And this is a school run by evil Pearson who controls all the textbooks, so that’s a bit of a comfort even as America’s educational standards slip down the tubes.
And this is a school run by evil Pearson who controls all the textbooks, so that’s a bit of a comfort even as America’s educational standards slip down the tubes.
The point is this is the teacher saying “it doesn’t matter what you believe, we teach science based on evidence and that’s what your kid is going to learn if they want to pass this class.” It’s not an apology.
It’s a preemptive and unprompted justification, hence its existence implies that the authors believe they need to justify themselves.
I’m not criticizing the authors for it, I’m criticizing the environment that leads the authors to believe they need to justify themselves when teaching Evolution.
Generally people don’t justify themselves unprompted unless they feel there will be some kind of negative impact to themselves if they don’t do it.
So, it’s pretty shit that the teacher feels he or she needs to preemptivelly justify themselves when teaching an area of Science.
I live in a supposedly very Catholic country - Portugal - and teachers don’t go around explaining their actions and justifying themselves for even sex-ed (which touches tabu subjects) much less for Evolution, simply because even if some people disagree with it (very few, I might add), the teachers won’t be affected by any kind of pressure around it as the system is such that it’s not going to be loudmouth non-expert parents that define or change the Education curriculum - the only case of parents trying to block some kids from learning something around here (by forbidding their kids for attending specific classes) ended up with the kids being flunked and stopped from advancing to the next year, the parents suing, the parents losing their lawsuit (so the kids are still a year behind their cohort and still have to take that class in order to advance) and last I check the parents relented because they had no other option. The system simply doesn’t indulge that shit and public opinion is on the side of the system in this.
Yes. Because otherwise religious asshole parents try to get them fired for teaching evolution. Do you really not know that?
I am aware.
What I’m criticizing is the system which lets parents have that power.
The teacher preemptivelly justified him or herself because that’s what they have to do because the system is so shit that teachers have to be subservient to ill-educated fairy-believing morons who have zero expertise in the domain of teaching (or Science, for that matter)
The fault is not in any way form of shape of the teacher, it’s in the AmericanTM Culture and Society - the teachers are as much victims of the Backwards’R’US society as the kids.