One of the joys of parenting is collecting your child from school on an afternoon, and hearing the news of the day. Last week my son said, "Dad, today we were encouraged to celebrate 'Black history month'."
"That's good" I replied. He continued by describing how in morning assembly, a head-teacher told them that even the students who are not black should celebrate black history month since "As we all know, the garden of Eden was in Africa, and that's where we all came from".
Well, I somehow managed to keep the car on the road as I laughed and tried to digest that little gem. I can think of many really good reasons why we all should study black history and any other kind of history in our fascinating world culture, but justifying it's celebration by using a myth? In a place of learning? Little did I know that more of this irrationality was around the corner.
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| National Marine Mammal Foundation |
Two days later, my son related to me an incident that occurred during his integrated science class. The day's topic was about the sound frequencies that various mammals can hear. My son was curious as to why humans have a different range of hearing to other mammals and asked his science teacher to explain why humans don't hear as well as some other species, his teacher replied "Because god made us that way".
As an atheist, one of my main arguments against religion is that it extinguishes mankind's natural curiosity and desire to explore the cosmos. The basis of science and all our scientific and technological advancements are made possible by simply asking a question, thinking of a potential answer to that question and then testing that answer by experiment and observation. Religion on the other hand demands that we accept dogma, and rewards unquestioning faith. If we accept "Because god made us that way" why should we progress any further?
I explained to my son that humans hear the way we do because we have evolved. If having the ability to hear higher frequencies was crucial to our survival then those tendencies would surface through the process of natural selection.
I went on to suggest (tongue in cheek) that the next time he is unable to answer a question on his science test he should simply write "Because god made it that way" and let's see the reaction of his teacher...
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence" - Richard Dawkins
Ok so I had this same thing happen in an Anatomy class here in NJ...*sigh* the teacher (think he was from Jerusalem) would id all the body parts etc then certain things he would ascribe, quite confidently to "God" I challenged him one day and he was quite shocked seemed like no one ever did or was too uncomfortable to do. People like this have no business teaching or should be told to keep those comments to themselves when teaching Biology for crying out loud. That is the lamest cop-out if ever. And I wonder how these nuts are even teaching. Good installation!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that, Andre! In Barbados at that leading secondary school? ( I am guessing it's the same one you went to. :) How can a science teacher give a ' God made it so' answer to a sincere question from a student about nature? I am glad you highlighted this, it makes me realise how much work we still have to do in our country. People ask what's the harm of religion, well there it is. Your answer to your son's question was brilliant and right on the mark. Even if the teacher didn't know the answer right away he could have encouraged your son to go and investigate it or even make it a class exercise.
ReplyDeleteI would hate to see Barbados or the Caribbean lose out on your great musical talent, but I have to wonder if it won't be worth it for you to put down the sax a while, put on a lab coat and go into school and teach these youngsters a thing or two about how to investigate reality.