The atheist bus

[rusmeister]

Military atheists want new rules on prayer

Coalition complains of religious discrimination in the services
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, November 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — A coalition of atheists and agnostics wants the new White House to protect young military members from what they see as rampant religious discrimination in the services.

I definitely know where they're coming from, but I'm not sure I totally agree. I myself never had much of an adverse experience, but then, I didn't ever make an issue of it (my dog tags said "NORELPREF"). About the worst I ever got were a couple funny looks from the chaplain when I didn't bow my head with everyone else or the officer who literally did a doubletake when I said "do affirm" instead of "do solemnly swear" during an ad hoc enlistment ceremony (they usually offer you the choice when they're reading the stuff you're supposed to repeat, but this was just some LT we roped into doing the formality (he was standing in line at the post office counter) for my reserves enlistment).

That said, religion really is everywhere in the military. In boot camp, the only real break you get is when you go to services on Sunday (I rotated denominations each Sunday. the Catholic one was a trip. one of my buddies almost flipped when we sat back down and I asked what I was supposed to do with this wafer). Every ceremony opens and closes with a prayer, and the chaplain's almost always slotted to speak. And on the ship, the chaplain always gives a little sermon over the 1MC before taps. About the only time it ever annoyed me was standing in formation, and it wouldn't have really made a difference who it was or what they were talking about, just that it was more time standing there.

So, I guess I support them, but when the evangelical population of the military is over 60 percent, I have to wonder how much of a difference any presidential directive will make.

There was an old saying: "There are no atheists in foxholes." Now this may not strictly be true, but it is kind of absurd to expect that people in a profession where one has a rather high probability of being faced with death to not think about the meaning of life and death, and to not be able to access the answers that have been offered for millenia. IOW, if you are an atheist in the military, you should not be surprised at the presence of chaplains or even the leading of prayer. Were I in that position, I would stand respectfully silent. But complain about it? Doesn't seem to take the rest of humanity into account.

However, I served (active, 5 years, honorable) and only met a chaplain once, in boot camp. I got no special exposure to religion at all.

A comment on "affirm" vs "solemnly swear". When you do your own, individual thing, you are doing it on your own terms - terms that may not be universally understood or accepted. IOW, how do they know they can trust you - with a gun, a tank or whatever? A knight never got knighted on his own terms. The formula they used is based on religion or tradition - your formula is based only on your own word without reference to that. Maybe you don't hold your word to be of much value, as far as they know (they can't read your mind and know all about you). By using the traditional formula, you are accepting conventional understandings shared by all over space and time.

(Edit) An additional thought - Chesterton calls tradition "the democracy of the dead", and he is really right, because by allowing our ancestors to 'vote' (participate in our decision making processes) we become more democratic in the true sense of the word - taking the opinions of people into account and not excluding them merely because they no longer "happen to be walking around". Thus, in a very real sense, tradition is more democratic than mere individualism.

[[Syl]]

There was an old saying: "There are no atheists in foxholes."

"When they say ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ it’s slanderous," said Wayne Adkins, a former Army first lieutenant who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. "To deny their existence is to deny that they serve."

...it is kind of absurd to expect that people in a profession where one has a rather high probability of being faced with death to not think about the meaning of life and death, and to not be able to access the answers that have been offered for millenia.

Yes, that would be absurd if it was remotely being suggested.

IOW, if you are an atheist in the military, you should not be surprised at the presence of chaplains or even the leading of prayer. Were I in that position, I would stand respectfully silent.

Who's surprised? And I and 99.99999999% of other atheists did just that.

But complain about it? Doesn't seem to take the rest of humanity into account.

But assuming everyone in attendance shares your beliefs does?

A comment on "affirm" vs "solemnly swear". When you do your own, individual thing, you are doing it on your own terms - terms that may not be universally understood or accepted.

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

I didn't make it up. I find the rest of your statement vaguely yet broadly offensive, but perhaps your presumption that I should be trusted any less than someone who swore by God (it's not a magic spell, after all, that bounds one to be loyal and true) derives from you mistakenly believing I would (or could) just make up my own Oath of Enlistment.

[rusmeister]

Hi Syl,
I think you will find that I agree with you on what matters to you – how you are treated for your beliefs in the Army. I agree that it is unreasonable for you to be singled out or treated badly because you do not believe.

On offense: I intend none (as long as we understand “offense” to mean “insult”, “personal superiority” etc.). On a personal level, I don’t know you and am trying not to make assumptions based on what I don’t know. However, our ideas can clash, and we can “offend” one another’s ideas without offending the person. Saying that another person is wrong is not offensive in the sense I mean it in. I suppose I need a little more work in rephrasing (such as “that happens to not be the case”)…
If you look at our "signatures" you may notice that the people we admire are ideological foes. So it is only natural that we should disagree philosophically.

I hope I’m not talking over your head if I refer to what the traditional standard (changed hardly 50 years ago, as you point out – a historically miniscule amount of time) has meant – why courts of law, knighting, and other appointments of trust developed and used the formula “swear” in the first place, as well as the origins of the recent “affirm”. My statements are meant in that context. Since, in Christendom, for example, people believed that the Bible was a truly holy book, swearing on it provided something stronger than (the modern understandings of) merely “I promise (or affirm)”. It meant that the person who dared lie risked not only universal social condemnation (something that today’s America is much less inclined to do) but possibly eternal damnation – and people by and large really believed that.

So I wasn’t speaking about your personal case at all, really, but about the basis on which people trust the promises of others – especially those that they don’t know.

[aliantha]

Seventh-century Slavic pagans swore by Mother Earth. They'd put a clod of dirt on their head. Or put one in their mouth.

Not that I'm advocating going back to that.

[rusmeister]

Seventh-century Slavic pagans swore by Mother Earth. They'd put a clod of dirt on their head. Or put one in their mouth.

Not that I'm advocating going back to that.

I second that motion!
But the sentiment, that there is something that everyone agrees to be solemn and sacred, that is more than even giving one's word (although even on that we no longer seem to hold it as important in personal relationships, including promises of faithfulness for life - but love songs still express that natural urge to make those promises)

GKC wrote a wonderful essay - I only have it online in abbreviated form
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/rash_vows.html
Do read it! It 'll take less than 5 minutes!!!

[lucimay]

I hope I’m not talking over your head...

talking over Syl's head?? hilarious! you definitely haven't read enough of Syl's posts, rus.

the use of phrases such as this one lend a vaguely offensive tone to your posts, rus. it's sort of another way of saying "i hope you're not to ignorant to understand what i'm saying..."

[rusmeister]

I hope I’m not talking over your head...

talking over Syl's head?? hilarious! you definitely haven't read enough of Syl's posts, rus.

the use of phrases such as this one lend a vaguely offensive tone to your posts, rus. it's sort of another way of saying "i hope you're not to ignorant to understand what i'm saying..."

Hi Lucimay,
You may be right - I'm not trying to say that anyone is stupid (what I take your use of the word "ignorant" to mean). However, there are always things that we are ignorant about (in the sense of not knowing. In that sense, we can be quite ignorant about things - like I am about Syl's many posts.

I will try to watch my wording, and apologize if my words seemed like arrogance.

My point in the given situation is that Syl seemed to be referencing his POV without reference to the history of the (offensive) terminology. It is easy to be offended if one is ignorant of larger contexts that have created the perceived offense. That's why I think that essay (above) is a great read and relevant here.

If Syl has been treated wrongly, or told that he should believe in a certain way to receive decent treatment, then he was wronged and I am behind his right to reject such attacks on his free will.

[Cybrweez]

The founders of this country believed in the importance of swearing on the Bible for the reason rus mentions, it lends a higher accountability. They believed if you didn't believe the Bible was the Word of God, then they couldn't trust your word. Most states had in their constitutions requirements to affirm the Word of God.

[[Syl]]

www.history.army.mil/faq/oaths.htm

The first oath, voted on 14 June 1775 as part of the act creating the Continental Army, read: "I _____ have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American continental army, for one year, unless sooner discharged: And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established for the government of the said Army." The original wording was effectively replaced by Section 3, Article 1, of the Articles of War approved by Congress on 20 September 1776, which specified that the oath of enlistment read: "I _____ swear (or affirm as the case may be) to be trued to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies opposers whatsoever; and to observe and obey the orders of the Continental Congress, and the orders of the Generals and officers set over me by them."

Rus, I don't think you meant offense, but that doesn't mean that I didn't find it offensive. I suppose I should have said that I didn't find it personally offensive. It just seems offensive that someone would find it acceptable to mistrust someone purely on the grounds of a common oath. Would you automatically trust someone more just because they said the oath? Would it have mattered if Pollard or Ames (a Jew and a Protestant, if I had to guess) had sworn on a bible? I just fail to see what difference a choice of words makes. Or... knowing my beliefs, would you trust me more or less if I had said 'solemnly swear' as opposed to 'affirm'?

And hey, it's quite possible to talk over my head. No complaints there. There are far more things of which I'm ignorant about, or close enough not to matter, than those with which I'm familiar. But, vis a vis the link above, I think your interpretation of history is tinted by your belief.

Swearing predates Christianity. I understood that the word "testify" comes from the Greek testes, from when the men would swear holding their testicles. Personally, I'd trust someone more if they believed breaking their oath meant their sack falling off rather than annoying some (POV) imaginary being. God forgives, but testes don't grow back.

As for the founders:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Test in this context cannot be taken to mean something someone fills out by circling or bubbling in the right answer or even writing an essay. Swearing on a Bible would be a religious test (checking for vampires?). If that was so important to them, you think they would've left that bit out. I could go on, but I don't feel like rehashing the whole 'America is a Christian country' argument.

[rusmeister]

Thanks, Syl!
(Now that's more like it!)

Yes, on a certain level - the level of saying that your philosophy is wrong, I am bound to "offend" (if we understand offense as failing to amiably agree or admit that (in the given case) your philosophy may be right and mine wrong) and I would offer no apologies for that. That is simply completely different from saying "You're stupid and I'm not", which IS offense in my book, I have, on a few occasions skirted saying something like that, and do apologize for that sort of thing.

It is not the common oath, but common worldview that is the problem. In a medieval European village, everyone shared a largely common worldview, thus, an oath was something that all could agree was binding - even if the oath-taker became an oath-breaker, the village would be witness of his faithlessness. It offered a standard on which to judge the oath-breaker and value of an oath.

You may be right that my interpretation of history is tinted by my beliefs. I would say that most people, especially those who underwent public education, have had their interpretation of history tinted by other people's beliefs. The issue of history and its interpretations has come to be of enormous interest to me lately. For example, what if voting really did lose its value over the history of modern democracies and was essentially worthless by the 20th century? Why then, women's suffrage, to which we attach such great importance, would turn out to be worthless. And modern elections to be largely worthless. Which, uh, they are.

But a more relevant example would be over the debates of America being founded as a Christian country. There is no argument that some of the founding fathers were non-believers, that Jefferson especially opposed any involvement of religion in government affairs. Far fewer people, though, are aware of Washington's warning in his farewell address against the exclusion of the religious principle. For the simple reason that in the history books produced (especially) over the last 40 years, references to God in early documents are increasingly replaced in school textbooks with "..." and references to religion in history are incredibly biased to make religion out to be a bastion of insanity and unreason. Thus, negative and wrong things like Catholic indulgences get a lot of press (in the school textbooks) and hagiography is left entirely out. If religious people do wrong, it is splashed all over the papers. If they do right, it is completely ignored.

In short, the problem is not history, but historians. It is possible to examine and question the history we read for unreasonable bias - but it is far more difficult to see the bias when something is excluded altogether.

To more directly answer your questions, i think that today we are sufficiently divided, and that e pluribus unum is increasingly meaningless, that oaths really do not have value - they can only have value in the face of a common worldview. Thus, promises to serve faithfully in the military only have the value that the individual attaches to them plus any fear of punishment - in short, I cannot trust them well because I do not know what you believe. The base philosophy is the thing that determines everything else.

If to the people making the oath the Being is not at all imaginary, then it's as effective for them as your testicular example.

Even the Constitution just reflects the struggle between believers and secularists. The winners were the secularists. So you can claim swearing to be un-Constitutional. On the other hand, the Constitution turned out to be something in need of amendments...

But I think we would probably agree that for religious people, the religious test (or Oath) would suffice, and it is possible to see how for them, a personal affirmation would be less trust-able, not being based on shared belief.

If we were to divide believers into 24/7 believers and nominal believers, it would be clear that America's Christianity is to an enormous extent nominal, and so, to 24/7 believers it is decidedly not a Christian country. But that's a post for another thread...

[aliantha]

Hey rus -- a couple of observations.

Re "you never hear of religious people doing good": In Journalism 101, I learned that news is, by definition, something out of the ordinary. "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog", on the other hand, is. Same with "good news" -- it's not news when people do what you would expect them to do. So if a religious person is living a good life, it ain't news. But the pastor running off with the church's silver candlesticks is.

Re people not voting: From a feminist standpoint, I'm tempted to run with your suggestion that voting started to drop off once women got the vote and, y'know, they'd let *anybody* cast a ballot. But the evidence doesn't bear that out. Low voter turnout is just one symptom of a dropoff in civic engagement in America. Unfortunately for your theory , the dropoff correlates more closely with the advent of TV viewing than it does with women's suffrage. See the book Bowling Alone, which does a nice job of explaining this.

And all I'm gonna say about the Oath thing is that if Americans would all have to practice the same religion for everybody to trust anybody else's word, then this nation has been screwed from the start.

[lucimay]

i agree ali.

[rusmeister]

Hey rus -- a couple of observations.

Re "you never hear of religious people doing good": In Journalism 101, I learned that news is, by definition, something out of the ordinary. "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog", on the other hand, is. Same with "good news" -- it's not news when people do what you would expect them to do. So if a religious person is living a good life, it ain't news. But the pastor running off with the church's silver candlesticks is.

Re people not voting: From a feminist standpoint, I'm tempted to run with your suggestion that voting started to drop off once women got the vote and, y'know, they'd let *anybody* cast a ballot. But the evidence doesn't bear that out. Low voter turnout is just one symptom of a dropoff in civic engagement in America. Unfortunately for your theory , the dropoff correlates more closely with the advent of TV viewing than it does with women's suffrage. See the book Bowling Alone, which does a nice job of explaining this.

And all I'm gonna say about the Oath thing is that if Americans would all have to practice the same religion for everybody to trust anybody else's word, then this nation has been screwed from the start.

Hi Ali.

On the first, I quite agree, and say the same thing myself. However, I'm not talking about news. I'm talking about public school history books - the basis on which most get their formative views of religion outside of the home - and they are incredibly biased against religion, while pretending to fairly teach and examine it, most especially Christianity in history.

My objection here is when people, especially non-believers, pretend that they are studying religion, and then focus exclusively on the negative. It should be obvious that, given their worldview, they would want religions to be ultimately wrong, and talking ONLY about the negative appears to support that. But it's not honest.

On the others, it took quite a bit to bring me around to the view that I now hold. I doubt that I would convince you over a couple of posts. I think voting started to mean less BEFORE women's suffrage - suffrage was just a significant factor. I think control by big business of gov't structures to be of greater importance, though. I agree that TV viewing played a role, but more in terms of voters' ability to think independently rather than in terms of making the vote worth less - which I see as a fairly constant process until now it is at the point where elections have little to do with actual democracy.

The "Oath thing" would require people to share a common world view - something that I agree is unlikely to happen now. It would take an ELE, something like "Lucifer's Hammer" to make that sort of thing possible.

I'm not surprised that most here disagree with me. I do appreciate your courtesy, though!

[rusmeister]

Hey rus -- a couple of observations.

Re "you never hear of religious people doing good": In Journalism 101, I learned that news is, by definition, something out of the ordinary. "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog", on the other hand, is. Same with "good news" -- it's not news when people do what you would expect them to do. So if a religious person is living a good life, it ain't news. But the pastor running off with the church's silver candlesticks is.

Re people not voting: From a feminist standpoint, I'm tempted to run with your suggestion that voting started to drop off once women got the vote and, y'know, they'd let *anybody* cast a ballot. But the evidence doesn't bear that out. Low voter turnout is just one symptom of a dropoff in civic engagement in America. Unfortunately for your theory , the dropoff correlates more closely with the advent of TV viewing than it does with women's suffrage. See the book Bowling Alone, which does a nice job of explaining this.

And all I'm gonna say about the Oath thing is that if Americans would all have to practice the same religion for everybody to trust anybody else's word, then this nation has been screwed from the start.

Hi Ali.

On the first, I quite agree, and say the same thing myself. However, I'm not talking about news. I'm talking about public school history books - the basis on which most get their formative views of religion outside of the home - and they are incredibly biased against religion, while pretending to fairly teach and examine it, most especially Christianity in history. If I may dare come out and say it, I'll say that people are indoctrinated into a dishonest and false view of Christianity, systematically, in public schooling and the media (my specialty is public education, though). So everyone rightly objects to the negative things that religions have been guilty of, and also rightly object to negative things that the faith is not guilty of at all and wrongly judge faith as a result. California's proposition 8 is a great example, where the gay lobby holds up signs saying "No more H8", when in fact the overwhelming majority of opposition is based on reason and faith and not hate at all. (It is to their advantage for people to believe that lie so that they will come out and support them. Hopefully, that example makes, and doesn't distract from, my main point.)

My objection here is when people, especially non-believers, pretend that they are studying religion, and then focus exclusively on the negative. It should be obvious that, given their worldview, they would want religions to be ultimately wrong, and talking ONLY about the negative appears to support that. But it's not honest.

On the others, it took quite a bit to bring me around to the view that I now hold. I doubt that I would convince you over a couple of posts. I think voting started to mean less BEFORE women's suffrage - suffrage was just a significant factor. I think control by big business of gov't structures to be of greater importance, though. I agree that TV viewing played a role, but more in terms of voters' ability to think independently rather than in terms of making the vote worth less - which I see as a fairly constant process until now it is at the point where elections have little to do with actual democracy.

The "Oath thing" would require people to share a common world view - something that I agree is unlikely to happen now. It would take an ELE, something like "Lucifer's Hammer" to make that sort of thing possible.

I'm not surprised that most here disagree with me. I do appreciate your courtesy, though!

[Cybrweez]

syl, the Constitution refers to federal govt. If you were refering to my post, I didn't say anything about federal govt.

Here's NJ's:

XIX. That there shall be no establishment of any one
religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and
that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the
enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious
principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith
of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably
under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of
being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a
member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and
freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their
fellow subjects.

So, assuming you were Protestant, it didn't matter which denom, you could hold office. Assuming you were Protestant.

I realize how little I know about NJ history. Why is public education so bad at teaching history? I know, I'm derailing the thread, sorry.

[Fist and Faith]

Difficult to know for sure... Wordings being vague at times in some ways... But that looks to me like it's saying a Protestant will be considered an equal to everybody else, and not discriminated against.

[[Syl]]

There's no State government without the Constitution, either. It is the highest law in the land. Yes, State constitutions have had such wording before, but they were wrong.

There is, and can be, no dispute about the purpose or effect of the Maryland Declaration of Rights requirement before us -- it sets up a religious test which was designed to,

Page 367 U. S. 490

and, if valid, does, bar every person who refuses to declare a belief in God from holding a public "office of profit or trust" in Maryland. The power and authority of the State of Maryland thus is put on the side of one particular sort of believers -- those who are willing to say they believe in "the existence of God." It is true that there is much historical precedent for such laws. Indeed, it was largely to escape religious test oaths and declarations that a great many of the early colonists left Europe and came here hoping to worship in their own way. It soon developed, however, that many of those who had fled to escape religious test oaths turned out to be perfectly willing, when they had the power to do so, to force dissenters from their faith to take test oaths in conformity with that faith. This brought on a host of laws in the New Colonies imposing burdens and disabilities of various kinds upon varied beliefs depending largely upon what group happened to be politically strong enough to legislate in favor of its own beliefs. The effect of all this was the formal or practical "establishment" of particular religious faiths in most of the Colonies, with consequent burdens imposed on the free exercise of the faiths of nonfavored believers. [Footnote 3]

There were, however, wise and farseeing men in the Colonies -- too many to mention -- who spoke out against test oaths and all the philosophy of intolerance behind them. One of these, it so happens, was George Calvert (the first Lord Baltimore), who took a most important part in the original establishment of the Colony of Maryland. He was a Catholic and had, for this reason, felt compelled by his conscience to refuse to take the Oath of Supremacy in England at the cost of resigning from high governmental office. He again refused to take that oath when it was demanded by the Council of the Colony of

Page 367 U. S. 491

Virginia, and, as a result, he was denied settlement in that Colony. [Footnote 4] A recent historian of the early period of Maryland's life has said that it was Calvert's hope and purpose to establish in Maryland a colonial government free from the religious persecutions he had known -- one "securely beyond the reach of oaths. . . ." [Footnote 5]

When our Constitution was adopted, the desire to put the people "securely beyond the reach" of religious test oaths brought about the inclusion in Article VI of that document of a provision that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Article VI supports the accuracy of our observation in Girouard v. United States, 328 U. S. 61, 328 U. S. 69, that "[t]he test oath is abhorrent to our tradition." Not satisfied, however, with Article VI and other guarantees in the original Constitution, the First Congress proposed and the States very shortly thereafter

Page 367 U. S. 492

adopted our Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment.

[rusmeister]

I realize how little I know about NJ history. Why is public education so bad at teaching history? I know, I'm derailing the thread, sorry.

The question is excellent, and I think it entirely related to the thread. It is our knowledge of history that IS a big problem. Most people are educated in public schools, and so, absorb the unstated philosophy buried in the history books and required by regulation of the teachers, making the philosophy of history books of enormous interest.

It is not the facts that ought to be disputed, but the interpretation of facts, as well as the omission of facts, particularly regarding questions of religion. In the historical context of Europe and America (where most of us originated, this means Christianity most of all).

I have a number of school history textbooks in English (that I imported to Russia to teach my kids and my students), and most of them are designated and approved for public schools. Upon an adult and careful re-examination, they pretty much all reveal an enormous bias against religion - particularly Christianity, and that not by open condemnation, but rather by presentation and focus on only negative facts about Christianity in history, and omission of what is positive.

In short, public school grads have by and large been indoctrinated over years, without being told, (and most often by teachers equally unaware of the hidden curriculum of public education) into looking at religion disdainfully, without thinking, and to have automatic reactions like knee-jerks or Pavlov's dogs against it. (That indoctrination is not limited to religion - Gatto correctly points out that a large part of its aim is to produce passive consumers - anti-citizens in the ancient Greek sense.)
www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm

You may now knee-jerk at my thesis.
Just make sure you weigh in relevant experience - a person who only experienced public school from behind a desk as a kid does not have an adult's perspective or understanding of what is going on - never mind what goes on behind the scenes at closed staff meetings or in district or county ed. I'll go further and say that teachers are most often unaware of the hidden curriculum and many spend time in teacher's lounges during their prep period expressing frustration at why their efforts seem to bear so little fruit. That curriculum is buried in the requirements to become and remain a teacher, school rules and regulations, and the generally undiscussed philosophy from which public education was organized.

It took me years as an adult to figure this stuff out first as a private, then public school teacher, and now private again.

[Cybrweez]

Certainly rus. For first few centuries this country (and colonies first), used the Bible as the tool for teaching, as they believed if you knew the Bible, you would be an educated citizen. It doesn't take much research to see how important the Bible was considered to education.

But, would you know that only relying on public education for history? The lie that you can't mention anything Christian in public sphere is so prevalent, that history is altered. Sad.

[rusmeister]

Certainly rus. For first few centuries this country (and colonies first), used the Bible as the tool for teaching, as they believed if you knew the Bible, you would be an educated citizen. It doesn't take much research to see how important the Bible was considered to education.

But, would you know that only relying on public education for history? The lie that you can't mention anything Christian in public sphere is so prevalent, that history is altered. Sad.

I'd say that the reason for that can be found in the history OF public education - a little-known subject that, when studied, explains WHY our schools achieve so little despite having mega-billions of $ pumped into them annually. If you don't know the philosophical basis on which the schools were organized in the first place, you don't know how your (the public school grad's) own thinking was formed.

I find Gatto to be highly credible - as a public teacher for several years, experience on east coast and west coast, it is obvious that this man knows what he is talking about because he was there (and I can see that because I was there). The one thing I held in skeptical abeyance - his claim of the US adoption of the Prussian model - I found to be corroborated (strangely enough) in my readings of Chesterton. I later found this: (although wikipedia should never, on its own, be trusted)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
Let me add this 7-minute video link - it mostly dovetails with what I already know. www.quantumshift.tv/v/1198046178

The Prussian system was not designed to liberate young minds at all, but to teach them obedience to the state - to be docile citizens, good taxpayers and consumers, if you like; its aim was to break the power of the aristocracy by teaching everyone to see the king as their true ruler. In our case, it was to break the independence of the Yankee entrepreneur and the independent farmers and craftsmen and turn them into modern consumers, particularly in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Traditional thrift, where things were made to last generations and be fixed when they broke, is bad for sales. I remember the minor culture shock I had in coming to Soviet Russia and seeing shoe and metal repair shops, just to illustrate that point.

The thing where I think Gatto is a little inaccurate is in discounting the role of ideologues like Dewey. But he's right to emphasize the role of big business in forming our public education. It ought to be obvious that the heavy involvement of big business in the form of its foundations in P.E. is not out of the "goodness of their hearts".

Dewey? Oh, yeah - a humanist atheist. Like....a lot of public school graduates. What an amazing coincidence! (Not saying here that that's what all or even most grads are - but that that's the philosophical slant favored in the system and encouraged in the textbooks.)