University eligibility universal

o7Five students from the Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta

and the Assn. of Christian Schools International filed a lawsuit last

week against the University of California system, charging that the

university’s new core class requirements discriminate against the

high school’s courses. According to the suit, the university informed

the high school that two of its biology textbooks were “not

consistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in

the scientific community.” The letter also said three other courses

at Calvary Chapel -- Christianity’s influence on American history,

Christianity and morality in American literature, and special

providence: American government -- did not meet university

requirements for core classes. Is the University of California

discriminating against students from Christian high schools, by not

allowing the use of Christian textbooks in core courses?

f7

There is no discrimination in insisting that the same basic

requirements be fulfilled by everyone who wishes to apply to the

university. All high schools routinely submit detailed course

descriptions to the Academic Senate of the University of California

to establish that their students meet the minimum eligibility

requirements in history, English, math, lab science and so on. This

evaluation of course content and texts also ensures that students

will be prepared to succeed in university classes.

The Academic Senate deals regularly with both public and private

high schools and also with religious schools from many faith

traditions. The requirements are the same for all.

Private schools have the right to provide religious

indoctrination, but students who wish to attend a public university

should take the same science and English courses as everyone else.

Religious schools may teach different viewpoints (such as their

belief in intelligent design or opposition to evolution) in

additional classes or by supplemental readings, but not as

alternatives or substitutes for students who plan to attend public

universities.

If private schools or those who home school want their students to

be able to enter the public education system, they will have to meet

or exceed basic requirements -- not expect to be excused from them.

Given such differences of opinion in politics and religions, it

should come as no surprise that there are conflicting views about

what should be taught in the public schools as the core knowledge

every citizen should have. Books that are banned for one generation

become assigned reading for the next. Whether it is “Catcher in the

Rye,” the “Great Books” or “Dick, Jane and Sally,” the curriculum

changes in response to new knowledge and the needs of society.

During the ‘60s, movements for gender and racial equality affected

the Norton Anthologies, the standard college literature texts with

writings from authors who were almost all white males. The Sisters

Formation Conference (a group in the ‘40s advocating that Roman

Catholic Sisters become college educated) arose partly from the

pressure for sisters to meet public teacher credentialing standards.

The lawsuit against the University of California is another

political struggle, one in which some religious groups want to change

the public school curriculum so that religiously based theories will

be considered on a par with accepted scientific thought.

In the debate between belief in the creation of the world by God

and evolution, what is often lost is that many faiths -- for example,

the Roman Catholic Church -- hold that both are true. The mystic

Teilhard de Chardin prayed, “You know how your creatures can come

into being, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed

process of evolution,” and “In the beginning was Power, intelligent,

loving, energizing. In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable

of mastering and molding whatever might come into being in the world

of matter. In the beginning, there were not coldness and darkness,

there was the Fire.”

The Buddha was not interested in whether God created the world or

not. His ultimate concern was to understand the causes of suffering

and to relieve it. So we too should concern ourselves with solving

the problem of inadequate public education in California, ranked now

near the bottom, at 43rd in the nation.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

What is not mentioned in the question above (according to the

Inside Higher Education website) is that evolution is taught in the

Christian textbooks alongside intelligent design, which is more than

the secular textbooks can say.

Since that is the case, the students are not being rejected for

not knowing evolution. They are being rejected because they are not

being taught strictly about evolution.

It is interesting to me that the Christian schools are being

punished for teaching a broader view of science than the limited

accepted secular texts. Wouldn’t it be in the best interest of all of

us, in any debate, if people could have an informed discussion (the

point of this column) rather than argue from ignorance? How can

anyone argue any point effectively without understanding his

opponents’ point of view? It is not even intellectually honest.

Several years ago, one of my students gave a video on intelligent

design to his science professor at Orange Coast College. The

professor said he wouldn’t waste his time. My student had legitimate

questions, and the professor was either too arrogant or too unsure

about his own position to view the video.

The video presented arguments from well-respected scientists such

as Dean Kenyon (who literally wrote the book on chemical evolution),

Jonathon Wells and Jed Macosko.

Though most scientists still believe in evolutionary theory, a

growing number are increasingly dissatisfied with the clear lapses in

the theory.

This is even true in the marine sciences department at OCC. The

standard textbook -- written by an OCC professor -- for marine

sciences presents the theory that the world is such an amazingly

complex and dynamic system that many are now talking about the Gaia

theory, or the theory that the earth is really a living organism.

So at OCC you can talk about Gaia the earth goddess, but you

cannot talk about intelligent design. To silence the voices of

dissenters seems very unscientific.

The university may have an argument if the students did not have

an understanding of evolution. Since they are taught evolution, the

university seems to be requiring not only understanding of but

agreement with the theory as well. That seems to go beyond the

responsibility of the university and education in general.

Do we want students to think or just repeat statistics and dogma?

Another point not mentioned in our question is that texts from

other religious groups covering some of the English requirements are

still accepted by the university, while the Christian versions of the

same texts are rejected.

Based on these two points, it seems clear that the University of

California is discriminating in a very intellectually dishonest

manner.

SENIOR ASSOCIATE PASTOR

RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

Teachers and counselors at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks

advised students like me in the early 1960s as to what courses we

should take if we wanted to get in to particular institutions of

higher education.

I remember that my aspiration to attend Berkeley was one reason I

took Spanish instead of Latin, and a friend who wanted to attend

Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., took Latin instead of

Spanish.

As an Episcopalian in a Roman Catholic high school, I distinctly

recall being told that I was required to take Notre Dame’s religion

courses (which I loved and still find helpful), but that credits for

those classes would not count toward admission to any of the

University of California’s campuses. I assumed then, as I do now,

that all this information was gathered by my high school’s

administrators and shared on their own initiative.

Religious schools are entitled to offer whatever courses they wish

and use whichever textbooks they choose. State schools are entitled

to determine what credits from which courses are acceptable in their

system. Hasn’t this always been so? It certainly was in the ‘60s when

the University of California did not accept Roman Catholic religion

class credits from my high school.

It seems to me exceedingly gracious, even exceptional, that the

University of California system now takes initiative in advising

religious schools as to what specific course credits they will, and

will not, accept toward admission to their campuses.

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

We Americans are biased toward the two-model approach. We believe

there are two sides to every issue, an alternative to every

proposition.

Part of our “argument culture” is evolution versus creationism,

held by some to be a legitimate clash of responsible viewpoints,

worthy of consideration in the marketplace of ideas. There are not,

though, two scientific sides to the origin and development of life.

Creationism is pseudo-science, a cover for fundamentalist

apologetics, utilizing unsupportable assumptions and preposterous

leaps of faith.

Sometimes there are more than two sides to an issue, sometimes

less. In explaining the cause of the ills that beset society, is the

“other side” the idea that the Illuminati are conspiring to enslave

us to a One World government in a super-socialist state? Is the

“other side” of why so much conflict plagues our world the thought

that elites have kept humanity ignorant of the existence of

nonterrestrial civilizations who could teach us ways of peace to

maintain profits from wars they unleash?

Is the “other side” of the unfathomable cause of the attacks

against the World Trade Center the possibility that the Mossad

orchestrated them with the goal of besmirching Islam? Is the “other

side” of the Holocaust the theory that it did not take place? Is the

“other side” of Paul McCartney’s perpetually youthful appearance the

concept that he died years ago and has been replaced with a

doppelganger?

We should be open to controversial ideas, but a mind can be so

open that it falls out!Why should the study of discredited views

qualify a student for admission to a university? Intelligent Design

proponents spread a veneer of scholarly affectation over their bogus

or distorted claims. They engage in wishful speculation, shoehorning

science into their theology, upholding what they want to be science

rather than what is science, ignoring mountains of evidentiary data.

They disdain sound analysis and dispassionate methodology in the

service of subjective faith, donning the specious mantle of

legitimacy but manufacturing, excluding or exaggerating facts. Their

phantasm may be psychologically and emotionally gratifying, but to

ignore science is to deny that the truth of evolution has been

established beyond a reasonable doubt.

For centuries, clergymen upheld geocentric cosmology. The

proposition that the sun does not move around the earth was denounced

as heresy, contrary to Scripture. It was not until 1992 that the

Catholic Church acknowledged its “mistake” in forcing Galileo to

recant -- 23 years after man landed on the moon!

Religious topography argued for an earth in the shape of a

rectangular plane, with Jerusalem at the center. After all, the Bible

speaks of the “four corners of the earth.”

These and others are classic examples of why religious agendas

should not be honored in their “contributions” to science. The former

press their case on the basis of doctrine while the latter argues on

a foundation of evidence.

There is no rational “alternative” to Darwinism. The inference

from design is a philosophical position, one not open to scientific

establishment.

Those who promote Intelligent Design have designs of their own: to

foist an argument that comports with Biblical literalism upon those

who are not of a critical disposition. Their arguments are simply

more sophisticated than when Martin Luther cited Joshua’s command

that the sun stand still as proof that Copernican theory was false.

Though their methods have “evolved,” they are no more convincing

than was William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tenn. In short, those who

pollute the air with the nonsense that creationism is scientific will

“Inherit the Wind.”

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach