Events | 2010.08.19
Dawkins is wrong: faith schools don't blinker children | Erfana Bora
Kids are bright. We owe it to them to teach all the alternatives of man\'s origins and let them work it out for themselves
Richard Dawkins\'s latest media foray highlights the alleged indoctrination of children into believing in the existence of a God and adhering to a particular creed. He claims this invariably creates individuals who cannot think critically or follow an argument through to its logical conclusion. This is demonstrated, supposedly, by their inability to come to exactly the same conclusion as him with regards to the origins of the universe and of mankind.
Picking out attendance at a faith school per se as the reason a pupil professes to believing in an alternative narrative to the scientific explanation of these events is, I believe, somewhat disingenuous.
From a personal perspective, I have taught secondary-level science to pupils in both state and faith schools. I am careful to teach my kids all the science they are required to know for their age group. They are then equipped with all the knowledge and information they need to both pass their exams and make their own minds up about the origins of the universe.
I make sure pupils are fully aware of the big bang theory, the age of the Earth and the theory of evolution by natural selection, among other topics. They learn about the evidence for these theories that scientists draw from, including redshift , carbon dating and the fossil record. I teach pupils that much of the evidence for these phenomena is compelling.
In my current teaching post at an Islamic faith school, pupils are concurrently taught in Islamic theology lessons that the universe and its contents originate from an omnipotent creator – and the mechanisms for this creative feat are described in some detail in the Qur\'an. They are then also taught that much of what is described in the Qur\'anic verses has been understood and interpreted in various ways by scholars over the ages.
Pupils then do make their own minds up as to what they believe, but only after some issues are hotly discussed. I get the same questions thrown at me year after year: "Did the world really start with a huge explosion?"; "Where did all the \'stuff\' come from in the first place?"; "How did the earliest forms of life come about?"; "Do humans really share a common ancestor with apes?".
The issues surrounding the origin of matter, abiogenesis and anthropogenesis are as relevant to 11-year-olds as they are to research scientists – I find myself explaining that scientific endeavours can provide some robust answers to some of the "how" questions but not the "why" questions – and pupils fill in the gaps themselves. Try telling a child in year seven that the question of where matter comes from is essentially unanswerable and therefore should not be asked. Often the response is "Why not? That\'s stupid".
The funny thing is that pupils in state schools are taught the same curriculum content in science lessons – and ask the very same questions. Pupils with a faith background will learn the lesson content in a state school while holding their own viewpoints – and will then attempt to integrate two worldviews – inevitably reaching differing points of "belief equilibrium", as it were. Pupils in faith schools do exactly the same.
Science is essentially mankind\'s best effort at understanding the workings of the known universe, given our limited resources and intelligence. Learning about science is fun, fantastic and thought-provoking, especially discussions arising around ethical grey areas. However, it is important that children are made aware of the limitations of scientific endeavour lest they be corralled into a realm wherein nothing is worth knowing unless it has been determined by empirical scientific discovery.
If they were encouraged towards that worldview alone, I believe they would be receiving an education devoid of further enrichment from a faith-based narrative. I\'m not in the business of wanting young people bereft of the entire canon of human belief systems. That religions have stood the test of time is testament to the human need for something other than that which we can prove or disprove.
As a teacher, I\'d be doing my pupils a grave disservice if I insisted that the answers that science can give us should be the limit of our understanding of the world. Kids are bright and don\'t need liberating from religion, especially if the alternative is limited to giving credence to atheistic secularism alone. Rather, equip them with all the alternatives and let them work it out for themselves.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ligion-doesnt-blinker-children
