Sarah Potter-Smith, a sophomore at Calvary Chapel Christian School, can’t understand why anyone would think that learning any subject from a Christian perspective is inferior to a secular education.
“We learn just as much as the public schools around here do and, actually, we learn more. For example, we have to learn about evolution on top of creationism too,” said the 15-year-old.
Calvary English teacher Shannon Jonker, 26, said the Christian perspective helps students identify the many religious and biblical themes in literature. “We’re reading ‘Frankenstein’ right now, and there are allusions to the creation story,” said Jonker, a 2002 graduate of University of California, Riverside.
The Christian perspective is why people send their children to a Christian school, said Robert Tyler, head of Advocates for Faith and Freedom and Calvary’s lawyer in a controversial case against the University of California system.
In an unprecedented lawsuit that opens yet another front in the nation’s culture wars, an association of Christian schools, including Calvary, charges that the admissions policy at the university unconstitutionally discriminates against them because they teach from a religious perspective.
The case offers a window into the deepening conviction of many conservative Christians that there is hostility to their faith in the public square and particularly in public schools. “This is just another example of what’s happening on a much larger scale,” said Tyler, who maintains that the university is attempting to secularize private Christian education.
The outcome of the suit could affect not only the college plans of thousands of students at California’s some 800 religious high schools but the way curricula are developed and taught at religious secondary schools around the country. The case could go to trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles before the end of the year.
DaveJ – Let me ask you a question in response. Is it right to formally request that government agencies (and state universities act in the name of governments) live up to the Constitution and laws of the government? If the First Amendment guarantees that there will not be government religious discrimination (by not establishing a religion and by permitting the free exercise of religion), then it is wrong for a government run school (such as the University of California) to discriminate against those who attend religious high schools. If the person is otherwise qualified (e.g. scores acceptable on the SAT/ACT etc.), then saying “no” to them because of their high school is discrimination.
I would venture that students in private high schools are better academically prepared for most subjects than students in public schools.
As to why you would want to send you children to a state university, the issue could be quality of the insitution’s academics or it could be financial where the family can’t afford any private institution. Finally, remember that whole “in the world, not of the world” thing.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
I think that a university, even a public university, is entirely within its rights to set its expectations as to the training and education its students should have prior to attending. The lawsuit is a red herring, in my view. I also am highly skeptical of the quality of anything coming from Bob Jones U. I think the plaintiffs would have to show that there’s a systematic discreditation of any materials from any religiously oriented publisher.
If you don’t accept the theory of evolution, or to put it another way, if you believe the world was created 6,000 years ago, then you reject not only the underlying thesis of all biology, but also the principles of geology, palentology, and chemistry (carbon dating) to name just a few. Now, you’re very welcome to do that. But you can’t then apply to a secular school and say you want “credit” in those fields for having followed a course of study that denies their basic theories. That would be like KJS applying to a Catholic seminary for a M.A. in theology and saying she wanted “credit” for work she had done in pan-Druid studies. If these kids want credit for their classes at a secular university they have to take classes consistent with what is being taught at that university. Which of course they absolutely can do and then take SEPARATE courses for which they do not receive credit in creationism or anything else.
Catholic Mom — there are some creationists (probably the most vocal ones) who say that God created the earth in six 24-hour days some 6,000 years ago, following the dates calculated by Bp Ussher a few centuries ago. (He based his calculations on the ages given in the genealogies of Genesis 4 and following — but he was ignorant of the fact that the Hebrew genealogies could skip generations, noting only the most important forebears, rather than an exhaustive list.) However, there are many creationists who do say that the six days of creation are six eras, using “day” in the Hebrew sense of “a period of time.”
Some of us are “old earth creationists.” We take the position that God created the heavens and the earth in the stages noted in Genesis, but not in 24-hour days.
Also, Intelligent Design does not require a brief and recent creation.
Also, Catholic Mom, I didn’t see anything in the article which suggested that the students from these schools are asking for any credit (as they would if they had some parallel to AP courses). They are simply asking for admission based on their application, SAT/ACTs and high school transcript, just like every other potential student who applies. Colleges should not be in the business of refusing students based on their background, except when they are ill-prepared for college level work. The excuses given: that the textbooks don’t meet a consensus of this group of scientists or that group of historians is the purest bunk. No science moves forward via consensus; it moves forward by examination of the facts and data available, and from conclusions that fit the same. It is also foolish to judge a student based on the textbook used for a class. Student A’s school may employ the best textbook in biology in the world, but that doesn’t show anything about how the class ran, what the teacher was like, or how much effort the student put in. Student B may not even have a textbook, but may do tons of field work, outside reading, etc. And now he’s supposed to be excluded from college because a self-selected group have decided who will be in the elite and who won’t? And at a publicly funded institution?
Catholic Mom, I believe you are incorrect. I share your disdain for creationism as a “field of study”, but the truth or falsity of creationism is completely beside the point. As the article points out the students in these school learn the theory of evolution as well. Would you REALLY want to allow public universities to bar students who UNDERSTAND evolution but simply do not BELIEVE it? The same holds true for the other fields of study you say are intrinsicly alligned with evolution. Evolution, as a theory, is a blindingly simple concept. For the purposes of high-school level biology class you’d really only have to read and comprehend about 500 words out of a textbook to “get it” at the high school level. In fact, it’s a given that the vast majority of students entering even elite universities are functionally ignorant in basic science (evolution, chemistry, physics etc…). You’d penalize creationists, not for their ignorance about ONE scientific theory, but for a religious belief that does not relate to 99.999% of what an average college student would need to concern themselves with in order to get a college degree.
You are apparently willing to bar students from public universities based solely on their religious beliefs. You would say they should be denied admittance to study theater, art history, ag science, business or journalism because of their religous beliefs that involves one narrow slice of one field of science.
As a “Catholic Mom” would you be comforable with a decision by a future admissions committee decision that anyone who believes in the physical resurrection of Christ should be barred from admission because that’s scientifically impossible from a secular perspective?
You are right that I mis-used the word “credit.” What I should have said is that students applying for admission to the University are required to have the necessary “pre-work” as preparation and the University reserves the right to judge what work so qualifies. In exactly the same way that a seminary offering an M.A. in theology could state as a requirement that you must have a completed a “rigorous” undergraduate theology program for admission. So you show that you studied Hebrew, Greek, NT hermenuetics, etc. and they accept you. Or you say you sat around and sang “kumbayah” and prayed a lot and they don’t accept you. They are not judging the merits of praying and singing kumbayah, but you don’t have the background required for the program.
Note that I am NOT saying that the case here is precisely the same, but that the University has the right (and responsibility) to define what constitutes a valid preparation for their school. And since they can’t send somebody out to every high school in the United States to check out every course, they define what is a “standard” course and which are “standard” textbooks and if you choose not to teach the standard course and use the standard textbooks, then you don’t qualify.
Every Catholic high school in this country teaches that God exists, that he is the ultimate basis of existence that “through Him all things were made.” But they also teach standard science. With a standard textbook. Hence they are accredited by universities.
BTW, as far as I can see, this involves not only science, but history, and many other courses. Now if you want to go to a Mormon school and learn that the Native Americans are the physical descendents of an ancient Jewish tribe (for which there is no linguistic, anthropological, DNA or any other kind of evidence) you can do so, but when you are applying to college and you put down as a course fulfilling the history requirement “Ancient Semitic Tribes in North America” they are going to say you have not taken a qualified history course.
In this particular case, I would have to know how “unstandard” these courses actually were to decide if the University were right or wrong. Which, of course, I don’t. But the concept that the University has the right to require standardized courses as a pre-req for admission is, IMHO, not an issue.
RE: “They are simply asking for admission based on their application, SAT/ACTs and high school transcript, just like every other potential student who applies.”
That’s the key there — the testing.
Fact is, people [even liberals] put their kids through all sorts of kooky classes — astrology, basket weaving, etc — through home schooling. It’s not only conservatives who home school these days — plenty of people home school who wish to keep their children from the pernicious influence of young capitalists. ; > )
But if a kid is raised taking home schooling classes in, say, alchemy . . . what matters is are they prepared for the academic part of college life. And one can judge that quite easily by SAT scores. I’ve been in numerous secular academic learning environments, and there’s plenty of times when I have inwardly rolled my eyes at their various amusing “insights” and “teachings” . . . but am I able to do the work, is what counts.
And one can do the work, while smiling inwardly at some of the theses of the work, till the cows come home, if one has been well trained.
The real issue is this — some [few, fortunately] secularists in academia don’t like the idea of other people being able to “get away with” not accepting and agreeing with their ideals and foundational worldviews, whether they be deconstruction of literary texts, or Marxist ideals, or postmodern constructions of truth, or Biblical criticism.
It bugs ’em . . . and if they can, they’ll exert their power to prevent those who disagree from achievement or influence.
If the person is otherwise qualified (e.g. scores acceptable on the SAT/ACT etc.), then saying “no†to them because of their high school is discrimination.
They are not saying no based on their high school, they are saying that the program that they completed is not sufficient to count as high school for the purpose of college admission.
The real issue is this—some [few, fortunately] secularists in academia don’t like the idea of other people being able to “get away with†not accepting and agreeing with their ideals and foundational worldviews, whether they be deconstruction of literary texts, or Marxist ideals, or postmodern constructions of truth, or Biblical criticism.
It bugs ‘em . . . and if they can, they’ll exert their power to prevent those who disagree from achievement or influence.
The real issue is that they have not completed a full high school curriculum. The simplest way to prove this is that they are spending time on alternative theories..
Let’s say for example that a college requires 150 hours of science instruction in biology for a high school to meet then requirement. It allows for 100 hours of accepted theory, 20 hours of lab, 30 hours of alternative theories. In a non-traditional high school, one may find that the curriculum, at best, splits its coverage. So they have 65 hours of accepted theory, 20 hours of lab, 65 hours of alternative theories. In that instance, the student falls 35 hours short of science instruction in accepted theories. Now, there may indeed be those students who could ‘ace’ a qualification exam with only 65 hours of science instruction in accepted theories, but they are not meeting the minimum instruction qualifications set by the State College board. This would apply to any alternative to traditional learning/theories. Not just religious or conservative.
Does the student have a valid high school diploma, or it’s equivalent (in Texas, a “GED”)?
Does the student score well on the standard tests (ACT/SAT)?
Those are the only questions a public institution should ask. Given that private school and home school kids generally score better on standardized tests than public school kids, the whole thing comes across as a religious, ideological test, which would violate the constitution.
[blockquote]9. Sarah wrote:
The real issue is this—some [few, fortunately] secularists in academia don’t like the idea of other people being able to “get away with†not accepting and agreeing with their ideals and foundational worldviews, whether they be deconstruction of literary texts, or Marxist ideals, or postmodern constructions of truth, or Biblical criticism. [/blockquote]
This is quite hyperbolic.
First, as Dallasite & Brian mentioned, Colleges are well within their rights to require a minimum amount of instructional content in order to be admitted.
Second, Wait–Wouldn’t the “secularists” want to admit those studious conservatives so they could then insidiously change their hearts and minds?? My point is that this is an imaginary “what if” game that could be played all day with this scenario.
Federal, state and institutional policies prohibit discrimination based on religion. Institutions should not decrease their academic standards to accept folks who haven’t met minimum admission requirements. This smacks of an affirmative action of sorts for conservatives who don’t want to teach & be educated in the canon.
#11-Institutions (good ones anyway) also want to know if the student can think critically. If you give me 4 weeks with an average student, I can prep them so they score better than average on the ACT/SAT. There are tricks. Tests can only measure so much.
In the statements by UC spokespersons (to be PC), they don’t come out and say what is really the cause because they know they would then loose. This statement
[blockquote] because they fail to meet the university’s standards for effectively teaching the required subject matter[/blockquote]
by UC is the key. To them it probably is not effectively taught if there is anything other than the current secular viewpoint. It might also be okay as long as the additional point of view is anything other than Christian.
The summary by the professor from Emory University really tied it all together. I pray that the schools win, as otherwise the liberal secularist viewpoint will predominate and Christianity will once again be marginalized.
BTW, my perspective is that God created the universe some time between 15 and 20 billion years ago and the record in the rocks is correct just not correctly interpreted.
The real question is why anyone would [i]want[/i] to use a book from Bob Jones University Press…
I hope the courts uphold the claim of the students, IF and that is a big IF, the university in question is rejecting students on the basis that the courses in question did not meet THEIR standards, which they have the right to do, I suppose, but to me they are adopting the wrong standards. SAT’s and the like have been devised to determine as best as is humanly possible the capacity of high school students to do college level work. To me it is pure prejudice on the part of a college to reject a student for what he passed in high school, because the college feels the student passed a course that is unacceptable in their thought process. Evolution (not Darwinism) can be true or false depending on whether you consider it to be scientific law following the theories of Mendel and De Vries et al. or to be the very unscientific evolution by observation as set forth by Darwin.
Likewise, Creationism that tries to set forth laws of dubious worth simply because it “comes from the Bible†and doesn’t look at the broader aspect of Creation as all things began at a point in time, albeit an uncertain specific date. Hawking’s “Big Bang†theory is now accepted in most of the Scientific Community as objective enough that it neither rejects a Creator (how else could something come from nothing?) nor disputes the Evolution theories of Mendel, De Vries, and others.
High School exists to learn facts and to develop skills to solve basic problems. College is or should be designed to teach students to think inside and outside a box. SAT scores can point to that far better than attention to HS courses the student took.
Too much of college level academia has moved past teaching young men and women to think and discover, to teaching them only what some academics believe. Both sides, from Bob Jones University to this college are indoctrination centers, not places of free will learning.
My plant physiology professor told us in class that he could prove a theory a thousand times, but it need be proved false only one time.
#16-Why require high school at all then? Why not just require a test score?
I went to a tiny church-run fundamentalist Christian school. The entire 12 years. The school was unaccredited. I was taught the literal 6 day 6000 year ago creation theory. The university I applied to was baffled by my transcript. They had never encountered one like it. But luckily I had taken the ACT and had simply brilliant results. Based mainly on those scores I was admitted- but starting out on academic probation. I graduated 4 years later summa cum laude with a Biology major and Chemistry minor. I think Sarah is correct that taking ACT/SAT is crucial. I don’t know why any college would turn down a student with high ACT/SAT scores because of the high school they went to.
#17. That’s what home schooling is all about. True, there is some oversight, but basically the parents make the decisions. And it works great. A neighbor’s boy was left handed and held his pencil so he wrote top down instead of the way we write right handed. His teacher refused any paper done in class with him writing that way. He was kicked out of school and was home-schooled for over a year and had a great SAT score.
One of my sons wrote that way, but we sent both of them to private schools where it didn’t matter.
If you read to the bottom of the article you will find that any student in a course that does not meet standards can qualify by taking and passing a SATII subject test.
College can (and should) maintain standards for adequate preparation for admission. There is nothing discriminatory about this, and it applies to courses from all kinds of schools, not just religious ones
My daughter graduated from an RC High School here in Los Angeles.
For her sins, she took Latin for 4 years while there, doing quite well.
She applied to and was accepted by an RC college here in Los Angeles, Mount St Mary’s College. To her surprise, the college would not accept her 4 years of Latin as their 2 year language requirement. Bit jarring that decision, but never mind.
Colleges do and should get to say, that this or that course you took doesn’t count insofar as meeting our admission requirements.
BUT, a college cannot refuse to accept the student’s entire HS CV (SAT/ACT scores, HS transcript & all the other supporting document fluff required today) simply because of the existance in that CV of courses the college does not recognize.
Even less can a government institution such as the UC system, funded by CA taxpayers, move into suppression of constitutional rights of freedom of religion of California citizens.
Is it a good policy for the UC, to reject as good candidates for admission, graduates of Christian high schools due to religious content of some of their classes? If this policy is allowed to stand, how can it be argued that it is not a government restriction on the free exercise of religion?
Does anyone out there, believe that this same policy would be applied by the UC toward Muslim applicants with a Madrassa background?
NO? I thought not.
Another thing that has been left unsaid is the likely difference in teacher quality. Whereas you know that your public school teachers are likely to be considered highly qualified in their discipline, homeschool & private school teachers may or may not be. Also, the article doesn’t say whether or not the school was accredited—I bet it wasn’t. The accreditation process would have suggested curricular changes to bring them into the mainstream.
#22, when you say: “Also, the article doesn’t say whether or not the school was accredited—I bet it wasn’t” you’ld lose your bet.
1) If the school was not accredited, they would not be a member of the larger association, otherwise they could not be a member. Such associations ONLY have members which are accredited.
2) If the school was not accredited, then the UC would have used that reason for rejection of the applicants, which they have not.
—————
Now, anecdotally, I am a docent (US Civil War reenactor) and we have events all up and down the state of California, such as Sacramento, Fresno, Mariposa, Menifee, where a special school day is put on by the reenactors, the Friday preceding the reenactment.
At those events, schools who know of the event, make the Friday an official school field trip. Both public & private, offer extra credit to their students, providing them with questions and other materials with which the students interact with the reenactors.
Inevitably, it is private school and home schooled kids who show up in numbers far in excess of public school kids, and it is the private and home school kids who:
1) Ask better questions and,
2) Follow up on those questions to flesh them out and,
3) Listen politely to explanations given & most importantly,
4) Show a basic knowledge of the subject matter FAR in excess of that shown by the public school kids.
Yes, this is a snap-shot in time and place but, over the last 10 years as a docent, the inevitable conclusion I reached, is that private and home school kids are more polite, more attentive, show a MUCH better grasp of the subject matter and give a positive feeling that all is not lost with out next generation.
For the UC to take the position that such kids may not be accepted due to a few religion classes in their curriculum, is at best brain dead and at worst, secular prejudice and religious discrimination.