Christian course credits can be ignored at 3rd level

Mena

OK, so it's in the US, but I found it a pretty interesting case none the less.

Essentially, the judge is saying that students can't have credits for a course where the bible is taken as fact and never questioned.

Link: The Register

Link: San Francisco Chronicle

Article (from the Register.co.uk )

A federal judge has told the University of California that when considering applicants, it has the constitutional right to ignore high school course work grounded in the notion that the Bible is infallible.


On Friday, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Judge James Otero denied claims from a group of Christian high schools and Christian high school students that the 10-campus University had suppressed free speech and discriminated against religious views in rejecting such course credits.

In a 20-page ruling (pdf) Judge Otero, of the Central District of California, says that UC could reject credits as long as it wasn't acting out of "animus" and it had "a rational basis" for those rejections. And he's quite sure the University met both criteria.


One high school course was rejected because its primary text, the Bob Jones University-published United States History for Christian Schools, "failed to adequately teach critical thinking and modern historical analytic methods."


According to one professor on the UC course review committee, the text "instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events, attributes historical events to divine providence rather than analyzing human action, evaluates historical figures and their contributions based on their religious motivations or lack thereof and contains inadequate treatment of several major ethnic groups, women, and non-Christian religious groups."


In 2005, the Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, California, five Calvary students, and the Association of Christian Schools International sued UC over its rejection of this Bob Jones-fueled course and other credits. This March, Judge Otero ruled that the University had not exhibited an anti-religious bias in approving high school credits, and with last week's decision, he dismissed the suit outright.


The plaintiffs have already appealed. "It appears the UC is attempting to secularize private religious schools," said their attorney, Jennifer Monk of Advocates for Faith and Freedom. ®

PDN

Mena wrote: »

Essentially, the judge is saying that students can't have credits for a course where the bible is taken as fact and never questioned.

No, essentially the judge is saying that a College has the right to deny credit for such courses. Colleges also have the right to award credit for such courses.

Galvasean

So basically its up to the individual college whether or not they will recognise said credits?

PDN

Galvasean wrote: »

So basically its up to the individual college whether or not they will recognise said credits?

That's what the article says. That would strike me as being eminently sensible. A College should be free to assess for itself which academic qualifications earn how much credit. That should apply to all qualifications whether we are talking about a Mongolian high school diploma, the Irish leaving cert, or coursework from a Christian school. If a US College is unhappy with the standards of any of these then they should not be forced to accept them or allow credit for them.

lostexpectation

course creidt is loose thing though isn't it

Galvasean

PDN wrote: »

That's what the article says. That would strike me as being eminently sensible. A College should be free to assess for itself which academic qualifications earn how much credit. That should apply to all qualifications whether we are talking about a Mongolian high school diploma, the Irish leaving cert, or coursework from a Christian school. If a US College is unhappy with the standards of any of these then they should not be forced to accept them or allow credit for them.

Hasn't this always been the case?

(probably should have just read the article )

ChocolateSauce

That judgement deserves a standing ovation. Well at least California is on the right track. Considering it was a federal judge, that means the ruling should have weight in all 50 states.

--amadeus--

In fact it is at best a partial victory for non-religious teaching. As noted in teh article quoted above credit was rejected for a history course where the principal text used the bible as the main explanation of history. UC does however offer credit for science courses that use texts such as:

"Chemistry for Christian Schools" and "Biology: God's Living Creation," or that include scientific discussions of creationism as well as evolution

link

So basically the college allows non-scientific science teaching but drew the line at a biblical analysis of history. This (predictably) upset the christian schools who sued over secularisation. Sadly UC shows no sign of revoking credit on the other religious courses but credit to them for taking a stance.