Public Schools and the Inevitability of Religious Inequality

[Sanford Levinson]

My first response isn't "that's tough," but, rather, I want to see the
evidence that this incident actually occurred.  To begin with, I'm
suspicious of any story starring a young lad named "Timmy."  (I don't know
if Christianity Today is a particularly reliable source.  Maybe they, like
the New Yorker, are famous for their fact checkers.  But maybe not.)  I also
wonder, in this day and age, about a teacher who would so blithely enter the
thicket of controversy by grading as described.  I recognize that the
incident might have happened.  This is a large country, and we know that
anything that doesn't violate the laws of physics is likely in fact to
happen, at least once, somewhere in the good old U.S. of A.  But until there
is greater specification, mark me down as a skeptic.

Incidentally, what grade would the following answer have received (and
deserved)>:  "Secular scientists say a Big Bang, but what I want to ask them
is who created the material that "banged."  And what accounted for the bang
occurring when it did?  I say that the answer is God, who created the atoms
and who decided, for reasons we can't fathom, to create the Universe through
a Big Bang?"  I take it that a believing Christian would have no trouble
answering in such a way, though a "fundamentalist" presumably might.  But,
then, might not a fundamentalist have trouble passing science in a standard
Catholic or Episcopal high school?

Sandy


>>Just a small anecdote about the continuing struggle for freedom of
>>religion and freedom of thought in public schools. In the current
>>issue of Christianity Today there is a story about 13-year old Timmy
>>who took a science quiz recently. One of the questions asked: "Where
>>did the earth come from?" Timmy answered "God created it." The next
>>day, his quiz came back and Timmy's answer had been marked incorrect
>>and 20 points were subtracted from his grade. It seems the correct
>>answer was The Big Bang.
>>
>>I know some of you will respond, that's tough. This is a science test
>>and Timmy gave a religious answer. But I don't know. This is a
>>speculative question that has no certainly correct answer. By marking
>>Timmy's answer wrong the school is sending a powerful message to an
>>impressionable mind (and one that is being held captive in a
>>government institution to boot). Steve Arons might say that the state
>>is "compelling belief" in the Big Bang theory by insisting that it and
>>only it is the correct answer to a question about the origins of the
>>earth. I might remark that this confirms my belief that the government
>>school monopoly inevitably results in religious inequality. God might
>>say: "Where were you [teacher] when I laid the earth's foundation?"
>>Job 38:4.
>>
>>--
>>                   ----------
>>             Rick Duncan (rduncan at unlinfo.unl.edu)
>>
>>"The rational basis test is a test not an applause track."
>>
>>
>Teresa Stanton Collett
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