I grew up as a very religious child, without parental indoctrination. I started going to church casually with friends and just made it a habit to join them because they were mypeers, and all of my friends associated with church. Even without a lot of scientific knowledge, I also knew in my head that I didn’t truly believe in god. I just didn’t, I wanted to so badly and was terrified of hell and just not being able to hangout with my friends at church. While I was religious from about 6 to 14 years old, I just simply knew god wasn’t real and as I started to get into science and just basic logic, I found an immense amount of evidence to disprove god’s existence. Not just scientific knowledge but it was also brought to my attention how immoral Christianity is. With that said, being in high school, two of my science teachers I currently have in both of my courses are extremely religious. I find it hard to grasp how a well educated person, especially science teachers can still be so religious.
One of these science teachers has a bible clearly sitting on his desk. It says “BIBLE” in large, bold letters right next to a cross. Of course it bothered me, being an atheist and knowing he was a teacher in an American public school with religious items sitting blatantly on his desk. However, I didn’t feel a need to make a big deal out of it and he hadn’t spoken about religion to us as students. About a month or so ago, I overheard him in mid conversation with a group of students discussing religion. I don’t know what provoked the topic but he was having a casual conversation about how important faith is to him. I thought “fine, whatever.” Then a student said “Well, religion is manmade, there really isn’t evidence for it.” My science teacher proceeded to say “Yes, but so is evolution. Evolution is just as manmade as religion. There is no evidence to support evolution either. I can’t stand when I see people with the Darwin fish sticker on their cars. It’s ignorant to believe in evolution.” Needless to say I almost fell out of my chair. This is one of my current science teachers, who is a great man and I see him help many students out, but either way… no evidence exists for evolution?
Then my other science teacher. She is also a very kind women, I am aware she is religious because she recently moved into my area and was talking to some students about local churches. She had about a five minute conversation with various students about churches and why she enjoyed her previous church. Again, I didn’t really care. I am used to many people around me talking about religion. But I’ve noticed when I have asked her questions about current things happening in science, she has absolutely no idea what I am talking about. There’s many examples but the most frequent thing I asked her was if she’s heard about the reviving of the show Cosmos with NeilDegrasse Tyson. She looked at me with a blank expression like I was speaking a different language, she asked me what Cosmos is and who Neil Degrasse Tyson is. I’ve asked her about various science topics, even one’s in the specific science subject she teaches and not once has she known what I am talking about.
These are only two experiences I have had with my current science teachers, there’s much more with my previous science teachers. What really strikes my nerve about all of this though, is not necessarily how much they wear their religion on their sleeve but their utter lack of major scientific knowledge. I have found the majority (definitely not all) of my science teachers simply do not know any science not only in general but in their subject outside of the curriculum of what they have to teach. They almost don’t even have a passion for the subject and this bothers me. I think to be an efficient teacher, you must be at least somewhat intrigued by your subject. When you are a teacher and don’t care much about your subject, not only do you not go into detail about the information and possibly not give correct or fully explain certain information but you also don’t give students the passion/interest they should or could possibly have in the subject. Being in this public school system my whole life, I have found that the majority of all my teachers lack so much education about their subject and simply got thrown into whatever position was open and handed a textbook, which is the extent of their knowledge. I am a firm believer that teachers have a job to set the roots for encouraging students to be active in that subject and how can some teachers do that with no interest in the important information they’re in charge of teaching?
(I am aware this is not all teachers. Some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met are teachers. I am also aware a lot of teachers do have a massive amount of knowledge about their subjects are truly care about what they do. This is just something I have personally noticed about the majority of my teachers in my particular public schooling system.)
By: @rosalyncni on Twitter
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