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increpatio
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« Reply #15 on: 12:30:24, 12-09-2008 » |
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I have trouble with the word 'creationism', or any of its cousins, even appearing on a scientific syllabus. If students have questions or doubts about scientific material, of course their teachers should address them if they can. But...putting such stuff explicitly on a syllabus is giving free licence to teachers to force such stuff on their students regardless of whether they have questions or not. The dude in the article says he's worried about dealing with children with very anti-scientific religious beliefs; I'd be more worried about teachers with such beliefs myself. This might very well be a blind spot to me...one that I should think about a little more perhaps. (all this said, I never studied biology in school past the age of 15). But I think that looking at how it will be taught in RE classes is relevant to the decision. In RE classes (in my experience) you will be taught that it is true, so saying "leave it out of science, it can be taught in the religious education classes" doesn't leave anywhere for it to be taught as not true.
Maybe we need to introduce an A-level in fallacies. |
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #16 on: 16:59:41, 12-09-2008 » |
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In my own religious education classes we were taught "other" religions from the secular, investigative viewpoint you describe. The Muslims believe this because..., Sikhs believe this because..., Hindus believe this because... . It was a purely pragmatic, historical, learning-the-details syllabus. As I recall, we spent a whole year on it. We didn't read a single holy book of any of those religions (something I regret, now).
The following year, we were taught Christianity. We read the Gospels. We quite clearly understood that Jesus was the son of God. Not that "Christians believe..." but that he was.
Now this was nearly 30 years ago and I might be mis-remembering, but the impression I am left with after all that time is that Christianity was quite clearly the thing to believe while the others were simply something to investigate as cultural and historical concepts.
I think that Christanity should have been treated on an equal eudational footing with the other religions (perhaps with greater time/emphasis, as it is the dominant religion in our society) and none of them promoted as "true". Not in school, anyway. We have plenty of churches (Mosques, Synagogues...) to handle that part of it.
I'd say that was true for my own experience of RE in the early 90s. By that stage I knew almost everything that we were told about Christianity and probably an outside view would have been much more interesting. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #17 on: 18:36:36, 12-09-2008 » |
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Maybe we need to introduce an A-level in fallacies.
There speaks a man who didn't do A-level economics ... It's beginning to seem to me eminently reasonable that, when teaching evolutionary theory to intelligent teenagers, the question of 'what about creationism and intelligent design?' is bound to come up. And why shouldn't this be an opportunity for any decent science teacher to talk about what scientific theories are, what science is, why evolutionary theory is scientific and why creationism isn't and so on and so forth. It's actually a fairly central point in understanding science to understand the distinction between science and non-science (good Popperians and good Hegelian dialecti tcians should even, for different reasons, be able to agree on that  ). And here's a good opportunity to do just that, a bit of 'philosophy of science' in a science lesson. I can totally go with all of that in principle, George - but given current levels of learning in many schools, is it really likely to be feasible that today's young people are going to be able to grasp that sort of philosophy at that stage? I think they probably could - in some ways a bit of creative thinking would be a good way of loosening the straitjacket of exams and tests. There's some evidence to suggest that introducing philosophy early (something I'd strongly support) can be really beneficial: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6330631.stm(not that I'd endorse some of the performacne measures quoted in this piece) And the chapter and verse: http://www.gtce.org.uk/shared/contentlibs/85419/1372773/137293/183525/p4c_evaluation.pdf |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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thompson1780
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« Reply #18 on: 22:43:13, 12-09-2008 » |
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I shuddered when I first read the title of this thread. I think I had a moment a bit like George, and agree that pupils need to investigate both sides of the coin.
That means that they need to be taught the skills to investigate both sids of the coin. There is a need for some element of philosophy to do that. More philosophy could be a very good thing. I think an element of History of Science could be good as well, to show that Western Science itself was started by the Church in Universities trying to understand Nature, and therefore the Nature of God.
But I'm not sure all this should be included in Science lessons. Separate lessons are called for.
Tommo
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #19 on: 22:50:39, 12-09-2008 » |
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I was intrigued by the claim that "one in ten children would come from a home which believes in Creationism". Where did this statistic come from? I sounds to me rather like "Eighty-Six Percent Of Statistics are made-up by their users".
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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George Garnett
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« Reply #20 on: 23:22:09, 12-09-2008 » |
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There's some evidence to suggest that introducing philosophy early (something I'd strongly support) can be really beneficial I very much agree and thanks for those links, pw. Heartening stuff. I was briefly involved in something very much more modest at my children's primary school and it was just astonishing. The children seemed to 'get' the idea of what philosophical questions were very quickly and seemed to love it. In talking about it afterwards one of them said something like "That's the sort of thing that I think about but I didn't know it was a subject before". I can't tell you what a happy/lump in the throat moment that was. It is odd that until very recently, and even now it's pretty rare, philosophy wasn't thought as something that could be introduced at school at all, let alone primary school. I'm probably biased but I think school age is exactly when most people are at their most philosophically inquisitive. It's a great shame that it's still thought of as something you can't even start until undergraduate level. |
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« Last Edit: 23:35:54, 12-09-2008 by George Garnett »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #21 on: 18:51:23, 13-09-2008 » |
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Oh yes, absolutely, George. I still feel that my Philosophy 'A'-level (which I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do under very good teachers at a school with some experience in teaching the subject) was probably the single most crucial contributor to my intellectual development at any age.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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MT Wessel
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« Reply #22 on: 01:31:37, 15-09-2008 » |
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« Last Edit: 02:20:14, 15-09-2008 by MT Wessel »
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lignum crucis arbour scientiae
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #23 on: 04:34:05, 15-09-2008 » |
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No philosophy for me. I had enough of that. I read a number of books and I discussed things with philosophers.
No philosophy for me, I think it is absolute bolony. May be better way to say it would be: It is gymnastic for your brain and no more.
Here I even know a man who specializes in philosophy of religion. Never heard anything more absurd than what he is saying. He is a nice man and I don't argue with him. He and his wife are both religious people.
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« Last Edit: 04:37:22, 15-09-2008 by trained-pianist »
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #24 on: 09:08:43, 15-09-2008 » |
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Pity you feel that way, t-p. Have you read this?  I'm fully prepared for a snob assault but I'll gladly confess that it did plenty for me. |
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George Garnett
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« Reply #25 on: 09:29:42, 15-09-2008 » |
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If you are fully prepared, Mr S, then I wouldn't dream of launching a snob assault. I wouldn't want to risk boiling oil being poured all over my pristine Marshall and Snelgrove scaling towers. However, I would make a complementary recommendation for this lovely little introductory book by Thomas Nagel. It is very short. Only 100 pages. This sort of thing is far more difficult to do than Nagel makes it look. And I just love the comedy title as well.  |
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« Last Edit: 09:40:26, 15-09-2008 by George Garnett »
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #26 on: 11:12:32, 15-09-2008 » |
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These books look interesting. I have so many gapses in my education. I just have to take things slowly. I did read one book about Kant. I liked it, but I found it too tedius.
I have a student who takes a lot of philosophy courses. She likes to tell me about what she is learning.
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« Last Edit: 11:18:32, 15-09-2008 by trained-pianist »
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martle
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« Reply #27 on: 11:16:03, 15-09-2008 » |
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Not a snob assault, but a major pinching of the nostrils for when de Botton addresses us on TV. However, that book is very fine indeed IMO. Don't know George's, but will hunt it down... |
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Green. Always green.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #28 on: 11:24:33, 15-09-2008 » |
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Not a snob assault, but a major pinching of the nostrils for when de Botton addresses us on TV. However, that book is very fine indeed IMO. Don't know George's, but will hunt it down... Well if you will go debasing things by descending into the televisual realm...  |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #29 on: 11:41:35, 15-09-2008 » |
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Well if you will go debasing things by descending into the televisual realm...  (not suggested for his philosophical outpourings  ) |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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