps and orangutans, started schooling their kids at home. This is not to say that all home schooled children are in religious families, nor is it to say that all religious home schooled children are Christian nor is it to say that all Christian schools or home schooling parents are doing so for reasons of racial segregation. My only point here is to provide some context on why these schools grew up and how they ended up spawning the burgeoning home schooling movement.

Cheers
Aj

[betenoire]

Eww, home-schooling. That's all I have to say about that. (Mind you, I only know two people IRL who were home-schooled and they were brothers from my church growing up. So I guess I really have no real yard stick with which to measure homeschooling. But those two boys (I used to hang out with them when I was in 11th and 12th grade) had zero concept about how to function with groups of people and would throw tantrums (seriously!). No sense of what compromise is. No sense of the importance of sharing, even - and that's something you learn in freaking Kindergarten. As far as how they would measure up academically, I have no idea. But I do know that socially they were behind.)

So in the US is it presumed that all public schools are bad, or does it vary depending upon where you live? Because here it doesn't matter if you are from Scarborough, Pickering, or freaking Northbrook - the expectation is that you've graduated highschool with the same tools and you know the same things.

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, I don't even like the Catholic school board. They are publicly funded by property taxes just like the public schools are (in Ontario) and so far as I am concerned no school that gets government money should be allowed to teach religion.

I want to know, during that hour a day that kids are in religion class, what education are they missing out on that Ontarian public school kids are getting?

(Threads about education in the US always confuse me. I don't get what is so bad about public schools. In Canada hardly anybody goes to private school (why would they?) and the few private schools I'm aware of are either religious, french, or all-girl. And I don't know anybody who went to one.)

ETA - I actually want to know, during that hour (or whatever a day) that kids are in religion class anywhere in North America - what education are they missing out on that non-religious schools use that hour for?

In the Utah public school system, all the jr. high and high schools have "Release Time". Release Time actually means Mormon seminary, but they can't actually put that on student schedules in public schools. The LDS church owns small buildings just off campus (in some cases, on a small parcel of land that would have been school property, but the church pays a pittance to the school to buy just enough land to build the seminary building) where students are taught Mormon doctrine during school hours. Even though they technically call it Release Time, that doesn't mean students can use that period for whatever they want. I tried to use it as a study hall period once and got detention for cutting class, even though my schedule said I was on Release Time and I was in the school library. Generally, students take seminary in place of one of their other electives. Usually it's art, language, or home ec/shop that they're not taking to make time for seminary.

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

In the Utah public school system, all the jr. high and high schools have "Release Time". Release Time actually means Mormon seminary, but they can't actually put that on student schedules in public schools. The LDS church owns small buildings just off campus (in some cases, on a small parcel of land that would have been school property, but the church pays a pittance to the school to buy just enough land to build the seminary building) where students are taught Mormon doctrine during school hours. Even though they technically call it Release Time, that doesn't mean students can use that period for whatever they want. I tried to use it as a study hall period once and got detention for cutting class, even though my schedule said I was on Release Time and I was in the school library. Generally, students take seminary in place of one of their other electives. Usually it's art, language, or home ec/shop that they're not taking to make time for seminary.

ALL of them, though? But what if you're not a Mormon? That's so messy!

[Linus]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, I don't even like the Catholic school board. They are publicly funded by property taxes just like the public schools are (in Ontario) and so far as I am concerned no school that gets government money should be allowed to teach religion.

I want to know, during that hour a day that kids are in religion class, what education are they missing out on that Ontarian public school kids are getting?

Yes but to be fair, you get to choose whether you want your taxes to go to public or Catholic schools. And Catholic schools are required to meet the same standard for ALL courses as public schools (I've gone through the submission process for college courses in Ontario and it ain't easy!)