Oppression in College Classrooms

Hi Flyer, I think you may well be right and I also think that this problem stems from the way some religious parents behave with their kids. A recent criticism of religion has been that it is wrong to label a child as a "Christian child" or a "Hindu child". Parents tell their child "You are a Christian." without necessarily explaining what that entails. Such a child is going to be poorly prepared to have their vague Christian ideas challenged when they don't even really understand those ideas in the first place.Of course, I can't guarantee that closer examination of Christianity will make it any more robust or palatable... At the other extreme there are those parents who insist upon teaching their kids a lot of things that are going to come under fire in a mainstream educational environment. If you teach your kid nothing but creationism, they're going to get a shock when they hit biology class. If you teach your kid that the Bible is a perfect historical record, they're going to get a shock when they enter a history class, etc. This is simply inevitable. The bottom line is that if you teach your kids stuff that flies in the face of mainstream scholarship, you're setting them up for a fall.Whatever one's beliefs, I think that it has to be a positive thing to focus less on applying religious labels to one another and more on examining individual ideas on their own merit. That is what education is supposed to be about. As for those of... shall we say, unconventional beliefs, they should have the courage in their convictions to tolerate seeing those beliefs challenged.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Hi Meldinoor,Obviously, we are largely in agreement. There's just one area where we are inevitably going to differ; Maybe it's not a shame eh? Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. If parents want to bring up their kids with really shoddy theology, it makes it easier for atheist scum like me to tempt them over to the Dark Side. Whenever I hear creationists say "If evolution is true, the Bible is falsified.", I am half-tempted to reply "Yep. Yep. I agree, if evolution is real, all religion everywhere has been proved false. Yep. Definitely.". All I have to do then is convince them about evolution, which is after all, real, so the facts are going to be pretty much on my side. It may be lousy theology, but forgive me if I don't complain to loudly as Christianity shoots itself in the foot.Don't get me wrong, I recognise that this can be traumatic for the people going through it, but if a person's religious beliefs are so flimsy, are they really such a big loss?Mutate and Survive

Hi Coyote, I know where you're coming from and I agree. The point I'm making here though is that it's a bit rich for parents to complain about their ideas being challenged by educators when they either;a) view religion as merely a rubber stamp to imprint onto their kids, with no serious examination of those claims in the first place, or
b) insist on attaching those religious claims to real-world claims that are known to be false.Parents like that have absolutely no right to complain if their kids find their faith being challenged at college. They only have themselves to blame. Well quite. How exactly does one base an entire field of academic study upon something that can't be observed? I would suggest though that there is such a thing as really shoddy, flimsy theology, poorly thought out theology that collapses like a house of cards as soon as it is pushed. There is also more sophisticated theology. Where we can probably agree is that sophisticated theology does not equate to "good" theology. If anything, the more sophisticated theological arguments are worse, as they weave ever more complex webs for believers to ensnare themselves in.Mutate and Survive