Alice Roberts Says Teaching Children Creationism In Schools Is 'Indoctrination'

Teaching pupils about creationism in science lessons is "indoctrination", according to the new president of the Association for Science Education.

Professor Alice Roberts has called for new laws banning all schools, including those in the private sector, from teaching the topic alongside evolution.

The new national curriculum for primary schools, due to be introduced this September, contains a clear requirement for pupils to be taught about evolution.

But the curriculum only applies to state schools, not private schools. Academies and free schools can choose not to follow the national curriculum, although most funding agreements between the Government and these schools say they must teach evolution as "a comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced theory".

In an interview with the Times Educational Supplement (TES), Prof Roberts, who has presented a number of BBC programmes including The Incredible Human Journey and Origins of Us, said: "There should be regulation that prevents all schools, not just state schools, from teaching creationism because it is indoctrination, it is planting ideas into children's heads.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/17/creationism-schools-alice-roberts_n_4618230.html?utm_hp_ref=uk


It is a joke if some schools are getting away with teaching creationism as a science, that is daft as there is no science to back such claims.


I know religious schools do well in this country but to me they should be done away with. Yes Religion should be taught as a subject so people can understand faiths, but religion should really be a personal belief and nothing more!

PhilDidge wrote:

I know religious schools do well in this country but to me they should be done away with.

I don't see what's wrong with parents passing their beliefs onto their children.
If they want their children to go to a religious school then they should have the freedom to do so.

краљица од Хартс wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:

I know religious schools do well in this country but to me they should be done away with.

I don't see what's wrong with parents passing their beliefs onto their children.
If they want their children to go to a religious school then they should have the freedom to do so.

Telling your kids what you believe is fine, of course, but forcing your beliefs on them isn't healthy.

I have no problem with parents passing on their faith to their children, I myself was raised a Catholic and went to an all boys Catholic school which to me they do indoctrinate on religion, which to me is wrong. Religion is a belief, yes it should be taught but a religious school can and is biased to some views which can again indoctrinate people with the wrong view.

PhilDidge wrote:I have no problem with parents passing on their faith to their children, I myself was raised a Catholic and went to an all boys Catholic school which to me they do indoctrinate on religion, which to me is wrong. Religion is a belief, yes it should be taught but a religious school can and is biased to some views which can again indoctrinate people with the wrong view.

Maybe but the true is same of politics and politics seems to love finding it's way into secular schools, doesn't it?

Ben_Reilly wrote:

краљица од Хартс wrote:

I don't see what's wrong with parents passing their beliefs onto their children.
If they want their children to go to a religious school then they should have the freedom to do so.

Telling your kids what you believe is fine, of course, but forcing your beliefs on them isn't healthy.

Forcing your beliefs on them would be punishing them for not believing in what you're trying to force on them.
Having them raised in a religious environment is not forcing your beliefs on them.

краљица од Хартс wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:I have no problem with parents passing on their faith to their children, I myself was raised a Catholic and went to an all boys Catholic school which to me they do indoctrinate on religion, which to me is wrong. Religion is a belief, yes it should be taught but a religious school can and is biased to some views which can again indoctrinate people with the wrong view.

Maybe but the true is same of politics and politics seems to love finding it's way into secular schools, doesn't it?

But is it the same with Politics?

Do we have politically run schools, if we did that would be wrong also in my view, because again a bias occurs. Teaching a subject is one thing, again happy for religion to be taught in fact I think it is necessary, but having an establishment be the teachers in the main can and does lead to a heavy bias on teaching views they hold themselves. It leaves little room for any conflicting views to theirs when it comes to religious thought. A school should be just that, a school, a place of learning!

It's a tough thing to do when you consider that many conservatives call bias even when you just give a bare presentation of facts. I see it on everything from neutral-viewpoint history videos on YouTube videos to straight-down-the-center news reports.

For example, John Green recently posted a video that delved into the many reasons the Cold War ended. A good number of comments accused him of being biased simply because he didn't say that Reagan did it all. Reasonable people know that one person cannot possibly do anything as complicated as ending the Cold War on their own, but no, to these people it was "liberal propaganda."

Again though Ben to be fair your view is biased also to what your views on that event are.

It takes a great teacher to put aside their own views and teach all sides of something.
History for one is mainly points of views witnessed, and yet we can resource these views and gain facts from corroborated works, but history is a continuing view point people have, which to me makes for a better debate, something I know Quill agrees on, even if the views differ at times between us!

I don't know -- I don't think someone who believes Reagan single-handedly ended the Cold War simply has a different view than I do; I know they're wrong, and I don't think lies should be given the same weight as facts simply because some people believe them.

As far as creationism goes, this is about the extent of what I find acceptable to teach kids when you're talking about government-supported schools:

"The scientific community, which is a self-regulating community of individuals professionally committed to finding and objectively interpreting material evidence, does not accept the hypothesis that we or the universe were created.

"There are many who disagree on the basis of their religious beliefs. However, the scientific community does not reach conclusions on the basis of faith or religion, and does not find any argument from the religious community regarding the origin of life and the universe to be persuasive."

Again to some people they may think Reagan did or that some man made myth created the world, they will not see themselves as wrong, you know this Ben, we see it here daily on so many threads. In fact it is a rarity if any do, which to me does take character when people do.  

I agree with all your points on science and religion by the way, as I am an atheist, but I also defend people who are religious from discrimination

Reminds me of that great Sagan quote: “In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

краљица од Хартс wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Telling your kids what you believe is fine, of course, but forcing your beliefs on them isn't healthy.

Forcing your beliefs on them would be punishing them for not believing in what you're trying to force on them.
Having them raised in a religious environment is not forcing your beliefs on them.

Where do you draw the line though? Some would say (and I certainly do) that circumcision amount to mutilating your child- who may grow up not to even share his parents faith. How about a Muslim or Christian having a gay child- is it ok for them to add to that child's difficulties by telling them they are sinful and risk eternal damnation? Is teaching a child about hell really healthy? Sexual repression? The idea of women being submissive to their husbands? It is debatable just how much religion is 'good' and how much could be damaging.

Moving this into schools, it is a whole other level when elements of the education system further push the above ideas on kids, and that should be stopped. There is no reason today why we should have a sectarian system whereby kids of different faiths can be taught separate from all others- and that some not of a faith 'pretend' they are of it just to get their kids to a good school demonstrates how silly the system is.

As for 'creationism' and 'intelligent design'. It is laughable so many give this credibility as a 'science' in the states- I saw a poll the other day on Richard Dawkins' website showing how roughly 1/3 of Americans still don't accept the fact of evolution- this is ludicrous   

Ben_Reilly wrote:Reminds me of that great Sagan quote: “In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

Very much agree on that highlighted Ben

If I ever have kids, I'll teach them to never make their identity out of their opinions. Why do we do that, anyway? We get so caught up in being right that we fight for untenable positions to the point of absurdity, apparently because it's that important to be right all the time, like any of us knows enough to be right all the time.

To me it's more a sign of strength when someone can admit to not knowing all there is to know about a topic and be willing to learn.

краљица од Хартс wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:
I know religious schools do well in this country but to me they should be done away with.

I don't see what's wrong with parents passing their beliefs onto their children.
If they want their children to go to a religious school then they should have the freedom to do so.

  

School curriculums are set by the state.

NOT by the schools..

AND certainly not by the churches...    

IF private schools still want to teach the non-science/anti-science of creationism/"I.D." as a subject in it's own right, then it should be included in their "Religious Studies", and NOT within any Science courses..  

Do you have religious schools in Australia? Because if not, count yourself lucky.

Here's a small list of the utter bullshit millions of American children are taught daily in religious schools, which their parents can enroll them in as an alternative to public education. Some of these schools even get public funding:

3. "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."—America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994...

7. The Great Depression wasn't as bad as the liberals made it sound: "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath…Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots and exaggerated statistics representing the number of unemployed and homeless people in America."—United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996...

10. Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson were a couple of hacks: "[Mark] Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless…Twain's skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel."—Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University, 2001

"Several of [Emily Dickinson's] poems show a presumptuous attitude concerning her eternal destiny and a veiled disrespect for authority in general. Throughout her life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life."—Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University, 2001...

12. Gay people "have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists."—Teacher's Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, 1998-1999, Bob Jones University Press, 1998

"Unlike the "modern math" theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute....A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory." — ABeka.com

Louisiana's publicly funded education system will soon tell some of its luckiest students that the KKK "achieved a certain respectability" by fighting bootleggers; "the majority of slave holders treated their slaves well;" dragons might be real; "dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time," and many other fun facts.

:D   EVERY church and private school imaginable can probably be found somewhere in Oz...

Micks, Anglican, SDA, Mormons, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Hari Krishna, Buddhist, Calathumpian, Jedi Knight, Christian Community..

They're all represented over here.

AND they all have to teach to those standards set by the States; (Australia is still in the midst of setting a national curriculum ~ with our current anti-science PM having just appointed a bible-bashing tobacco executive to head his committee !).    

 

"Bob Jones University" !!!

Sounds suspiciously like it will be similar to the "Pond Institute" [the world centre for cutting-edge R&D into face creams and moisturisers - 'campuses in Switzerland and Sweden; by appointment to cosmetics companies everywhere'..].   

Likewise with the little-known "A Beka Book" book publishing concern. (Is that name in Afrikaans ? Certainly looks like it !).