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And this is a school run by evil Pearson who controls all the textbooks, so that's a bit of a comfort even as America's educational standards slip down the tubes.
Yeah it's not a point for science if the science teacher has to apologize for teaching science
we understand this is a very sensitive topic
Ya wot m8?
In the American Dystopia factual things are upsetting to some people on the basis of conflicting with their preferred fictions. They are, unfortunately, numerous enough that the sane people here don't always have the time or energy to argue with those who actively refuse to see reason.
Deeply depressing that this email even has to be written.
Yeah, it is only a sensitive topic because bigots overreact.
And why are we coddling bigots again
Because they are in charge.
Well yeah, but not good enough, and we should be more vocal about it before our right to speech is eroded
Love their phrasing. Really makes it difficult for anyone to object without sounding like a complete asshole.
And it's just a little bit passive-aggressive, which I appreciate.
It's well written message. What they did there was to not be an asshole in the first place. Respect pays off.
'Last Thursdayism' is the key to ending the squabble on evolution vs creation.
Sure, Earth is a thousand years old or some shit; but you see, god is super sneaky, and made billions+ year long backstory for his fresh creation, so on day 1 the earth has topsoil, fossils, oil, critters in all stages of life including old cranky ones that still remember their childhood (which never took place, you see - that was pre-existence, but to the individual critter, pre and post creation of everything are indistinguishable.
Boom. Evolution is now compatible with creationism, we can stop bashing heads over that one now.
god is super sneaky, and made billions+ year long backstory for his fresh creation,
Now I can't get this mental image of God sitting there with a typewriter writing incredibly detailed Earth fanfics long before he actually made anything.
Not the Christian God, he just filled out a DND character sheet. Under the character info he wrote "Looks old as fuck, but is actually really young". And then in a different color pencil, kind of squeezed in sideways along the edge with an arrow that points back to the original sentence in a second line, "Full of random shit that could only be there if actually super super old!"
He will then use that sentence to explain away why he always seems to "know" something that could only be known if he was truly ancient.
Edit:
Chatgpt was actually able to make an image I asked for without telling me it violated its rules, and at the same time looking something like what I asked for, what a miracle...
It would be easier just to set the rules and let everything play out. It's a shame he wasn't smart enough to think of that one.
Hell, when I was in Catholic high school, there was a world religions class, and we learned all sorts of stuff about all sorts of religions, without any snark or derision or sense of superiority. I still remember that there's an eightfold path to union with Buddha, though I don't remember any of the steps on that path.
I was even the "resident non-believer" in class discussions, and I only felt a little twinge of weirdness from other students (but not the teacher). I was already an outsider so I didn't care. I suppose Catholic school isn't as bad as generic Christian (read: evangelical) school.
Extremely case by case
Yup, I also went through Catholic grade school and received my first F in anything in the third grade. It was because I had a grievance with the way my ancient nun of a teacher explained heaven. I kept asking her about how the other ideas of heaven (nirvana/valhalla/ whatever else I had heard of be age 8) couldn't all be the same place just viewed through other languages/cultures. She ended up slapping me and giving me a failing grade in religion.
I have continued to fail at religion as a lifelong practice. She helped cement some contrarianism in me to the point where I actually read the whole bible by 6th grade so as to be better prepared for debates.
Yeah. My grandmother sent my father to a Catholic school in part for the cult indoctrination... at least she has enough sense to be appalled about that specific school being one of the Catholic facilities involved in their child rape scandals at the time he was attending.
It's only a sensitive topic if you're on that gamma bronze age peasant whineset
They could snark it up a bit by adding a disclaimer that some of the geology evidence will require teaching the earth is globe-shaped.
Looks like a pretty bog-standard notice whenever evolution gets taught, at least in all my classes. Really shouldn't have anything to do with religion vs atheism.
It's stupid that such a disclaimer needs to be sent at all.
While I understand it is necessary to send out this kind of message, it is an example of coddling bigots and terrible people to avoid conflict.
Which is sadly something you kinda have to do a lot of in the world of education if you want to keep a position of being able to teach. Ironically, it probably wouldn't be a real issue if the US had a more robust education system and understood the nuance of this stuff better
Not standard in the U.S. at all.
Must be a local or cultural thing then. Because it very much was standard everywhere I've been to school in the US, so much so that I actually notice when there isn't a disclaimer. Bet we could draw an interesting map here that roughly mirrors the political and/ or religious distribution throughout the states.
May I ask which state, or at least which region, you're talking about?
I mostly went to school in Colorado and California, but I think more important is I pretty much always went to school in conservatively rural towns of fairly liberal areas where the lines between politics or religion get kinda blurred with little pockets of extremism. Logically, those areas would probably have enough people squawking about science to warrant a message like this, but not enough to influence the broadly standardized curriculum.
I am in Indiana and it is technically an Indiana public school because the teachers are accredited here, but it is actually a national thing owned by Pearson. Basically an online charter school. But maybe they just send that out in Indiana?
Raised in a religious community, the closest we got in our high school was Earth Science and Biology (this one was taught by a christian fellow, too). I wasn't exposed to Evolutionary discussion until college.
I had an anti-science argument with my counselor and tried to opt out of Earth Science in my first year. She said "you just have to take it". I was at that stage where I was afraid to challenge my beliefs.
Within the next 4 years, I was agnostic. During college, and through an anthropology class, it was clear I was ill-informed.
At this point, I also wouldn't consider my self "atheist", because the community around it (on Reddit) became it's own sort of religion that spent their days bashing on (primarily) christians. Religion, to me, is no more than parables that teach good morals.
The people on /r/Atheism are coming at things as getting away from oppression and abuse at the hands of religious communities. And they're a small portion of atheists, not really representative of "the community"...which doesn't really exist
Religion, to me, is no more than parables that teach ~~good~~ questionable morals.
Ftfy.
I'd like to see endosymbiosis covered. At this grade level they should have the structure of a cell down, and at least be able to define both chloroplasts and mitochondria. Mitochondrial evolution has continued within our cells and offers some of the strongest evidence, as well a form of evidence they are more likely to experience (23 and me, etc), in the form of genomic testing.
This is obviously a curriculum based on the historical way in which we established the theory of evolution, and while a traditional approach to science (to effectively teach it as historical anecdote), I don't think it's the most engaging. Students in this age range have their eyes roll like giant boulders off a cliff when confronted with the highly dynamic concepts of finches and peas. At the end of the day it's the story of a dude who married his cousin and was fond of plant tropisms. Maybe more interesting when you are a bit more mature.
If you take it from the perspective of endosymbiosis, you get to tell a story of cells attacking or invading other cells, but how evolution didn't stop there. And because evolution didn't stop, that's why and how we know everyone on the planet is related.
It's probably a bit much for eight graders but I've also seen HIV being used as the central teaching element for evolution, about specifically how the virus evades the human immune response system by constantly evolving.
Just because there was some specific order white Europeans discovered some particular concept in, doesn't make it necessarily the best way to teach a concept, nor is it a presentation of the strongest forms of evidence for that concept.
How long until this teacher ends up either behind bars or dangling from a branch?
Well it's an online school, so it would be the former more likely than the latter, but who knows in Trump's America?