What Should be Taught in Public Schools
Year Delivered or Published: 2005
Author: Jack D Capehart
Author's Faith: None
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: September 27, 2007
Topic: Religious Conflict
In the United States of America we have separation of Church and State and public schools are “State”, since they are supported by government taxes. It then stands to reason that public schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that must be accepted on faith. In other words, everything taught in public schools should have the quality of being provable or disprovable by either experiment or logic. I don’t mean by this that we should not teach “theories” in public schools. All knowledge amassed by humankind throughout the ages is made up of theories. The word “theory” really only means “capable of being disproved”. Science doesn’t try to “prove” anything. Science constructs theories and then tries to improve or disprove them. Einstein did not disprove Newton’s theories of gravitation and motion. Einstein’s theories of relativity improved Newton’s theories with theories that applied in situations not foreseen in Newton’s time.
Faith based beliefs on the other hand, can never be disproved because they aren’t theories. They are “dogma” and stated as being absolutely true.
Many people confuse morals and ethics with religious faith. Morals and ethics are a big part of religion, but they don’t require faith for their acceptance. They were arrived at by experiment and logic and could well be (and should be) taught in public schools.
Not only must we restrict what we teach in public schools to that which is provable or disprovable by experiment or logic, but we must select those theories which are most likely to be true. If there are several theories about a particular topic, we must select the theory which is best supported by experiment and logic. If instead we try to teach all of them equally well, then it will either take too long to teach or we must cut back on the amount of information we are trying to get across for each theory.
Let’s teach our children those things that are best supported by experiment and logic. Teach “theory” not “dogma”. Teaching anything that requires faith for its substantiation is only proper in churches or religious institutions.
