This isn’t technically about the trial, but, after an election, all the supporters of Intelligent Design on the Pennsylvania school board have been voted off. It seems that parents in the area have had enough of the topic and would like teachers to get back to educating the children about science. That’s not too surprising really, but it’s heartening that it’s happened.
Full story here.
Is there such a thing as ‘religious studies’ in American schools? It’s a standard feature in the British curriculum. Admittedly, it is usually heavily biased towards Christianity, but we did cover other religions a little bit and I suspect things have got better in that regard since my time at school. I think it’s important for the peace of a country that people are taught about the alternative faiths that exist around them. From a personal perspective I think that knowing religious mythology gives you a richer insight into the archetypal images of humanity, but it can’t hurt to give people a greater understanding of why followers of Islam can be just as peaceful as those who follow Buddhism or any other religion.
You could probably write on the back of a small postage stamp the amount that most people know about different religions; I’ve taken an interest but I would still say that my knowledge is quite limited, so it wouldn’t hurt to bridge a few cultural gaps in people’s education… Although I think this moves us on to the rather touchy subject that perhaps not everything written in the American constitution is always a great idea, which I’m really not going to get into here. If anyone fancies discussing it, you could always start a topic up in the Issues section on my forum! http://www.matazone.co.uk/forums
There’s a “Religious Studies” program at my University, but public high schools do not (usually) include any sort of religious studies program. Occasionally there will be some sort of supplementary (and very much optional) religious education program, but those programs are usually specifically for Christians to learn more about Christianity. At least, that’s how things are in the central Pennsylvania public school system.
We are actually proud of ignorence here in Texas–people will smugly state “I don’t know anything about that”, as though knowledge were evil. Considering that the voters just ratified homophobia into the state constitution, not a surprize.
I had a teacher in the 70’s tell the class that male and female skeletons had differing numbers of ribs–you’d be appalled at the number of Texans who still believe that. Fat bloody chance of them teaching anything like diversity here.
Although in ratifying homophobia Texas has apparently just effectively abolished ALL marriage.
(The law prevents “any union resembling marriage” – apparently under that wording, legally that includes marriage itself…)