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Campus Crusade For Accuracy: California Colleges Resist Fundamentalist Demands
In California, an umbrella group representing fundamentalist schools, which have ill-prepared their students for higher education by teaching them dogma instead of standard academics, is now demanding that those students be admitted to state colleges anyway. Backed by Religious Right attorneys, the Association of Christian Schools International is suing the University of California (UC) system, charging it discriminates against fundamentalist schools. The system does no such thing. In an effort to make certain that students are prepared for college, the University of California system allows public and private secondary schools to submit course outlines in core subjects such as math, science, history, English, foreign language and others. If the courses are adequately taught, they are considered acceptable preparation for an education at any of the 10 schools in the UC system. "If the courses are adequately taught" is the key phrase here. Some of the courses taught in the fundamentalist schools simply don't measure up. Many use textbooks produced by Bob Jones University that are replete with dogma and outright factual errors. One book, American Government for Christian Schools was rejected by the UC system because its content is not consistent with "empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community." (The book elevates "Christian nation" claptrap over actual history.) Another Bob Jones text, Biology for Christian Schools, focuses on creationism. Officials at UC found that the book "is not consistent with the knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community" and tells students that "science is invalid to the extent it conflicts with Christian belief." Students who have been taught that Earth is 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans coexisted are going to be at sea when they enter freshman Biology class at a public university. Unlike many public secondary schools, where teachers are intimidated into downplaying evolution, most biology instructors at the university level teach evolution straight up and without apology. Students had better grasp it if they want to pass the course. Perhaps a compromise can be forged. A university education is important for young people, and it would be a shame if some of these kids were denied one just because their parents enrolled them in a fundamentalist academy. (Some of these teenagers might not have had a say in the matter, after all.) If a student tests below average in math or English but still shows academic promise, he or she can often enter college on a probationary status and take remedial courses to get up to speed. Maybe the UC system needs to look at remedial biology and remedial history for all of those unfortunate young people led astray by Bob Jones University textbooks.
Campus Crusade For Accuracy: California Colleges Resist Fundamentalist Demands | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden)
Campus Crusade For Accuracy: California Colleges Resist Fundamentalist Demands | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden)
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