Atheism classes in our schools to add balance.

iguana

iguana wrote: »

The school syllabus is full of things that are known to be wrong. History is, ime, the worst offender. Much of it is simplified to a point where it becomes completely nonfactual.

But galileo did come from space

actually the whole galileo thing really gets to me sometimes, it wasn't until years later of reading about him i found out about the whole Simplicio thing, bit of a difference from "he was burned for being a scientist omg!"
i suppose there must be much worse

dmw07

iguana wrote: »

The school syllabus is full of things that are known to be wrong. History is, ime, the worst offender. Much of it is simplified to a point where it becomes completely nonfactual.

Good point. History is a very contentious subject. Depending on which country you live in. Science in the main does not change from country to country so much but history diversifies too much across the globe.

Perhaps some sort of health warning should be attached with each syllabus. There could be a grading to highlight how non-factual each module is. Like World History in Europe getting an 8 (Imo it's the most dubious subject on the planet. Outside of religion, but that's a pseudo subject) and subjects like Maths getting a 0-1. Each health warning would dilute the weight of each module so students would then tend to opt for the higher weighted subjects to get better grades. Choosing more factual subjects would give students a better grounding in their educational lives.

Also as a result, we might have less honours degree history students claiming the social (pinch of salt time!, it's a joke) and less religious folk looking for free money. Which are never bad things

Jimoslimos

seamus wrote: »

Religion should be part of the history module. Not because "Religion is History", hur hur, but because the two are so intertwined that students will get a good grasp of why and how religions came out in the context of the times they appeared in.

I think this will make it easier to understand religions as arbitrary, plucked-from-the-sky viewpoints instead of trying to teach them in a "some people believe...." manner. I could be wrong though.

This^^^

I also don't agree with 'teaching' atheism in the manner most subjects are taught. Religion also shouldn't be on the syllabus as a separate subject but neither should it be completely ignored.

Rather the Bible, Qu'ran, etc., should be taught as a module in history, with the same weight lent to other historical and philosophical texts such as works by Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Confucious, etc.

joethatoom

I wouldn/t have minded studying Atheism in school. The exam would have been pretty easy also.

Q1. Does God Exist?
Answer: No

Sarky

You can't teach atheism. It's just a natural result that tends to arise from being taught everything else properly.

joethatoom

To fix all problems I think that religion should just be removed from schools.

Sin City

Religeon could be mixed in with philosophy but the sheer size of Religion means it should be its own subject in itself. I see no reason why Religion should be scoffed at. Its an ideology and should be taught, Atheisim should not be taught, however students should be made critically evaluate what they are learning and decide for themselves what they think to be true for them. As Athesism itself isnt a subject, its a reaction to a subject

MagicMarker

Sin City wrote: »

Religeon could be mixed in with philosophy but the sheer size of Religion means it should be its own subject in itself. I see no reason why Religion should be scoffed at. Its an ideology and should be taught, Atheisim should not be taught, however students should be made critically evaluate what they are learning and decide for themselves what they think to be true for them. As Athesism itself isnt a subject, its a reaction to a subject

Eh? Shouldn't all ideologies be taught then?

sbsquarepants

iguana wrote: »

The school syllabus is full of things that are known to be wrong. History is, ime, the worst offender. Much of it is simplified to a point where it becomes completely nonfactual.

History is a tricky one though. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. Most people aren't too keen to record their own indiscretions or atrocities. Take the british for example, they are thought that they had a glorious empire that spanned the entire world and was the envy of everyone - not that they enslaved and plundered half the globe. Most "history" is extremely slanted one way or the other.

joethatoom

Philosophy should be the core subject for all schools from primary school up to the leaving cert.

baddebt

bluewolf wrote: »

a
some brainwashing anti-religion class, no, that's stupid

but religion classes are brainwashing classes

seamus

History is a tricky one though. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. Most people aren't too keen to record their own indiscretions or atrocities. Take the british for example, they are thought that they had a glorious empire that spanned the entire world and was the envy of everyone - not that they enslaved and plundered half the globe. Most "history" is extremely slanted one way or the other.

Not to mention that if you speak to someone with a UK education, they'll tell you that Oliver Cromwell was a great man, a hero and an idol.
If you speak to anyone educated in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell was the first incarnation of Hitler. Only worse, and with more baby murdering.

I agree that history isn't ideal, perhaps it would be better concentrating on some core hsitorical events rather than simplifying and watering down a whole pile of them.

I do like the idea of a philosophy syllabus which teaches the theory and history of religious thought rather than trying to mix it up with facts.

joethatoom

I usually did my homework during religion class

Sarky

I wish I could have done that. Any religion teachers I had were either that particular type of elderly Catholic who doesn't seem to know just what is or isn't canon any more and reads the Medjugorje Herald more than the bible, or those priests who tried so hard to be trendy and hip and down with the kids. Both required far too much interaction from the class to think about getting something useful done.

sbsquarepants

Sarky wrote: »

I wish I could have done that. Any religion teachers I had were either that particular type of elderly Catholic who doesn't seem to know just what is or isn't canon any more and reads the Medjugorje Herald more than the bible, or those priests who tried so hard to be trendy and hip and down with the kids. Both required far too much interaction from the class to think about getting something useful done.

Not THAT type of interaction i hope!:eek::eek:

iguana

Sarky wrote: »

I wish I could have done that. Any religion teachers I had were either that particular type of elderly Catholic who doesn't seem to know just what is or isn't canon any more and reads the Medjugorje Herald more than the bible, or those priests who tried so hard to be trendy and hip and down with the kids. Both required far too much interaction from the class to think about getting something useful done.

Still better than many of my religion classes in secondary school which consisted of the religion teacher playing Charlie Landsborough's My Forever Friend on a loop for 40 minutes and telling us to think about the message.:mad:

iguana

sbsquarepants wrote: »

History is a tricky one though. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. Most people aren't too keen to record their own indiscretions or atrocities. Take the british for example, they are thought that they had a glorious empire that spanned the entire world and was the envy of everyone - not that they enslaved and plundered half the globe. Most "history" is extremely slanted one way or the other.

Or history in Irish school where the rise of Protestantism has the tone of the rise of the Empire in Star Wars.

But even objective facts became nonsense. Regardless of whether you feel like it was a good thing or a bad thing Henry VIII never converted to Protestantism as my history book said.

And that's just the books, half of the teachers just spout whatever urban legends they picked up over the years and teach them as fact. My 3rd year science teacher insisted that there was no scientific way to prove bees could fly.:rolleyes: A history teacher told us there was no conscription in Ireland in WW1 because women had recently been given the vote so voted against it as women don't like to see their sons and husbands killed.:rolleyes: There are so many things I learned in school that I believed as fact only to later learn they were absolute crap. And nearly as many times in school when I'd get in trouble because the teacher was trying to teach something I already knew was wrong.

robindch

iguana wrote: »

Or history in Irish school where the rise of Protestantism has the tone of the rise of the Empire in Star Wars.

You're telling me

Over the main blackboard, my primary teacher in 5th and 6th classes had placed a sepia print of some relative, an uncle if memory serves, dressed up in some military outfit, staring somberly towards the camera, I suppose taken some time before he got himself killed while fighting for whatever cause he was involved in. Which was presumably nationalist, since our teacher had little time for the English and dwelt extensively on the perfidy of the English, the misery of the famine, Mr Boycott, lots about the the landlords and plenty of Irish. I recall our sixth-class school play was something he wrote (AFAIR) himself on the 1798 rebellion, and the nationalist glory that pertained thereto.

Sheesh, does anybody remember what it was like in this country during the mid-to-late 70's, especially down the country?

muppeteer

There is willful biased ignorance, mostly nationalist bias, and there is just ignorance. I once had a LC science teacher tell the class that the moon does not have enough gravity to walk around on, so the astronauts needed to be tethered down to stop them drifting off. I'm sure it was just coincidental that Armageddon was recently on tv.:)

Sarky

I used to have a geography teacher who didn't know the difference between Farenheit and Celsius. He's say things like "have ye ever stuck yer hand inwater at 99 degrees? Nearly boilin'! No wonder you feel bad when your temperature is in the 90's..."

He's a Fine Gael TD now, last time I checked. Go figure.

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"?