Musings of a Seminarian

This Wisconsin law looks to be a fair attempt to deal with the issues. It defines what Science is in the context of preparing curricula and setting educational standards.

The government has to define standards for education as long as education is compulsory. The Jeffersonian concept of democracy requires an educated populace. If education is compulsory and someone opens a school purporting to be educating children there must be some standard used to determine if there is compliance.

Meanwhile, the Constitution’s seperation clause says that then government cannot mandate religous training as a part of compulsory education.

So far, so good on the surface. No Bible teaching, no Koran teaching etc. One may say that those topics are to be taught by the parents and their church’s if they choose.

It gets dicier when values need to be taught in school.
Topics such as history, literature and current events cannot be taught meaningfully in a values neutral way. Where does the public education system go to find the values being taught.

One place that seems appropriate is the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So there we find equality, democracy, freedom, tolerance, etc. We then use these as a basis for the necessary values.

Does the selection of these values constitute the “establishment of religion”? What is a religion?

For the purposes of this discussion I propose that we define religion as a worldview whose source of values is based on supernatural input. It seems then that the constitution says that all values imposed on the public must have a source found in nature.

Science, as defined in Wisconsin, requires that nothing be taught in a class labled in the curriculum as a “science class” have any souce outside of nature. Looks like a marriage made in heaven (oop’s sorry for the allusion to the supernatural there.) Further the state requires a certain number of science courses be included in the curriculum.

Now what has happened is that the state has required that the children of theist parents must sit and listen to hours of subject matter that discounts and ignores ideas that are central to their worldviews and values.

I agree to a certain point that because science is by definition a study of the natural world, and that it is not a suitable method for inquiry into the supernatural,(because if science were to investigate the possible supernatural cause of a phenomenon it would no longer be science.); non-natural explanations for the beginning (or lack thereof) should not be taught in a class labled “science”.

On the other hand, the value of tolerance in the constitution, seems to require that these students be assisted in dealing with this contradiction they are facing.

Where are these issues going to be dealt with? To a certain extent it is the responsibility of the parents and their religious institutions.

The government and their public schools owe it to the theist children to deal openly and honestly with these issues. If it is not dealt with in the class labled “science” where will it be addressed? The history and literature classes (lumped by the education establishment into the pot labled social studies) may be one place. But does the average history or literature teacher have the science background to address the issues effectively? I don’t think so.

What do we do?

Well, lets go back to the values found in the Constitution. Where did they come from? There were many religious people involved in writing the Constitution and Declaration, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt that when they wrote the establishment clause they included non-establishment of their own religion. The answer as I see it is the discipline of philosophy. Not all philosophy results in religion, but all philosophy results in worldview.

The worldview of the constitution requires that all law be based on materialist principals. Hence all ethics taught in public schools must be based on materialistic principals. Values based on non-materialistic principals may not be taught by the teachers. The students, via free speech, are allowed to express these principals, however these not yet educated children are not equipped to adequately state the worldviews of theists.

It could be said that teachers can teach that these theistic worldviews exist and explain to a certain extent what they are. But this begs the question, because when it comes down to brass tacks, the teacher has to teach from the standpoint of some wordview. And the only allowable worldview is materialist.

The teachers may not teach theistic values and the children are inadequate to express it. Wow, that looks like intolerance and religious discrimination. But I thought the Constitution did not allow that.

It looks like Catch 22 has won game, set and match.

Is there an answer?

Yes —— Live with it.

Is there a more helpful answer? Well a good idea is to start by offering philosophy of science classes, or at least a 2-4 week section of the class labled “science” be jointly taught by the science thacher and a liberal arts teacher trained in philosophy. During this time the foundational presumptions of science should be covered. Also the limits of the competancy of scientific inquiry should be taught. Until the basis of the philosophy of science be explicitly taught (and taught well) alongside the actual science itself we will never get out of this particular science theist/materialist pickle.

On the bigger issue of the materialist bias of public education and the law all I can see happening is the US just trying to muddle through. It won’t get solved. We’ll all just have to live with it the best we can.

# posted by Dan @ 9:22 PM