Atheism classes in our schools to add balance.

kylith

I had a science teacher who thought that Pluto, that icy former-planet, was hot. After that my trekkie friend and I taught the 'Space' portion of the syllabus.

The same teacher told her LC class that it takes 3 people to make a baby: A man, a woman, and God.

Gbear

In the first page of my JC science book (7 or 8 years ago now, dunno is it still the same) there was an introduction to science and the first line read something like this (im not joking):

"Science can be said to be the study of God's work"
And our school, while being catholic wasn't mentally so - it was relatively moderate in most things.
It's one thing for a teacher to say it off the cuff but for it to be in the science book itself is absolute madness!:mad:

Sarky

Took me a minute to realise you meant Junior Cert with the JC.

For a terrifying moment I thought J C might have tried writing a book.

Zombrex

I think general classes on critical thinking (or thinking as the rest of us call it ) are a great idea. Not on any specific subject but on the basic nature of knowledge, how we know what we know and why we have confidence in it. Not for young children who are at a developmental time when they need to accept what they are told. But for older children and young teenagers.

They don't have to have anything to specifically with religion. Our education system at the moment is too geared towards memorization, and not enough towards thinking and critical assessment. Even if this was nothing to do with atheism it would be a worthy inclusion in any curriculum.

I would imagine though it would be fought tooth and nail by the churches and some more religious parents who don't like the idea of little Johnny learning to question the nature of beliefs that they have been ramming into them since they are toddlers.

Dades

joethatoom wrote: »

The same teacher told her LC class that it takes 3 people to make a baby: A man, a woman, and God.

Well somebody has to keep watch.

Turtwig

Bit late to this thread. First off the answer to the OPs question is never. I love the idea of teaching critical thinking as a class but I think it would be far too open to abuse. Philosophy and philosophy of science would be a little bit more attractive. As for teachers teaching the wrong content that's not really surprising when you consider that the vast majority of them actually have no interest in their subject matter. The most depressing truth though is when you come realise how few of them actually know what science is. How few of them actually know what buddhism is. How few of them know the esoteric details behind basic physics or maths formulations. How few of them know what evolution is. How few of them... ok you get the picture.
Everything it seems is based on popular belief littered with misconceptions and they simply never bother to check the facts and that's what they teach to the kids. It's literally staggering the amount of sh*te that a child is taught these days. Yet if you ask most maths teachers about the state of affairs of maths their biggest problem will simply be the alien idea of allowing kids to use calculators or log tables littered with formulae which completely misses the point of education. Calculators are no more part of the problem than mnemonics like "my violent evil monster just scared us nuts" both are extremely useful tools to have and be able to use. In fact, I'd actually argue that kids and their parents aren't even taught what mnemonics actually are, how their mind work, how learning works etc. Heck, do teachers even have an idea how learning works? Most of the ones I talk to seem to pass pedagogy off as quackery. Their idea being "Well if it worked for me it will work for them, why change it?".

Oh yeah, our education system has a tonne problems. So to any parent who reads this no matter how it is, no matter how impatient you may get, never let the child lose that sense of curiosity and passion for learning stuff. Just because you found something hard or complex to understand doesn't necessarily mean your child will find it so. Crucially, just because you found it easy doesn't mean your child will find it so and just because others pick things up faster doesn't mean your child is any less smart than anyone's else. Smartness and ability is something that is utterly overrated, it's nice to imagine there is a huge divide. But in reality everything is just an acquired skill that you either learn or you don't and then there'll be a very small statistical percentage of people who will have genuine disabilities or be savants in some line of study or another. In Ireland there seems to be an attitude that there's somethings people aren't good at and you just learn that accept that. That's a toxic untrue idea. The vast majority of people can be experts at anything the only question is whether they'll be given to chance to become so and more importantly if they actually want to.

The greatest tragedy of our education system is that it is set up so that only a certain type of student can prosper, others get left behind. Even though those others could be equally if not more competent that those who prosper. Salman Kahn asked the question whether those who did good in education were simply an accident of time? That may be blunt and an oversimplification but in my opinion it is probably more accurate than people would like to believe. Is learning a language, maths, music, craftsmanship etc. really that hard? Nope, but it's just we feel that we ought to be good at them if someone else our age is and we tend to get impatient with the basics or skip them altogether. The point Kahn and other express is that everyone has their own pace of learning some will grasp the basics very quickly but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll know the subject matter better than someone who takes longer to get the initial strands and neural networks of the concept in their brain assembled. Most of the posters in this forum rejected religious dogma, so all I'm saying is reject one more tradition. Leave personal experience at the door, leave what you think are valid intuitions (our intuitions are prejudices) and apply some critical thinking to your child's education. They may never thank you for it, but you may inspire them to them to be fantastical failures. Oh yeah that's another I hate about this country and society as a whole in general. This idea that people must succeed, failure isn't bad, in fact I'd argue it's good for you but that's a topic for another thread and by being good for you I don't mean failing is good for you because you'll try harder to succeed I simply mean failure is good for you. That is all.

Jimoslimos

kylith wrote: »

The same teacher told her LC class that it takes 3 people to make a baby: A man, a woman, and God.

Ah, so that's why she was screaming his name then - thought it was just my legendary lovemaking skills:o

Peregrinus

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Ah, so that's why she was screaming his name then - thought it was just my legendary lovemaking skills:o

Is that "legendary" as in "mythical"?