Reading Time: 3 minutes On May 21, 2022, Pitzer College in Claremont, California – home of the nation’s only Secular Studies Program – featured Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson as its graduation speaker for the Class of 2020. It was a momentous occasion, not only because the Class of 2020—thanks to COVID—had to wait two years for their in-person graduation ceremony, […]
education
Posted inParenting & Family
For which it stands
Reading Time: 8 minutes My son, now 5 years old, was chosen to lead his school in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. As an atheist and a parent, I have mixed feelings about this—especially when he asked me what “under God” means. Why I let him do it despite my misgivings, and how to use the Pledge as a teaching moment in secular parenting philosophy.
Posted inRacial justice
Grove City College’s anti-‘woke’ report contradicts its stated Christian values
Reading Time: 14 minutes Grove City College is your typical conservative Christian college, but I’m not your typical alumna. Unlike my fellow students, I’m an atheist, and I formed this identity inside Grove City’s faith-based Pennsylvania bubble. Since graduating in May of 2018, I’ve done my best to distance myself from the school, breaking my silence only when the […]
Posted inCritical thinking
Scooby-Doo, where are you? Our kids need you more than ever
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a child of the late 80s and early 90s, Saturday morning was a sacred time. Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Scooby-Doo dominated my morning. I filled my mind with useless jokes and colorful fun as Captain Crunch destroyed the roof of my mouth. My father called it the “boob tube,” and was utterly […]
Posted inEducation
Are conservative attacks on teachers changing the future of education?
Reading Time: 2 minutes A new national poll show teachers’ job satisfaction at an all-time low, ith more than half of teachers polled saying they wouldn’t advise their younger selves to take up a career in education. In addition to unprecedented strain from the pandemic, the last few years have been marked with book bans, calls for cameras in […]
Posted inSecularism
Go ahead! Ask any schoolkid to name just one historical heretic
Reading Time: 4 minutes Quick! When in your American schooling up to higher education did you ever learn about the rich, global history of religious skepticism? “Never” is the correct answer. You might have been taught a thin sprinkling of heresy, perhaps, glancing for a moment on the lurid burnings of medieval Christian skeptics by the feared Inquisition, or […]
Posted inAnalysis
Does religion really improve educational outcomes?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Horwitz makes the claim that religiosity is beneficial for working-class young men when it comes to their educational attainment. The claims in the article are clear illustrations of two logical fallacies – faulty generalization and cherry-picking.
Posted inReligious News
UK Catholic priest: teachers are ‘devils’ teaching an ‘abomination’
Reading Time: 12 minutes Controversy has visited a town in the south of England over this last week with a taste of American-style preaching very rare in the chapels, cloisters, and vestibules of traditional English holy buildings. Gosport is a town in Hampshire on the south coast of England that enjoys very little news fame. This week has seen […]
Posted inEducation
Supporting Black teachers under siege
Reading Time: 4 minutes Generations after Black secularist historian and scholar Carter G. Woodson founded what was initially dubbed “Negro History Week,” the continued struggle for Black self-determination in education is an indictment of American democracy. In his new book Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Harvard professor Jarvis Givens argues that “teaching and […]
Posted inPolitics
Missouri Republicans try to ban teaching the American Revolution
Reading Time: 5 minutes Last week Republican lawmakers in Missouri tried to ban the teaching of the American Revolution in public schools. This is not what they thought they were doing, but this is what they did. In House Bill 1474, ostensibly an act designed to integrate a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” into existing legislation governing public schools, they […]