Textbooks

I know, by now this should be old hat. What is it with textbooks now? I thought the "culture wars" over the Texas textbooks had subsided, until I noticed an article in The Baylor Lariat this last Thursday bringing the textbooks up once again. This time, the article explained, the State Board of Education (SBOE) is planning to vote next week about refusing to buy textbooks they view as expressing pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoints.

There were two major points that struck me about this article. Primarily, didn't they already talk about this? My memory was pretty hazy about the turbulence created last March and April by the SBOE, so I looked up a few articles which I think detail last spring's issues pretty well:

Texas Board Adopts Conservative Curriculum

Why the Textbook Debate Matters

Historians Speak Out Against Proposed Textbook Changes

Just a note, I tried to get as wide a range of viewpoints as I could, but most the the articles I found seemed at least a little biased. If you can find better articles, please let me know :) . Anyway, the current issues are that the SBOE is, as the Lariat article states, planning to vote on what to do about textbooks they see as more pro-Islam than pro-Christian, but they have additionally recently voted to slash the funding for English and Science textbooks.

The second point that struck me is that this reminds me of a Times article I read recently in another class, World Cultures V: Is America Islamophobic? The recent actions of the SBOE seem like they're expressing the belief that Christianity is a better religion for Islam, not that children should learn about all religions equally in schools. 

I happen to ascribe to Christianity, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to learn about Islam. The recent SBOE proposals seem to favor a textbook curriculum that tries to demonize Islam even as it praises Christianity. Shouldn't children be given the opportunity to learn about all the major religions without being taught a bias? Solely teaching Christianity in public schools not only fosters ignorance, but it robs children of the ability and freedom to make an educated decision about whether they wish to follow Christianity or not. Is the freedom to choose one's path not one of the basic tenets of Christianity itself? When I was confirmed in the Church, it was because I had looked at the world's religions and, knowing their basic precepts, decided that Christianity was best for me. I'm afraid that with the recent changes in curriculum, my elementary-aged brothers will not be able to make the same informed decision, but have Christianity thrust on them.

Oil spill praise

My sister graduated from the University of Phoenix last weekend. As a graduation present, I bought her a book of phrases and prayers for graduates. Before I put the book in the gift bag, I flipped through a couple of pages. There were inspirational and titillating quotes, passionate prayers, and prayers meant to give comfort in times of need. One kind of prayer seemed missing, though: praises. I have always been told that praises are the best kind of prayers, and I always personally felt they may give God something of a break from all of the complaints and requests offered up around the world.

In response to this realization, I thought it would be appropriate to not just defame situations around the globe that relate to ethics, but to pause for a while on an issue that has been, in my opinion, handled in an ethical manner. Kind of like trying to send praises to God more often than we ask for or complain about something.

When the BP oil spill first happened, everyone was horrified. I was in Nebraska at the time, among Northerners who had never seen the Gulf Coast. It felt like a part of me, of my childhood and the world around me, had been wrenched away, leaving nothing but slick, unctuous residue behind. I watched CNN in the morning during breakfast, listening to the reports of the various attempts at halting the flow of oil and of rescuing the wildlife, and felt at the same time utterly isolated from the event and right there with the citizens living on the coast of Louisiana.

Today, I read another article about the BP spill in the New York Times, which describes how many scientists are coming to the conclusion that the effects of the oil spill have not been as bad as previous ones (e.g. the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska) or as severe as was predicted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/earth/14spill.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=gulf_of_mexico_2010

True, the main motivation for BP to be trying to fix their mistake is probably business-related, but it is still commendable, I think, that humanity is concerned enough about the welfare of the world's ecosystems that we not only try to fix what we have done to hurt wildlife, but to continue to work even when the whistles stop blowing. My grandpa, who ran a stucco company, always said that you had to watch the workers. The minute he left the work site, they would often take a "break" until he came back, sometimes hours after leaving. Although scientists are not sure how the oil spill will affect the local ecosystems in the long term, the media and many scientists seem to be essentially leaving the work site. But BP and other companies are still working.


I recognize that BP is required to administer measures to counteract whatever consequences arise from the oil spill, but I still think that they deserve some recognition for their willingness to own up to their mistakes and go above the required measures to ensure that everything be righted. The world needs more of this, I think. We have heard too much about banks and other businesses that have played the system, cheated taxpayers of the government's money, and refuse to own up to their shortcomings. I'd like to hear more about companies honestly working to make our world better, if only in righting their mistakes.

Raising kids on drugs

In elementary schools across America, children are drilled to "Just Say No" to drugs. Recently, the anti-drug campaign has become much more intense than when I was in elementary school (admittedly, I thought that was impossible), to the extent that a pair of ten-year-old twins I was traveling with last semester whispered, horrified, to their father, "Daddy, why is he smoking? Why would he do that to himself??" upon spotting a college student whom they knew smoking. The war on drugs has taken admirable leaps toward improving the general health of our society through its educational programs.

However, it's not the children's view of drugs that I am so worried about. It's their parents'. In particular, how parents are viewing the kind of drugs that are more and more being prescribed to chemically modify a child's behavior. A New York Times article last week highlighted the story of one child in particular to illustrate this modern dilemma:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html

This feels particularly relevant in light of the most recent reading for Biblical Heritage, in which John Wesley gives detailed guidelines on how best to raise one's children (a text of this sermon can be found here). Wesley's point implies that one must raise and discipline one's children, and goes further to dictate how accomplish the feat of raising one's children well. This is also expounded on several times in the Bible, especially in Paul's teachings.

With doctors more and more prescribing behavior- and mood-altering drugs, not only are they potentially ruining a child's good health, which was one of the major points of the NYT article, but they are also shirking their moral responsibility to both nurture and discipline their children. 

For example, I know of rambunctious boys and girls who got put on ADD medication at young ages because they were "hard to handle," and their parents had a hard time disciplining them. However, it seems that the bar for "hard to handle" has been significantly lowered in recent years, and many of the people I know who were put on ADD medication simply stated that they were bored most of the time and just got into trouble more because of it. This is probably by no means true as a whole, but most of the people I know who are or were on medications like the ones prescribed for ADD also happen to be some of the smartest people I know. It makes sense that they just maybe needed to be challenged more in school. However, not knowing the full story in every case, it may be that prescribing behavior-altering medications is necessary for a child's health. And I'm sure there are many cases pointing to this; why else would it be so acceptable for doctors to be continuing to do this? However, in cases where the medication is replacing proper upbringing, this seems to be both contrary to both the Bible and secular moral reasoning.