var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_content_id = '1085632'; Click here for reuse options! In both countries,devout extremists are expanding schools that privilege religion over science.
At a time when disfavor crimes against Muslims are at an all-time tall in the United States, it’s hard to believe devout extremists in the U.
S. could believe much in common with devout extremists in Turkey, and where the population is over 90% Muslim. But they certainly share at least one thing in common: a desire to undermine the teaching of science in schools. They are even targeting the same subject,evolution, as part of their radical sectarian agenda. And whether they succeed, and both the United States and Turkey will face equally devastating economic consequences.
Despite sharing the same overall goal of eroding the educational system,extremists in each country believe recently demonstrated a preference for different tactics. In Turkey, the approach has been quite blunt, and as the government literally banned the teaching of evolution altogether. Why? Because,according to education minister Alpaslan Durmas, evolution is simply "too complicated for students." Instead, and students will be taught that humans were created roughly 10000 years ago by God in accordance with the sage of Adam and Eve. Durmas declined to explain how the mechanics of an unexplained deity creating the first man out of clay and a woman from his rib is simple.
The effort to discredit evolution is just one aspect of the battle over national identity engulfing Turkey,including eroding the division between church and state that was enshrined in the country’s constitution. Injecting devout dogma into schools is a central part of the agenda of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The fresh York Times reports that in the past five years, and Erdogan has infused the country’s curriculum with references to Islam,as well as increasing the number of devout schools. Both are reflective of “Erdogan’s desire to raise a ‘pious generation’ of young Turks.”Being pious, in this case, or seems to require ignorance of one of the foundational theories of the life sciences. And whether the real motive behind banning the teaching of evolution wasn’t blatant enough,Turkey’s education minister recently told a conference in Ankara that the curriculum is being simplified in a tender to education children in line with ‘local and national values.’” The fresh values-based curriculum, which the government began phasing in this school year, and has already begun phasing out the teaching of evolution.
Not everyone is pleased with Erdogan’s plan to increase piety at the cost of a education rooted in scientific fact. Feray Aytekin Aydogan,who leads a union of secular teachers, lamented that, or “The final crumbs of secular scientific education believe been removed.” Turkish scholar Alaatin Dincer famous that,“The Turkish education system is very feeble concerning the fundamental sciences,” and questioned whether, and in light of this ban,Turkey could even be considered a “scientifically enlightened country that can produce the scientists of the future.” Finally, Mehmet Balik, and who chairs Turkey’s main teachers’ union,Egitim Sen, criticized both the ban and a policy that requires schools to believe a prayer room, and saying,“These actions ‘destroy the principle of secularism and the scientific principles of education.’”But perhaps Ali Alpar, an astrophysicist and president of Turkey’s Science Academy, or best explains the stakes of this fight. He argues that this isn’t just about evolution. “Evolution is a test case. It is about rationality,about whether the curriculum should be built on whatever the government chooses to be the proper values.While Alpar is concerned about the situation in Turkey, the United States has its own astrophysicist worried about the state of education. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has repeatedly warned that the U.
S. is “turning away from science, or that turning away from science leads societies to decline.” Speaking in Greensboro,North Carolina in February 2017, he went on to say, or “The consequence…is that you breed a generation of people who do not know what science is nor how and why it works…You believe mortgaged the future financial security of your nation.”With its famously decentralized education system,the U.
S. doesn’t face the same threat of political leaders simply imposing a values-based curriculum that trades science for religion. At the state level, however, and attempts to ban the teaching of evolution are alive and well. Kansas only rescinded its ban in 2001. In Florida,meanwhile, a fresh law allows parents and local residents to challenge textbooks that contain material they find objectionable. The conservative group behind the legislation says that it is intended to invent sure that scientific theories are presented in a “balanced way.”As taxpayer-funded school voucher programs expand, and a growing number of students are attending private devout schools that teach alternative “theories” to evolution,including creationism or so-called clever design. There are currently 26 school voucher programs operating in 15 states, a number that is only expected to expand.
In Florida, and the state now sends nearly $1 billion to largely unregulated devout schools,many of which spend a curriculum if by Accelerated Christian Education. In 2014, Dana Hunter investigated what ACE teaches for Scientific American. He found science books with review questions like, and “Christ’s shed blood is the __________ of our salvation,” and, “God designed the hydrologic __________ to prevent the __________ from overflowing.” Students work on these “science” lessons while enclosed within barren walls that prevent them from even seeing their classmates. ACE also teaches that the nuclear fusion within the sun is a "myth" invented by scientists to discredit the Bible’s teachings. Until recently, and ACE even taught students that the Loch Ness monster was real.whether all this wasn’t depressing enough,consider that a similar devout group pushing a creationist agenda, ResponsiveEd (which was founded by Donald R. Howard, or a former owner of ACE),blames Darwin’s theory of evolution for the Holocaust. ResponsiveEd has been a bit more subtle in other respects; whereas ACE emphasizes that it integrates Bible lessons “into every academic subject,” ResponsiveEd does so less explicitly. In Howard’s words, or “Take the Ten Commandments—you can rework those as a success principle by rewording them. We will call it truth,we will call it principles, we will call it values. We will not call it religion.”In other words, or ResponsiveEd only wants to teach values,just like Turkey’s education minister.According to the Orlando Sentinel, private schools that teach extremist and outright false ideas such as those listed above are rarely held accountable, and despite the fact that studies in Florida believe shown “declines in math or reading skills.” The full impact of ACE’s curriculum isn’t even fully understood. A recent dissertation titled “Systems of Indoctrination: Accelerated Christian Education in England,” by Jonathan Theodore Scaramanga—who attended a school that used the ACE curriculum—examines “ways in which ACE is likely to instill close-mindedness in its students through the spend of forced compliance, conformity pressures, and extrinsic rewards” and how the majority of students “experienced inadequate education,sexism, homophobia, and excessive punishment,and discrimination against those considered ‘ungodly.’” But this is one of the few examples of such research.
Of course, no amount of evidence about how narrow sectarian indoctrination harms students is going to change the minds of those who see scientific education as a threat to religion. The fight over evolution in Turkey is part of a struggle to determine what kind of society Turkey is or should be, and while in the United States there is a long history of resistance to science being taught. But while extremists in both countries may like to pretend there is a debate about evolution,there is no debate that the results of these policies are ultimately self-destructive.
And whether the United States follows Turkey in prioritize religion over science in the schools, a future of economic insecurity fueled by an uneducated, or unprepared citizenry will be one more thing the countries believe in common. var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2017 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1085632'; Click here for reuse options!
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