Get ready for the usual suspects to get their freak on:
A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.
Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC’s review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts – not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.
Otero’s ruling Friday, which focused on specific courses and texts, followed his decision in March that found no anti-religious bias in the university’s system of reviewing high school classes. Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, a group of Christian schools has appealed Otero’s rulings to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
This one has it all- California, liberal ivory towers, creationism, poor marginalized Christians, home-schooling, and activist judges. Get ready for the freak out, because you know it is coming.
4tehlulz
Why does Bush hate Christians?
Zifnab
So here’s the joke. Who gets to suffer from all this outrage? The schools can blow a few million dollars on lawyers. The taxpayers can subsidize the whole mess to their hearts’ content. If the Christians win, they get to have their kids admitted to a college that will most likely end up re-educating or flunking students with a Biblical world view. If the colleges win, they’ll probably end up hiking up tuition or cutting services to cover the court costs and lawyer fees – so secular folks end up footing the bill for this bitch-fest.
And the real losers, the folks who absolutely get nothing out of this whole affair, are those poor dumb high schoolers who spent 4 years of their lives busting their humps buried eyeballs deep in textbook after textbook just to learn a whole bunch of information that has no real world application and will serve as a massive handy cap in securing a college degree and eventually a job.
Epic. Fail.
Halteclere
Whooo hooo!
This will be fun to watch. Can we get Bob Costas to provide commentary?
Ripley
There’s an easy solution – outlaw Xian High Schools. Hell, by the time you’re 14 or 15, aren’t you ready to move into the real world? Coddling these kids until they’re 18 leaves them unprepared, as this case shows, to function in normal Society.
Big E
pray for rain….
Marshall
This is about “course credit.” In my educational experience, schools will deny course credit for all sorts of reasons (or, my favorite, allow the credit, but not have it count for graduation).
I think that this is the first step in the true education of a bunch of kids.
cleek
we should make it illegal to teach religion to anyone under 18.
D0n Camillo
And the appeal is going to be heard in San Francisco. Rapture!
Dennis - SGMM
Like most of us, I have found myself occasionally working with committed Christians. They were the ones who ate lunch alone.
Punchy
Just wait until those kids get into college anyways, fail Biology 101, then have the parents sue (again) for (again) “religous persecution”.
Just watch. Give it 2 years. My bro-in-law prof said it’s not an “if”, but “when”.
Joshua Norton
It would seem only logical. Since the UC system has to turn away thousands of qualified students every year, I should being ignorant should be at the top of the list of things that won’t get you admitted. Every time you didn’t know an answer (which would be most of the time), all you would have to say is “God did it”. It’s better than joining those heathen study groups.
The Moar You Know
This is just an attempt to start the weeding out process earlier in the game. These poor kids, brought up in an environment like this, don’t have a chance of success in the real world – I’ve worked with enough of them to know. The best case scenario is that they are mediocre workers who, as Dennis said, eat lunch alone. At worst, they can’t cut it in any secular work environment – these denizens of the deep end usually end up costing their employers a substantial amount of money from lawsuits related to prostelization. They either sue an employer who won’t allow it, or one of their co-workers ends up suing the employer because the deranged fundie won’t shut up.
We won’t even talk about how much fail these guys generate in a work environment that relies on the employment of actual science.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’ve heard that the US Dept. of Justice might have some positions open.
dbrown
Hey, the fundamentalist believe the planet Mars does not exist since it is not mentioned in the bible (nor any of the others) – so when asked how many planets there are they can truthfully answer none (since the Earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun goes around it.)
Of course, I can’t recall that numbers are mentioned in the bible … did God ever say let there be ‘One’, and it is followed by ‘Two’ and so on? Of course money, all the important qualities of real christians are talked about like killing, hatred, money, and slavery are all talked about but not a word on abortion – strange.
Joshua Norton
Of course it’s “when”. The right wing, abetted by the bible thumpers has been trying to destroy public education for a long time now.
Walker
This is a no-win battle for the Christian right; they need to give this up. The only way they can win this is by having public support for universities declared unconstitutional — an outcome no one wants. Otherwise, the university must have control over its academic curriculum.
They won the battle for extra-curricular tolerance (rightly so), but somehow they are deluded that they can win the curricular battle as well.
Face
Why do these chumps want to go to college? After 18 years of home-school, what’s 4 more?
An aside — how the fuck do parents home-school high school? Are you telling me one mother remembers/knows ALL high school algerbra, calc, geo, trig, chemistry, biology, creative writing, is a swim coach, track coach, understands how to teach French, Spanish, and Italian, while allowing their son to flirt with the dog and ask his sister out on Prom, which consists of a fancy dinner in the basement?
No fucking way. I dont get it.
The Moar You Know
Please. This has been their goal from day one, and it’s not just universities they’re interested in shutting down, it’s all public education.
pharniel
because the rest of the world is falling into hell faster than dresses at the prom, and only protecting your little ones from anything that might taint thier poor little souls will keep them pure and ready for the rapture.
les
There’s a thriving home-school industry, especially for xians–but secular types as well. They offer curricula, books, organize social and sports events, etc. The books and curricula for the courses UC refuses to recognize are widely used by home-schoolers, as well as the xian high schools that brought the suit.
Josh
Like John said, it’s not about actually accomplishing anything (i.e. compelling the UC system to accept junk science), but rather all about the fauxtrage (i.e. keep the rubes frothing in perpetual fear and loathing at liberals, atheists, judges, San Francisco, etc.).
jrg
This is all a result of treating religion with more reverence than it deserves.
Polite society bites it’s tongue when these morons declare that they alone are privy to the true desires of Jeebus. It should come as no surprise that christianists think they know better than people who actually dedicate their lives to science… We give these people inch after inch – it’s no surprise they took a mile.
Jeebus freaks know more about everything… They know more about how others should raise a family; they know more about how people should form relationships; they know more about how to reduce teen pregnancy; and they know that “God did it” is the only hypothesis we need to explain the universe and everything in it.
Here’s an idea… If these morons are angry about not getting college credit for “Advanced Christianist Voodoo Bullsh*t 101”, why don’t they just use their hard-earned knowledge of God’s will to find a job in the private sector?
We need to stop coddling these people. They’re destroying their own communities with ignorance and superstition, now they want to suck off the public’s tit to spread their nonsense? Let them sleep in the bed they made – stop sending these people freebies and federal pork… Let them pray for food and jobs; they’re going to blame us for their failures regardless.
Michael G
To steal an idea from Colbert, why don’t these parents just start home-colleging their children, too?
Brother Flaming Taser of Warm Reason
Another reason I love my state.
We should change our motto to “Not as batshit crazy as the rest of you”.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
For some strange reason the Jesuit fathers don’t seem to have this problem (education and religion not mixing).
I think it may have more to do with a specifically American strain of bumf*ck ignorance and damn proud of it too!
Kirk
Moar,
As les said, there’s a thriving home-school industry. Having had to home-school my daughter for a year, I’ll add to that. First, not all the industry is fundie.
Second, fundie or not, they KNOW that while some of the parents will be highly educated, most of their customers are not going to be multi-disciplinarians. So they write in a fashion that’s meant to help both the teacher and the student. In fact, I’ll plug that a little harder. If there’s a subject on which you’re fuzzy and you can afford it, these are outstanding tools. Just – don’t get biology from one of the fundie supporters (for example).
Third, the homeschoolers cheat where they can. They form cooperatives. And again, it has benefits. Very small class size taught by a subject matter expert (or at least high-knowledge, relatively) with a vested interest in their success (at least one of the students is the teacher’s child).
Fourth… ok, this one’s indirect. I spent some time some time back trying to identify “what makes a good school good.” Informal study using some qualitive analysis techniques of a wide variety of schools. While money and class size and such do have an impact, I found there was one factor that stood out. That was parental involvement. If the parents are involved in their children’s education – even if it’s just a handful of hours of volunteering in the district every semester – the students’ academic performance is greater. (As an aside: If the informal result is accurate, it creates an explanation beyond genetics for why higher income areas produce higher academic performance as a rule — it’s more likely one or both parents CAN be involved if they’re not both having to work 60+ hours a week.)
The point is that homeschooling requires parental involvement. Which also, in my opinion, explains why the average performance of homeschoolers on standardized tests is better than the average of those in formal schools – public or private. (Average, folks. And with glaring examples in certain obvious areas.)
Joe Max
The point of which is to keep the cash donations pouring in, so these creationism clowns can continue to avoid honest work.
Crusty Dem
I remember when republicans would openly laugh at these Christianists (to use the rather apt Andrew Sullivan terminology). Now they’ve not only accepted the mutters, they’ve become them. It’ll be a happy day for America when her politicians don’t look to Genesis for science policy, Leviticus for social policy, and Revelations for foreign policy.
binzinerator
Because they really want their science-ignorant kids to obtain degrees with the same value and reputation as real degreees from a real university. They can’t get that with a do-it-yourself degree from Homeschool U.
At the heart of it is that they want the the nonsense science of their religious beliefs to be accepted as equivalent with real science.
It’s absolutely foolish to want the legitimacy and value of a real degree while insisting on things that destroy that legitimacy and value. But logic, critical thinking and common sense are among those things that these people lack and still want to be given credit for.
Naturally, they will insist that major universities who refuse their moronic nonsense are oppressing them and discriminating against them.
Ah yes. People who insist on their own ignorance are victims of discrimination in our educational system.
We can extend that out to all college students who bomb in their classes. It isn’t they are mediocre students or aren’t ready for college or partied too much or — gasp — just lack any aptitude for it. No sir! Their inability to demonstrate basic competence in learning and understanding key areas of human knowledge must be rewarded with the same degree as those who can and who do excel. Because to fail them is discrimination!
dbrown
Don’t mix up Protestant fundamentalist and Catholicism – the two religions have VERY different takes on science. The religion that attacked Galileo and banned him now fully supports modern science and even evolution. Protestants in the US, mainly the Baptist and more evangelical groups take the bible literally in all respects and reject evolution and much of science.
Napoleon
Thank God I went to a Catholic school where they taught us about evolution.
By the way in the last week I just started reading the book “Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters” and so far it is a pretty good take down against creationism. I will mention one interesting fact in it, apparently the creationist were able to slip a person into Harvard’s paleontology program (when Jay Stephan Gould was alive) and Gould apparently let him stay and some thought that he figured that creationist would see the light of day, but instead he has just used his degree against the theory of evolution.
The Google is your friend, this is the guy:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/313.asp
dbrown
Followed your link and (C)unt Wise claims that the eye of the trilobite is the best optical system of any living creature … his proof, he says so.
Of course, these creatures have been missing for a few hundred million years so it is impossible to really know much about the real lens (current stone fossils aren’t the best copy of organic lens, so realy, except for shape we would know about zero on its optical quality) so his spew is more shit than fact but hey, he has PhD on his name and that puts him one up on God.
Martin
Well, I’ll disclose that I’m somewhat involved in this.
This isn’t anything new, mind you. The UC has been denying course credit for quite some time, and strongly affirmed it’s right to do so after the Kansas legislature made their move some years ago. It has nothing specifically to do with religion, instead students are reasonably expected to have met a given set of outcomes of a course to receive credit for it. That includes little things like actually passing the course, too. If your university offers a first semester course on calculus and fails to cover integration, UC will reject it just as easily. If you offer an evolution course and have the kids pray before each class but cover the necessary elements, UC will take the course.
UC will win this and won’t back down on it. UC has asserted for, well, forever that it has the right to determine its own academic standards. That’s nothing new or unique.
The fight in CA is going to get a lot nastier because in addition to the UC continuing to put its foot down on this issue, the recent home school ruling that says that home school teachers must be credentialed is seen as an even more aggressive assault by the religious folks. I can say with some authority that there is massive variation among home school students. Some are simply outstanding, some are so deficient that it’s hard to fathom. But the religious groups are seeing it as a two-pronged attack: denying them the right to home-school and then denying the courses that they take at private religious school. The parents are pissed because they claim that this is a big surprise, but it really isn’t. UC works with all accredited public schools. The system runs workshops for HS counselors and administrators to understand exactly what the system (and CalState) expects. This information is published for anyone to see and if they worked at least somewhat with the public schools they would know this.
What’s interesting is that after having rejected public schools for 13 years that they then turn and wonder why public schools are rejecting them. There are plenty of private colleges to attend and most small privates are in need of students. What they aren’t saying is that a lot of the private universities – even those that are church affiliated are rejecting exactly the same courses as UC, but suing some small private university won’t get them the persecution headlines that they crave.
John PM
Neither do the Dominicans. In my senior year of high school, our required religion class was titled History of Catholicism, and actually discussed the history of the Church. It was taught by a woman who was not a nun. Also, during my Speech class my sophomore year, I gave a speech with the premise that the National Endowment for the Arts should be supported, which included references to the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano (sp ?). Not an eye was batted.
Walker
Before I sold out and went to Big and Famous ™ university, I was faculty at a small Catholic college. We got a lot of home school students. The interesting thing about home school students is that they are very bimodal. Either it is over-protective parents sheltering their little ones from the world, or it was over-educated (e.g. PhDs) parents who thought (correctly) that they could do a better job than the crappy school system where they lived.
Students of the latter type were awesome — much better than your traditional public school fare. We actively sought them out.
Walker
There are always institutions like Pensacola Christian College and George Wythe College.
The problem is finding an accredited institution that puts up with this stuff.
Walker
Having worked at a Catholic university, the issue is the Magisterium, which dictates what can and cannot be taught. For 90% of all material, it is completely hands-off. That is why Catholics think they do not have any of the crazy issues fundamentalists have. For the sciences, they are completely right.
However if you say anything about what the Church believes and/or has believed (even if you are a secular History professor talking about Church politics in the Middle Ages), then the Magesterium kicks in. At many Catholic schools violating the Magisterium is grounds for removal, even if you are tenured.
Walker
I was curious about this claim, as this appears to be on murkier legal ground (we don’t require students to actually graduate from high school, so why do we require credentialed teachers?). And indeed, it appears that a California court reversed this decision just last week.
ThymeZone
This is why we have courts. This is why wants to simultaneously disempower courts that don’t decide in their favor, and gain control of courts to get them to decide in their power and then empower them to have the very power they tried take away while the tables were turned.
This is why the right cries “don’t let the courts legislate from the bench” when the courts go against them, and then works assiduously to have the courts legislate from the bench when the courts are tilted to the right.
Pay attention. It’s all a shell game and the rubes are only too happy to play along.
ThymeZone
Fuck uneditable posts. “This is why the right wants ….”
Darkrose
Indeed they don’t. Much though I hated the social aspects of high school, I certainly can’t fault my Jesuit education.
When I applied to UC Berkeley, I had to re-calculate my GPA without the religion classes. I grumbled, but only because I got straight A’s in what were some pretty tough classes. I understood the reason, though, so I didn’t bitch too much. Funny how that works.
HumboldtBlue
Actually what happened was the opposite. On August 8th The 9th Circuit court of appeals reversed its decision on this issue, http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10139484?source=most_emailed
HumboldtBlue
On August 8th The 9th Circuit court of appeals reversed its decision on this issue, but that won’t stop the crusade against all public education. It’s quite clear that Republicans want all facets of public life privatized, it’s the only way they can game the system well enough to gain the most benefit for them and their own.
binzinerator
I’ve met 4 adults who had been homeschooled as kids through highschool, and they were all kind of squirrelly. Odd in the sense they just didn’t seem to understand the non-verbal cues and boundaries the rest of us do. I figured it was due to the lack of socialization outside the family.
I think the 2nd worst thing to do children to prepare them for a modern society is to homeschool them for their entire primary and secondary school years. (The worst thing to do is to not educate them at all.)
For the fundies this withdrawl from the modern world is a benefit, as is ensuring their 18-year-olds remain ‘outsiders’ to the culture they will have to live in. If they view the culture they live in (the place we call the real world or modern society) as threatening to their religious beliefs, then the ability to limit contact with those threatening ideas and influences is appealing.
(BTW, sure I may have met dozens of peole who were homeschooled and not have noticed anything different about them. But I can tell you when that squirrelly-ness is there, it’s a good guess that they’ve been homeschooled all their childhood. The last one of those adults I referred to, I noticed that oddness and said to myself, bet this guy was homeschooled. I asked him — and yup, got it in one.)
jbarntt
This one has it all- California, liberal ivory towers, creationism, poor marginalized Christians, home-schooling, and activist judges. Get ready for the freak out, because you know it is coming.
Oh my God, John Cole is upset with how he thinks Christians will respond as he expects Christians to do so. So what if they do ?
Who cares ? Epicycles within epicycles.
But why worry, our black robed overlords have ruled, so all is well. Cole should welcome our overlords, as I do. They are superior beings, and know what is best for us.
Xenos
If the fool understood anything about evolution, he would realize that if the trilobite indeed had the best optical system of any living creature, it would not disprove evolutionary theory.
This profound ignorance is common with fundies. They are attacking straw men, always. This is why it is important to treat them with withering contempt – they do not argue from a position of honesty. They do not even understand American cultural and political history, and their biblical exegesis is beyond fraudulent.
grandpajohn
One thing I note here, the discussion is actually conflating 2 distinct modes of education in to one general topic,Home schooling in itself is NOT as some have noted here a direct offspring of fundamentalism. In my experiences, most fundamentalist do not home school at least here in the south where i live, but rather they form private christian schools for the purpose of educating? their children. And as some have noted there is a big homeschooling support business out there and it does a pretty good job when kept secular
I suspect that most of the course units questioned here were courses taught in these private christian schools rather than courses that were taught by home schooling, not to say that none of them were from home schooling but that the majority probably were not.