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 […]
education
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 […]
Posted inReligious News
Are charter schools threatening church-state separation?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Even though Christianity and its value system have long dominated this country’s politics, the separation of church and state was one of America’s founding principles. The founders ensured that there would be no official state religion, a choice with long-lasting effects on the country’s future. As the country industrialized and levels of education increased, Americans […]
Posted inRacial justice
Critical race theory bans are silencing educators
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Republican Party has gone all-in for critical race theory bans. States such as Arizona, Florida, Arkansas, and Iowa have set bans in place, with 14 states passing some form of legislation in 2021. Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia Governor’s race in large part by making race in education a core part of his campaign. […]
Posted inEducation
The freethinking life: Raising critical thinkers, not parrots
Reading Time: 6 minutes I grew up in a freethinking household—at least, where religion was concerned—and that has made all the difference. I know many atheists who grew up in religious homes, whose turn from religion never actually pulled them from religion’s sphere. Many spent the rest of their lives shaping personal identity around the decrial of religious faith. […]
Posted inEducation
If providing vax proof bothers you, you’re showing your ableist privilege
Reading Time: 6 minutes Turns out it’s not just anti-vaxxers getting on my nerves these days, it’s also vaccinated people who are being dangerously ignorant about the world that disabled folks also navigate.
Posted inScience
The good news and bad news about teaching evolution to U.S. middle schoolers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Fighting Creationism isn’t the biggest problem science educators face.