What they ought to do is teach some courses regarding the true history of the bible. I would consider that "academic instruction of the bible".
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The Bible in Public Schools
- Thread starter Reptillian
- Start date
I agree it should be an elective and not required course if they teach Bible as literature or any other book of that nature- religious or whatever.
My thoughts on this developed from several different areas which eventually intersected, from conversations with my father to reading Closing of the American Mind to the study of Greek, Roman, and early Christian and ancient Jewish cutlure. There are a few things I have in mind when I speak of consequences beyond simply an inability to understand references within art, literature, etc. Perhaps the most important is morality. In my experience (personal interactions, reading the thoughts of others, reading history and the historical texts) and in what I have read in the sociological literature, the conception of "culture" in the "West" as well as the influence of Christian thought/morality has created for most a false sense of the basis for human morality, which is compounded by the commonality among "different" Western cultures compared with regions which have non-christian traditions dating back for centuries or millenia. The result is a mindset that "we all pretty much think the same" when in fact this is mainly an illusion due largely to Chrisitian influence on the West. The differences between Italian culture and French culture and American culture can be great, certainly, but one need only look at the initial failure (and eventual "solution") of pharmaceutical companies marketing anti-depressants in China, or the problematic extension of DSM criteria to South American countries, or even the issues Special Forces had training Saudi troops to see how radically different worldviews can be in places without centuries of Christian influence. This is only more true now that most of the countries which were so greatly influenced have such greatly decreased Christian populations.
As for how this can have truly wide-ranging consequences, look at the mission to "spread democracy" and other European/American ideas. Or take science: Bertrand Russell wondered, with his Eurocentric perspective, wondered why China did not develop science (meaning the systematic endevour to investigate and understand the world, and the development of methods and instruments to do so) because they did not have what he regarded as the main impediment to such a development: a religion like Christianity. What he failed to realize (because of his Eurocentric perspective) was that very few cultures have had anything like the impetus necessary for the development for science, or the fact that this requires a particular worldview with certain elements: a belief that the world/cosmos can be understood because it has some sort of order, that there is a reason/good in such an endeavour, etc. Some cultures have come close, and may have continued had they not been conquered or for other reasons, but these are still few and far between. Christianity helped create (after initially stifling, and then later impeding) the development of science because after the fusing of Greek philosophy and Christianity the Christian intellectuals viewed God as working with a plan, with a certain order, and to some extent knowable (compared to, for example, the way many groups falling under the modern categorization of gnostic saw god). The scholastics extended this into an attempt to understand god and god's works through reason, logic, and higher learning, and the early modern philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians further extended it throught the investigation of the natural world.
Chinese philosophy did not provide the pre-requisites to encourage that kind of investigation and development. Not understanding how worldviews can radically differ with so many ramifications makes possible (or likely) truly poor international relations.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
After reading all of your post, i still don't understand why teaching solely about christianity would be beneficial to the americans rather than teaching also about other major religions such as the islam, judaism, buddhism and hinduism. Wouldn't that do what you propose? That is, to increase the understanding of different common worldviews, how they came to be and how they influence people.
gnomon
Well-Known Member
Did you say you were an educator?
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I never said anything about teaching only christianity, and I certainly wouldn't advocate it. What I said concerned teaching students about the influence and history of the bible on Western thought. Basically, my concern is more with ensuring that students (especially American) gain a better conception of their worldview and how it can differ from others. This means not simply teaching christianity, or even the bible, but also Greek thought, the rebirth of intellectualism during the scholastic era, how this led to the scientific revolution, and how the bible both made this possible and also rendered it problematic. Finally, how the bible and christian faith came to be seen as intellectually bankrupt for an increasing number of philosophers/intellectuals (Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Freud, etc.).
In other words, as stated in the OP's quote, teaching about the bible in the sense I'm talking about is not so much teaching what it contains and the religious thought behind it, but how what it contains influenced a particular intellectual and cultural history spread across numerous countries over the centuries, and perhaps also how this influence created differences between "Western" thought and regions without centuries of christian influence.
As I said, in my experience it's difficult or impossible for even college-age students to understand how different a culture can be because they conceive of culture in a way that makes comparisons between French Canadian and British Canadian no different for the most part than comparisons between French Canadian and Southwestern China. Most of the "different cultures" they talk about, or are taught about, share the same or quite similar traditions of thought.
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Of sorts. I'm a graduate reasearcher, but that requires teaching and (because even doctoral researchers often get next to nothing in terms of pay) I also tutor and teach on the side, both high school and college students, in various subjects (greek, latin, mathematics, research methods, history, english, test prep, etc.).
outhouse
Atheistically
if you havnt figured it out yet
he has a high enough IQ to be mensa if he isnt already, has read more books then most people see in a lifetime, And has family that already has established credentials [famous author] if im not mistaken.
were really not lucky enough to have such skills teaching are children on a normal basis. Soon to be well known or proffessor, is a pretty safe bet here.
Alceste
Vagabond
Teach that the thing was cobbled together out of cherry picked folk tales by fallible, human men, hundreds of years after the events the tales describe, in an effort to establish a collection consistent enough to organize a religion around? The Christians would NEVER go for that. OTOH, if I were a teacher and Bible study was a required part of the curriculum, that would be my approach.
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outhouse
Atheistically
It would be great to teach children in the USA the reality of the situation to stop the brainwashed ignorance that thrives in this country.
Even in Ca I have YEC all around me without going to the bible belt. I have relitives there and you really cant even converse with them at all, unless its mythology.
That goes back to what I said here:
There was a thread not long ago on teaching logic in high school, in which I wrote about how fundamentally flawed the approach to teaching mathematics to high school students is. In reality, this is true for the entirety of high school (and to a lesser extend, middle school/prep school) education. When the "core curriculum" was developed, most students who finished the final years of education before college went on to college. And college wasn't the key to a good job. That changed with the push to ensure that everybody has access at least up until college and as much as possible to an undergraduate degree. What didn't change, for the most part, was the subject matter. A great deal of what is "required" in high school and college was never intended to be useful for most people, but designed for a subset of the population interested in "higher learning". So we continue to teach subjects, and students continue to memorize (only to forget) enough to pass, instead of teaching them critical thinking and analysis, logic, the scientific method (rather than scientific subjects), how historical events, people, and works, shaped not only their own time but our own, etc.
Ideally, high school should be modeled on an updated version of colleges from the scholastic period and early modern period: approach every subject by
1) tying it in with as many others as possible and
2) with a focus on critical analysis
Alas, this is all just wishful thinking.