Schools Teach, Churches Preach

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I have a mostly hate relationship with organized religion, that is if you can call it a relationship at all. I avoid it like the plague. Through a combination of circumstances, mostly wanting to support Sid in his grandfatherly role, I agreed to go with him while his grandson participated in a geography bee. The boy attends a Christian school, so I had a partial idea that I might hear some remnants of religion, but thereby hangs a tale as they say.

As an educator, university professor, and renaissance scholar, my expectations tend to be national. I was expecting a Geography bee conducted under the auspices of an organization such as National Geographic, whose Washington DC offices I once visited to thank them personally for their grant in support of my conference on perceiving nature, held in Honolulu in 1985. In this assumption, I was completely wrong.

The geography bee, if one might call it that, turned out to be sponsored by a geography council supported by an association of Christian schools. Are you with me so far? The occasion opened with prayers in the main church, followed by prayers by various persons in the rooms assigned to various grade levels. I was already feeling something akin to a consumer going to a store and being treated to bait and switch.

The bee itself contained such “geographical questions” as which river Christ was baptized in, which city’s walls came tumbling down at the sound of a trumpet, and the name of the hill upon which the crucifixion took place. To be perfectly fair, many of the other questions sounded more geographic, but those prior were standouts in what I came to call (privately of course) The Sunday School bee. To do well in this bee, one needed to know the general place settings of the Old Testament. So much for the national competitions that these children will face as young adults. I highly doubt that National Geographic would ask only one question about Europe, and so many about Israel and the Holy Land.

But such is the way of religion. And such is the way when religion controls the school setting and the curriculum. I’m reminded of the song Che sings to Evita in the eponymous musical. “Get them while they’re young, Evita” he sings to her as she gathers children around her. I’m sure that the parents are happy with the setting or they wouldn’t have sent him there. The teachers seem like nice people, in the way of missionaries, which is just what they are.

I felt like a curmudgeon looking at all these good people, but also thinking how many years will it take for these kids to be deprogrammed to become the scientists and thinkers we need in this country. They’ll have to adapt once they get to college. Unless, of course, their parents send them to any of the evangelical universities around.

Schools teach; religions preach. I wish people would get clear on the difference.