Teaching Christian creationism in history classs

The New York Times has an article today "Talk in Class Turns to God, Setitng off Public Debate on Rights", by Tina Kelly.

Here's the event:

KEARNY, N.J. — Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

Here's the community reaction (this is 10 miles west of New York City):

In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.

Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board ... called for Matthew’s suspension.

On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”

One teacher [said...] “He had the right to say what he said, he was not preaching, and that’s something I’m very much against.”

Here's the legal reaction

“This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. “He’s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that’s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible’s view of creation as well as evolution.”

Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.

Comment: This event looks like an example of the power of perspectives to blind us. It can remind us that communicating with other people is not as easy as we might think. And it makes a clear case that a "neutral point of view" is in the mind of the beholder.

This whole debate illustrates a point about the power of reference frames or perspectives to push explicit assumptions into implicit context, to the point that it's easy to forget that such a fact is even being asserted.

What seems most interesting here is that the community is so immersed in one perspective that the whole neutral point of the debate has shifted: they can't even perceive that an authority figure, with control over grades and college admission, affirming one sect of one religion's viewpoint to a captive audience he has been entrusted with might be a problem, let alone illegal and a violation of the US constitution.

As a consequence, the only motives they can attribute to someone who objects to this are sinister. One resident said "they’re simply looking for a payout and to make a name for themselves." The result is a major conflict, with threats of violence and even a death threat against the student who objected.

This seems to me a microcosm of part of the problems the US has in the Middle East where many people can't comprehend why their "neutral" actions are perceived as "hostile" or "objectionable."

I can't find the quote, but the idea is relevant: "It's not what we don't know that's the problem, it's what we think we know that we don't."

The action conclusion, or take-away message, is that it is hard to tell whether you are "doing anything" and therefore it's hard to tell if the other party is "getting all upset over nothing" or "attacking us out of the blue for no reason at all."

As will all active systems, we spend most of our time like a helicopter rotor, in our own propwash. Most of what we see coming back at us, if seen from a distance, is the echo and response to something we did that we can't see that we did, or are still doing.

This unrealized difference in perception is a key part of any solution to this kind of conflict. We need to stop looking through the windshield, for a moment, and look at the windshield and the distorting effects it is having on what we think we see going on outside. Both sides of such conflicts need to grasp that they way they "come across" is startlingly different from what they assumed.

We need perspective on perspectives. We cannot see our own blind spots, and need to keep reminding ourselves of that. What other people see, and react to, is not what we see, and realizing that is the first step towards conflict resolution. Above all we should be careful about inferring sinister intentions to actions that seem out of place.

Rule of thumb - never ascribe to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence - or, in this case, almost complete unawareness of how something that makes sense to us comes across to someone from a different background.

(phot credit: jojobear99 )

technorati tags:perspective, referenceframe, frameworks, conflicts, mediation, differences, God, creationism, rights, perception, conflictresolution, peace