Last week, an 8th grade class in St. George began the day with this excerpt on the board………. Kudos to the student who took these photos and shared them with her mom! Please note this is not Common Core, just the secular humanism religion that is allowed in our public schools.
Context is important. What was the lesson about? Who wrote this and why? What other materials were presented?
There is no taking this out of context. This is a “Self-Start.” That means when you as a student enter class, you are to get out your class writing journal and write according to what is displayed on the board (in this case, a Promethian Board). This is a blatant attempt at introducing youth to flirtations of abandoning their belief in The Almighty. It is a fact that youth are extremely susceptible to adults whom they trust messing with their minds. If they don’t have a good relationship with either parent at the moment of this moral invasion, their support system is lost and they are left to themselves and their own limited wisdom and understanding. The teacher who engages students in this know there are a certain number of students whose religious beliefs and moral pillars could eventually shatter as a direct result of this type of “teaching.”
A self-start is often an anticipatory set; it gets kids thinking about the topic for the day. If the topic is a comparison of religious beliefs or the works of a variety of authors, this might have a place. My questions about context stand. In order to truly be inoculated against falsehood, you have to encounter it at some point and learn to think critically about it.
Vincent, this is the whole problem with the so called “critical thinking” movement. By design, it isn’t meant to produce critical thinking as altruists think it means. It’s meant to make children think critically about what they’ve been taught at home and church. You can see many quotes about this here:
http://www.utahsrepublic.org/prominent-educators-vs-religious-leaders/
In this particular case the example given clearly does not give opportunity to debate the existence of God, a religious topic forbidden in schools, but assumes that God doesn’t exist as a foregone conclusion and then asks children based on that assumption to make a decision. This is clear indoctrination. It doesn’t get any clearer what the activity is trying to achieve. This is insidious.