Fear of an Educational Theocracy

One of the reasons I blog is because I sometimes feel like the standards of society are slipping, and that maybe people just aren't as critically "with-it" as they ought to be. Part of that has to do with the media--people can just slip into an entertainment-coma and not even bother to access the real-world, so why should they be in touch with day-to-day events? But another problem is the fairly recent issue brought about in part by cable news and to a larger extent the internet--the ability to self-select one's reality and create an informational "bubble-world".

This self-segregating ability to cherry-pick one's information sources to continuously reinforce one's biases strikes me as being very likely the reason why we see such polarization in our politics. But it concerns me most of all when the self-segregators try to enforce their limitations on the schools. It appears to me that the main goal of an education should concern providing a student with the information and skill-set to critically examine new data and determine how it pertains to them and the world that he/she lives in. It should not be about indoctrinating a child with any faith-based learning.

But this is a battle that is regularly being waged in school-districts all over the US. It's an issue most commonly on display regarding the issue of creationism,
but as of late, it has become more and more clear that history itself is being rewritten to try and accommodate the view that the United States was always a Christian nation.

There is ample reason to believe that this is not in any respect, a solely Christian nation, especially when you consider this nation's founding against the inflammatory religious background of British history for about the two hundred years preceding our revolution, and the actual statements made not long ofter our founding, to the effect of saying the US is "not in any sense, founded in the Christian religion." But is is even more so not a Christian nation when you consider the extent to which we are a nation of immigrants and pilgrims, and a nation of independent-minded individualists. We don't lend ourselves easily to political descriptions--I worry about anyone who thinks we can be pigeon-holed into any religious description.


But that is precisely what some people want to do with our history curriculum--categorize the nation as Christian, and tear down the wall between Church and State. They want to lessen the contributions of people who aren't properly Christian, and talk up the contributions of those who are. In other words, they want to re-write history to make it more religious, to in turn justify a religiously-based present and future.


People act upon what they learn. I fear that a more religiously-biased education will result in more religiously-indoctrinated voters, more religiously-motivated candidates, more religiously-motivated laws, and less actual democracy. I especially think that is true if the understanding of church and state separation is lost.

It's clear to me that the schools are a major front in the battle against theocracy.