Although secular humanistic thought began to penetrate American culture in the 1800's, 1960 seems to be a watershed year in our nation's history. In the early 1960's, prayer and the Ten Commandments were taken from our public classrooms.
Source: Truth North Quest
The phrase "lying by omission" is used when a person deliberately omits some key information in a way that happens to give a false impression about some situation or event. I think that this applies here because Brian Del Turco has left out something very critical: what was "taken" from public classrooms was not "prayer and the Ten Commandments," but government-written prayers and readings from government-approved Bibles. Individual students continued to retain the right to say their own prayers on their own and read from their own Bibles.
These key facts tell a radically different story, don't they? Brian Del Turco seems to want to give the impression that religion was somehow banned or just suppressed in public schools, but the truth is that government itself was banned from making theological decisions (like what sorts of prayer to say and which Bibles to privilege) then imposing those decisions on all children.
Brian Del Turco isn't alone in this and I think it's very important to pay attention to how Christian conservatives almost universally leave out this critical information. It doesn't fit with their ideology to admit that what they are really defending is giving the government the authority to pick which Bible kids should read and they wouldn't garner nearly as much support if they admitted that they want to give the state the power to write prayers for students. It's only to be expected that they would leave out these facts, but that doesn't make it any more honest.
It is interesting that downward trends in academic and moral indicators can be traced to the early 60's.
Brian Del Turco would like to give readers the impression that there is a causal connection between the elimination of government-written prayers and government-approved Bibles form public schools on the one hand and "downward trends" on the other, but he seems to be smart enough to leave it just the suggestion. He doesn't try to make any sort of argument on behalf of such a position -- maybe he did and realized that it would fail?
Another series of events that occurred in the early 60's were desegregation and the rise of the Civil Rights movement. Is there a causal connection between that and "downward trends" in public schools? Anyone who made such an argument would be immediately branded a racist because in such a context most people are able to recognize that a correlation between two events does not necessarily imply that one caused the other. Nevertheless, that's precisely the sort impression that Brian Del Turco wants to give his readers: correlation means causation. I suppose that if he had a serious argument, though, he wouldn't have to resort to logical fallacies like this.
A 60 year cultural meltdown has created a moral vacuum in our nation's public classrooms.
As with all his other assertions, Brian Del Turco of course doesn't offer any arguments to support this claim. Because just about every generation seems to claim that things were so much better when they were younger, these sorts of statements have to be taken with a big grain of salt -- and only accepted if accompanied by strong empirical evidence.
What's more, anyone trying to support such an assertion should only be taken seriously if they approach the subject seriously. This means that they have to be willing to compare the past and present on issues beyond their own pet peeves. We can, for example, expect conservative Christians to try to make comparisons on behaviors like premarital sex, but if they are serious they would have to include comparisons on things like racism as well.
It begins with no God. If there is no Creator, then were did we come from? Well, of course we evolved from lower life forms. If we came from the animals, why not live like animals? Amorality is the absence of morals.
And finally we come to the crux of what Brian Del Turco has been driving at: without belief in his deity, there is no morality. The fact that most of humanity has managed to have morals, laws, ethics, and social systems without his god -- and without being worse off than Christians -- seems to escape the notice of Christians like this. It's not just atheists who demonstrate that one can be moral without belief in the Christian god, but every non-Christian who has ever existed.
Perhaps non-Christians have a stronger, more solid foundation for morality than Christians? I know that sounds wrong, but Christians are the only ones saying things like "If we came from the animals, why not live like animals?" Anyone who sincerely believes that there is no reason to not rape and murder their neighbors unless they were specially created by a deity who tells them not to do such things is not a person with a strong moral foundation. They are, at most, good at following orders -- but they aren't being very moral.
In contrast, a person who treats others well regardless of whether the Christian god exists -- and indeed without having to be told to -- is a person with a much stronger, more secure, and more reliable moral sense. Id' have far more trust for a person who treats me well because they want to than for a person who treats me well because they think they are under orders to do so (and may be punished if they fail).
It's interesting how often Christians like Brian Del Turco start out apparently trying to make a case for why their religion needs to be promoted by the government in institutions like public schools, but if you examine their arguments more closely what you find is a demonstration of why such a move might only make matters far worse for far more people.
Austin, you say:
“The phrase “lying by omission” is used when a person deliberately omits some key information in a way that happens to give a false impression about some situation or event. I think that this applies here because Brian Del Turco has left out something very critical: what was “taken” from public classrooms was not “prayer and the Ten Commandments,” but government-written prayers and readings from government-approved Bibles. Individual students continued to retain the right to say their own prayers on their own and read from their own Bibles.”
To add to your point, I drive past a baptist church every morning coming into work. They have a sign where they post messages that change every few days or so. The last two or three mornings the message has been something like: “In case of nuclear attack, the ban on prayer in schools is lifted.”
This kind of thing drives me nuts. There is no ban on prayer in schools (I assume that what the sign meant was public schools. Many if not most private schools are explicitly religious.). Students can pray all they want as long as they aren’t disrupting school activities. The restriction is that teachers and other public school employees are not allowed to promote a particular religious or anti-religious viewpoint as part of school activity or in their role as school employees. They can pray all they want and can promote religion all they want, just not in the context of school or other government sponsored activities. But when they are interacting with students during school sponsored activities, they represent the government, which is required to remain neutral on religion. Is that really so tough? Like you Austin, many complaints about prayer not being allowed in school strike me as deliberately disingenuous.
This is, of course, nothing that is not expressed regularly at this site. But sometimes one needs to have a little rant.
So funny that your post begins with the question “Can you get a good education without being Christian?” because I wonder if the real question should be “Can you get a good education WHILE being Christian?” My own observations show me that most religions disourage critical thinking and rational analysis. They shun real learning & discovery in favor of blind faith in fairy tales and bad, bad “science”.
Although correlation does not necessarily imply causation, it might be interesting to investigate the possibility that, ever since the gov’t was banned from endorsing religion in public schools, and there’s allegedly been a “downward trend” in academic and moral indicators, maybe that trend is being caused by all the religious parents who could be rebelling against the “restriction” of their religion, and deliberately subverting their children’s education by telling them to ignore what they are being taught, in favor of a more scriptual “education”.
Just sayin’.
>Like you Austin, many complaints about prayer not being allowed in school strike me as deliberately disingenuous.
To be completely fair, some overzealous school administrators have sometimes banned prayer or bibles at schools. They are not acting in accordance with the law, and the ACLU is often more than willing to set them straight. Regardless of how rarely this happens, we should not pretend that this doesn’t happen.
Otherwise, I agree with everything you said. Preventing schools officials from using their positions to promote religion not only helps those of us who claim no religion, but also those of different faiths. There would be (justified) outrage if a teacher led a class with an Islamic prayer, Buddhist meditation, or virtually any other non-Christian religious observance.
I do believe you can get a good education and form a good moral framwork without being a Christian. The “good books” tradition or a classical education would be just two educational philosophies which I feel would provide an excellent education and inculcate a morality. But, in general, public educators are not amenable to these types of educational approaches.
I myself had a public education, though I also had influence from my community of faith and from personal reading.
I think my post “A 50 year cultural meltdown has devasted American public education” was a snapshot into a general trend in the last half century which is fairly accurate. Just look at the statistics. On average, how do American high school graduates rate against graduates in say Greece, Britian, Korea, Japan, or a number of other nations? Not very well. There has been a corresponding rejection of all things “God” and of the good books tradition or classical education.
It is not true that “what was ‘taken’ from public classrooms was not “prayer and the Ten Commandments, but government-written prayers and readings from government-approved Bibles. Individual students continued to retain the right to say their own prayers on their own and read from their own Bibles.”
In fact, in most cases, students are not even allowed to observe a moment of silence to begin their day to meditate or pray in any way they would privately choose. In some cases student have had to go to court to have a religious club which met after school. In some extreme cases, students have not been allowed to publically use their Bible during school hours, such as at lunch.
This is not to say that all administrators and teachers would agree with this, but there is enough of it to understand it as a trend line in public education in recent decades. And of course there are those involved in education, from the best teacher graduate schools in the nations right down to the classroom, who would not want any recognition of a higher deity or opportunity for prayer.
I do not believe that government or public educators should be making any types of decisions about what types of prayers should be prayed or about an endorsement of a specific book of scriptures, whether that be the Bible, Koran, or any of a number of religious books. My personal faith is that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a uniquely inspired body of truth. I also feel that the Ten Commandments are really universal truths that we see across the religious spectrum. Would we want to disagree with “You shall not kill,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not steal,” etc? Not if we want to live in an ordered and moral society. I believe these truths revealed in the Ten Commandments are also seen in the human conscience and in natural law.
It is not about government-written prayers or government-approved Bibles. They don’t even want a moment of silence in which students could begin their day with a moment of reflection or prayer.
I think you can have a morality without necessarily believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that Jesus spoke of. But this would come through being honest with the human conscience and through natural law. I believe that the Creator communicates through natural law and human conscience as well as through inspired scripture.
From my vantage point, in spite of the dominance of a Darwinistic-evolutionary paradigm within science curricula or on networks such as The Science Channel or Discovery, most people simply do not buy it. Even so, could we not agree that a Darwinistic-evolutionary world view is affecting our society? Evolutionary psychology … evolutionary ecology … evolutionary medicine … even evolutionary theory of government? Really, can we order ourselves personally, societally, culturally … solely on the basis of star dust? Pure naturalism and materialism?
Homeschooling, virtual online schools, charter schools, and private education have proliferated because of the damage done to public education. There are some good people within the public education systems. And there are parents who are very aware and involved. But, the problem is systemic. If public education is going to be what the nation needs it to be, it will have to free itself from political agendas, special interests, political correctness, and a worldview which will never bring the level of success that our children and youth deserve.
A quick response to some of the main points in your critique. I appreciate the dialogue.
Thanks for the comments, Brian! I can’t speak for anyone else, but I appreciate the acknowledgement that we atheists can lead moral lives based on reason and empathy.
We all want what is best for our children. I personally could live with a moment of silence, I’m not sure I understand the argument against it, unless it is based on a ’slippery slope’ objection. That said, I strongly doubt having that moment will make our children competitive with the Japanese, who don’t take the time for a moment of silence and are largely atheists, Buddhists, and/or Shintoists.
We will likely improve schools more if we look at teaching methods, discipline, and teacher training. There are a number of public schools that produce much better than average education without re-instituting teacher-led prayer or having moments of silence. I think your argument in this respect just doesn’t fly.
Should educators just educate and then get out of the way? http://bit.ly/51A63p