Get Informed About Religion
Being a substitute teacher in the public schools, I get to experience a variety of teachers and classrooms in action. I have learned a lot doing this actually, and have refreshed my knowledge of a variety of subjects. However, it seems that whenever a public teacher tackles religion, he or she often get it wrong. I don’t know if it is because religion is untouchable in the public schools, so even teachers never bother learning about it, or if there is another reason. Here are few of the errors I have encountered:
1. What was taught: Martin Luther was standing up for freedom of thought against a Catholic Church that suppressed free thinking.
Reality: Martin Luther was not a proto-first amendment enthusiast. While he opposed Catholic ideas, he had little tolerance for ideas that opposed his own, as Zwingli could tell you.
2. What was taught: Buddhism has the most adherents of all religions.
Reality: Christianity is at the top, with Islam close behind. While this doesn’t tell us anything about the truth of Christianity, the facts show that Christianity is, as of now, the most popular religion worldwide.
3. What was taught: The Koran is just the Bible with the same characters doing a few different things.
Reality: While the Koran and the Bible share many common people and places, the former statement is an inaccurate oversimplification.
4. What was taught: “I don’t see why Christians can’t get along…Catholics have a Mary-centered worship service, Baptists have a Jesus-centered worship service…they’re basically the same!”
Reality: Catholics don’t partake of the body and blood of Mary every week, and last I looked, Mary is mentioned twice at most in your average Catholic Mass, and sometimes, not at all. This teacher is an atheist, and apparently has never set foot inside a Catholic Church.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Yeah, I usually have to correct what A. hears in his middle school social studies class. What is scary is that social studies teachers aren’t even required to have a degree in the field. They can have a generic education degree with no real in depth study of history, economics, geography etc.
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:42 am
Good points. I think part of it is that teachers are required to know so many things (since one teacher teaches History, Psychology, Geography, and Govt for instance) that many lack specific knowledge that students need. As a sub, and as a guest in the classroom, I do my best not to correct the teacher. However, I have talked to teachers afterwards in a non-threatening way.
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:46 am
That last post was mine…still working out this wordpress stuff!
May 5th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
This isn’t a recent development. I’ll never forget my fourth grade teacher (Don’t ask when! Suffice it to say she started teaching in a one-room school in 1918.) saying ” the puritans were called puritans because they wanted to purify the church of all the statues.” Did a good job of mangling history, too.