Legless
Russell Blackford asked an important question on Jerry Coyne’s post on Andrew Brown and Michael Ruse:
It’s true that science teachers in public schools should not draw inferences, when talking to their students, about whether some scientific findings cast doubt on some religious positions. But is Brown really going to say that NO ONE should draw such inferences in public debate? That would go a long way towards putting philosophers of religion out of business. Does he really think that the whole question is one that should not be debated honestly in the public sphere?
Yes. Here is how he puts it:
Suppose we concede that the new atheists are right, and no true, honest scientist could be anything other than an atheist. If that is true, the teaching of science itself becomes unconstitutional. For it is every bit as illegal to promote atheism in American public schools as it is to promote religion…[T]he footnote on page four of Judge Selna’s ruling in the recent case of a science teacher censured for calling creationism “superstitious nonsense” in class makes this clear. He says The Supreme Court has found that
the State may not establish a “religion of secularism” in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion.” School Dist. of Abington Tp., Pa. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225 (1963). This is simply another way of saying that the state may not affirmatively show hostility to religion.
And Brown is indeed saying that no one should draw inferences about whether some scientific findings cast doubt on some religious positions in public debate because if people do then the teaching of science itself becomes unconstitutional, and Judge Selna said so.
The trouble with that, of course, is that Judge Selna was ruling on what can be said in the public school classroom, not in public debate in general. The quoted passage from Selna’s ruling doesn’t show what Brown wants it to show, but he thinks it does. That’s rather careless.
This is a big, and sloppy, mistake, and it matters because it seems to be at the heart of what Ruse and Brown keep insisting on. Judges are very likely to rule that atheism cannot be taught in public schools. It does not follow that judges are very, or at all, likely to rule that public discussion of the incompatibility between science and religion makes science a branch of atheism and therefore forbidden in the public schools. That outcome is in fact vanishingly unlikely. (One reason for that is simply that another important part of the First Amendment guarantees free speech, and judges are pretty well aware of that.
I suspect that Ruse has been making this claim because he enjoys irritating his colleagues. (He has said this freely many times.) I’m not sure why Brown is backing him up. Anyway – the claim is just nonsense, a kind of joke. It has no legs.
This is interesting. I’m not sure what else I have to say about it yet, but it is definitely interesting.
I’m thinking through how the public school classroom is somehow (legally) so different from just regular old public places. I guess my own opinion is that they aren’t/shouldn’t be all that different, but then I do not have kids and do not spend much time at all thinking about what school should be. (Well, that’s not exactly true – I know exactly how I think it should be – I just devote my energies elsewhere.)
I’m curious to see how this discussion develops.
-CM
The public school classroom isn’t just any old public space because it is quite clearly government space: School buildings are paid for by tax money, teachers are employees of the government (again, paid by citizens’ tax money), and school administrators and teachers have authority over their charges backed up by the power of the state because – among other things – students are required by law to attend (and are exempted only if they are engaged in some suitable substitute education, which is honored more in the breach than substantial compliance where home schooling is concerned). Under the U.S. Constitution as interpreted in a long and growing history of legal precedents, the authority and resources of the state cannot be used to advance any religious agenda or encourage any religious belief. Nor can the authority and resources of the state be used to advance religion of any kind over irreligion, at least according to Supreme Court precedents established in the past five or six decades.
Nor, naturally, can the authority of the state be used to advance irreligion over religion in the public school classroom. That’s obvious enough. And while teaching science in a classroom may cause students to doubt some religious claims because some religions make demonstrably false claims about the natural world, that’s not considered by any reasonable person (nor by any Supreme Court precedents, which are far from uniformly reasonable) to be advancing irreligion for the simple reason that the subjects are in themselves religiously neutral. Some religious traditions and institutions and holy texts also make false historical claims, and even false mathematical claims (pi = 3 according to one Old Testament passage), but teaching accurate history or math isn’t advancing irreligion either.
So really, we can ignore science in specific. Under the bizarro Ruse/Brown understanding of church/state separation, teaching any sort of critical thinking at all would be unconstitutional because critical thinking is incompatible with believing claims as a matter of faith and therefore is hostile to almost all religious traditions and beliefs and therefore would an illegitimate use of state power to advance irreligion/atheism. Of course, under reasoning that absurd, science and history and math education would already be unconstitutional, because teaching any facts or truths will contradict some falsehood-riddled religious tradition or other. I fear Michael Ruse, always somewhat woolly in some ways, may finally be losing it for good and all. Brown, I suspect, is simply a fool.
(and are exempted only if they are engaged in some suitable substitute education, which is honored more in the breach than substantial compliance where home schooling is concerned). Why are home schooled kids winning spelling bees if that is the case G.?
Richard,
There’s a lot more to education than learning to spell.
“I’m not sure why Brown is backing him up. Anyway – the claim is just nonsense, a kind of joke. It has no legs.”
That’s certainly true, and, while I don’t have the evidence, I have at least the sense, having read Brown off and off for the last few years, that he has been getting, dare I say, more strident and shrill as time has gone by. I stand to be corrected on this, of course, but this is my unresearched opinion. Unresearched, because I’m not sure it would really repay close study.
It seems to me quite clear that education should be providing students with the basic workings of critical thought, and should not teach authoritatively, any particular findings as to world-views, except in so far as training in critical thought would include methods for assessing world-views.
In such training, because of their success at baloney detection, science, math, logic and probability and statistics (the latter often unappreciated fields, and much misused at the moment by religious apologists) would be central to the curriculum – though not in the way of trying to make mini-scientists (which was a total failure in my case), but in teaching the scope and wonder of these pursuits and how they are of use to individuals in making decisions about the truth of knowledge claims
Stephen Law’s The War for Children’s Minds is a very good place to start.
“Why are home schooled kids winning spelling bees if that is the case G.?”
Reasoning 101. Not all home schooled children are winning spelling bees, or excelling in any other way. The fact (if it is a fact) that some home schooled children win spelling bees cannot show that all home schooling is well conducted. There is much other evidence that a great deal of home schooling in the US is horrendously badly conducted.
Richard, do you ever think carefully about anything before you write? Is your inner dialogue – the voice we all have in our heads that informs what we write or speak – composed entirely of specious soundbites, like those you type out here?
Or, are you just playing the role of contrarian for shits and giggles? If so, it’s a cheap performance. There are interesting, sound, and valid ways to dispute the kinds of claims and issues that arise here on B&W. That’s not what you do. You’re not “down the pub” when you comment here, and barstool one-liners aren’t going to convince anyone.
Just a point about spelling. My brother, who has a PhD in English and Commonwealth Literature, taught university for many years, and has many published papers, was and probably still is, a hopeless speller. His beginning as a university teacher coincided with the computer revolution, and the spell-checker was his saviour. Besides, many children who became not only well educated but effective critical thinkers were taught to read by the word recognition method – a completely stupid idea devised in some education department isolated from the world of real language – and never learned to spell. Spelling has practically nothing to do with education or critical thinking. though looney methods of teaching language can make spelling more difficult.
If you want to read some very complex, yet critical English, with bizarre spelling, I suggest you try John Donne’s Biathanatos. Convoluted prose and acutely critical thinking combined with an orthography that is sometimes enough to send you sreaming into a neighbourhood padded room.
Mine crossed with your Josh, and the 6th to the last word is meant to be ‘screaming’. Spelling failed me, or I didn’t hit a key hard enough.
Thanks for the overview of classroom as gov’t space, G. That helped me to be reminded of that.
Later on, you say this:
“Under the bizarro Ruse/Brown understanding of church/state separation, teaching any sort of critical thinking at all would be unconstitutional because critical thinking is incompatible with believing claims as a matter of faith and therefore is hostile to almost all religious traditions and beliefs and therefore would an illegitimate use of state power to advance irreligion/atheism. Of course, under reasoning that absurd…”
But I must ask – _is_ that reasoning absurd? It seems to be it is correct – critical thinking is in fact toxic to faith including religious faith. Therefore, teaching critical thinking is damaging to religion, and in that sense could be considered the promotion of non-religiousness.
Am I missing something?
-CM
I think the ‘absurd’ designation applies to the ‘would be unconstitutional’ rather than to the ‘critical thinking is incompatible with believing claims as a matter of faith.’
In a sense it’s true that courts could rule that way (if they wanted to) but it’s also true that they wouldn’t, for all sorts of reasons, pragmatic at least as much as principled. It’s a case of what the market will bear, to put it crudely.
Actually there’s also probably a reason coming from the other direction. Say a court ruled that PS 42 may not teach reasoning skills because reasoning skills are incompatible with religious belief and so a violation of the free exercise clause. Would believers really be happy with that outcome?
So there’s a certain amount of turning a blind eye to the incompatiblity at issue; that’s my guess.