[video=youtube;ulX8nZjeCXE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulX8nZjeCXE [/video] [video=youtube;X3lwa8faV9s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3lwa8faV9s [/video] [video=youtube;LhbSVZ-XK9k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhbSVZ-XK9k [/video] [video=youtube;_KNk6wNQjSU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KNk6wNQjSU[/video]
Here's a response by a youtube user called TheRationalizer: [video=youtube;wmALFDbiIgE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmALFDbiIgE[/video] This documentary is pretty depressing. Religious schools are popping up all over the place and it's as if the students have to make a choice between believing in their religion OR believing in scientific concepts like evolution. I mean there are people out there who try and mix the two. People who call themselves religious and practice their religion but still believe in science. Two questions: Wouldn't it better for the future of the UK to try and get religious leaders and religious teachers to reconcile the two concepts, putting religion and science together? What's the worst case scenario for the future if this does not happen and the level of science taught and learned keeps falling as a result of religious schools taking over?
I attended American public school for many years, but for two years I was able to attend a private Baptist school. Tuition was $60/mo, as the school was subsidized by the church. This was a very fundamentalist church a very rural part of America. White kids weeded fields with Latinos, some of who had been in the country for many generations and others who only came North for the Summer. In the government school in that area, there was a significant problem with basic literacy among children in the 6th grade (11 to 12 yrs of age). Many or most of the kids who could read could only lip read. My own English teacher showed up to school drunk and unwashed on many occasions. The teachers who did do a good job did so in spite of, not because of, the system. Switching to the Baptist school was like jumping ahead three grades. It was an entirely different world. Education mattered. Learning was important. Critical thinking was considered to be a required component of a full life. Kids could read -- and did. Yes, we wasted a lot of time memorizing entire books of the Bible. With a bit of prep time, I could probably quote an entire epistle to you now -- three decades later. We used the King James Version, of course, none of those newfangled eighteenth century bibles for us. And no rock and roll music either, it's a tool of the devil. No school dances either, that could lead to sins of the flesh. The end result? Thinking brought me to Atheism. The Problem The problem is that we in Western Civilization have abandoned education to socialists and as a natural result public schools are a complete failure. The public school system provides little more than thirteen years of babysitting and Marxist indoctrination. Children are raised not as individuals, but as drones. Education and achievement are considered far less important than accepting your role in society. Educational performance falls almost every year. Religious schools are, by any objective standard, doing a better job of educating children than public schools. The students who attend religious schools simply score better on all standardized tests. The same is even true of home schooled children. Government schools are a total failure and attacking the only currently working alternative is similar the the proverbial cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face. The Solution I have a friend who is an Atheist who, with his wife, home schools his children. The public schools, in his affluent neighborhood, are not of acceptable quality. The trouble is that he has great difficulty finding decent teaching material -- because most of the good teaching material is produced by Christians. He is considering sending his children to the Christian school near his home. What is needed are good quality private non-religious schools at reasonable prices. There are almost none of those in existence. We Atheists are smarter than members of any other religion, and yet we are completely failing to provide proper education for our children. We abandon them either to totalitarian socialism or totalitarian religious fundamentalism. We are failing at educating our children and while we are failing it is senseless to attack the Christians -- who are succeeding at educating their children. We would be better off learning from them than condemning them. Once we're learned from them and are doing this right ourselves, then we can condemn them.