Please Sir Can I Teach Nonsense?
So ‘faith schools’ want ‘exemption from new equality laws in order to carry on teaching that homosexuality is a sin’ do they. That’s interesting.
At the moment, many faith schools make children aware of different sexual practices, but underline that anything other than heterosexuality is a sin. In a submission to the unit, the CofE said that it would not wish to discriminate against pupils or parents on grounds of sexual orientation in the context of admissions or in disciplinary procedures. But it insisted that schools should be free to teach that homosexuality is at odds with the Bible.
Thus we see why the realm of education, if it is to be real education, has to be secular. It’s like politics in that way. Because ‘education’ has to mean teaching things that there is good reason to believe are at least approximately true. That means public, sharable reasons have to be given for them, or capable of being given for them. (Yes, even in literature classes. That’s why our teachers always asked for more evidence – quotations – on our papers and exams, remember? They were teaching us to back up our claims.) ‘Teaching’ that homosexuality is a sin doesn’t fit that description. It’s meaningless except in religious terms, hence it’s not teachable except within a religion, hence it’s not education properly understood. Claims that are based purely on faith and nothing else aren’t really education. It’s deceptive advertising to call them education.
But what about morals and values, ‘faith’ fans will squeak. Yes but even morals and values require something more than ‘because god’ if you’re going to teach them to everyone. And if you’re not what is the point? What is the point of parochial group morality? Good morality should be universal and crap morality should be done away with. If ‘because god’ is all you have, you can’t call that education, because it isn’t. Even religious people admit this, often defensively – they often say ‘yes but we do give reasons, we don’t just say “because God said so” and leave it at that’ – but then ‘because God’ is superfluous. It’s one or the other, and either way it’s out of place in education. ‘Because god’ is either superfluous because there are other (public, valid, groundable) reasons, or wrong and bad because there aren’t. There is no moral truth-claim that can adduce no secular public reasons but is nevertheless valid and convincing. Demands for the right to teach false and discriminatory nonsense make a mockery of the word ‘teach.’
Ah, but Ophelia, these aren’t merely beliefs. These are Deeply Held Beliefs.
Quite another matter.
Does that mean we can hold the people who teach them underwater, as long as they are Deeply Held?
Ah. Ah, I say. You will note that the word ‘belief’ does not appear in that N&C, and I don’t think it appears in the article, either. (That article is very carefully worded. It avoids many predictable moves.) They’re not demanding an exemption for their ‘belief,’ they’re demanding an exemption to teach something. Belief is one thing and teaching is another. They appear to want to teach that it is a fact of some sort that homosexuality is a sin, not merely that Christians choose to believe that it is. This is precisely the problem.
Having said that, however, I would indeed enjoy Deeply Holding the people who teach them underwater.
If I read the article correctly, C of E schools want to be certain that they can teach that “homosexuality is at odds with the Bible.” Episcopalian Bishop Spong and others have shown that this is a misunderstanding of what the Bible is about. Spong wrote an official advisory statement to the Lambeth Conference explaining this. Nonetheless, I think that schools should be allowed to teach about the implications for their students’ understanding of what the Bible’s various texts are, of interpretations of the Bible that assert that homosexuality is a sin. They should also be allowed to teach that eating crayfish is at odds with the Bible. Et cetera. What they should not be allowed to do is teach that anti-homosexual discrimination is consistent with modern law regarding human rights, or to teach that their skewed view of the Bible allows them to break the law.
This actually arose at my daughter’s school when she was in year ten. The RE teacher informed them that homosexuality was abhorent to God and a ticket to hell.
My daughter and some of her friends objected that certainly dozens, perhaps a hundred or more students at the school were either gay or dealing with their sexuality and it was inappropriate for a teacher to lay that on them.
The teacher responded that she had no personal animosity towards gays, and felt sorry for their inevitable fate, but that was how God felt and it was her duty to inform her students of the fact. She had picked the wrong bunch of kids. They ran her ragged.
I had no part in it other than directing my daughter to a few useful sources. The teacher in question transferred shortly afterwards but not directly due to that. My daughter was genuinely puzzled because, ‘Other than that, she was really nice.’
Wow, good for your daughter. Props to her and her friends.
I think the problem is between the two possibilities Jeremy mentions. Teaching about various understandings of the Bible, as sociology or historical or literary study of the Bible or similar, is okay although no doubt very tricky, not to say a minefield. But what I maintain, along with Don’s daughter and her friends and (one hopes) a lot of other people, is that teaching that homosexuality is a sin is not okay, independent of discussion of law. It’s explicitly the ‘homosexuality is a sin’ part that I am saying should not be taught.
I agree it shouldn’t be taught. But how do you draw the line between beliefs that can be taught as beliefs and beliefs that can’t be taught, even as beliefs in an RE class?
And of course it depends on how it’s taught. If it taught flatly with questions encouraged then that could be good. But if it’s taught as sacred then of course not.
By the way, I take “RE” as a UK concept and so think that the incident happened in a UK school, which is mind-boggling! What age group, if you don’t mind my asking?
Framing, I suppose. As one does frame discussions of beliefs, customs, cultures, etc. ‘This is something that some people believe’ or say or do. But the article said the CofE wanted to teach the unframed version.
Juan,
Year ten is age 15-16. RE is usually comparative religion, with a basic philosophy module. To be fair to a pretty good school, this was not typical.
The teacher in question moved to an ‘academy’ where no doubt her career flourishes.
I don’t know if the C of E should pay too much attention to God re sexual morality. That Mary case ( the unfortunate rape/adultery with the gross family resonances) shows that God’s opinion about sex is much like that of the John Huston character in Chinatown: “… most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of… anything!”
The sado dom parts of Hosea, too, are rather … well, indicative. And Ezekial. A cry for help, even. I’m very sympathetic, but let’s face it: we are not dealing with a well deity.
I’d suggest consulting other sexologists.
cackle
Good one, roger.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of thing lately, because it’s so ubiquitous…religious people demanding respect for their beliefs, even though the beliefs are unverifiable, subjective or just flat wrong. To boot, they’re constantly talking about their need to exercise rights that effectively take away the rights of others, in this case the rights of students to receive real sex education and the rights of homosexuals not be taunted and abused by those who didn’t receive real sex education.
It amounts to asking for tolerance for intolerance, just as it does with so many other issues in which religious zealots seek to impose their own shaky values and beliefs on everyone. I’m writing an article about this phenomenon now, and about how religous people seem to have completely inverted the very idea of tolerance for their own purposes. Tolerance used to mean acceptance of the fact that others may disagree with you. Now it’s starting to imply exempting all “deeply held” beliefs from scrutiny, especially if they’re religious. It’s beginning to mean a blanket submission to the beliefs of others.
Phil