Re: What Are the facts

[Ed Brayton]

Rick Duncan wrote: Here are the facts as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The lawsuit contends that for 70 years, the UC system accepted high school courses completed by students in classes such as history, English and math. But recently, UC officials have started regulating the content of the high school classes and the books used. Science, English, history and social science courses that Calvary offers were rejected by UC officials, and two biology textbooks produced by Christian publishers were deemed unacceptable, the lawsuit says. UC officials have decided to "single out one perspective, and turn down these courses because of their Christian perspective," said Wendell Bird, an Atlanta-based lawyer who filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court. "That is flat-out discrimination." Bird said to his knowledge UC is the only public university system in the nation not accepting such Christian school teachings. .....  The Calvary school lawsuit complains that in January 2004 a UC official informed Christian high schools that two Christian biology textbooks weren't acceptable, and that the schools' science course outlines were "not consistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community."   Wendell Bird is a very distinguished constitutional litigator. If the reported facts are correct,students attending a subgroup of Christian high schools (i.e. those using the biology textbooks published by the Christian publisher) have been disqualified from admission to the tax-funded university system. These high schools--as I have called them "theologically conservative evangelical Christian schools"--have been disqualified at least in part because of "the viewpoints" taught at the schools. I still maintain that this is not an accurate restatement of the facts. The high schools themselves have not been rejected, not have students from those high schools, only the few specific classes based upon a few specific textbooks. The students are still free to take a different course, either at their school or at another school or a community college, to make up for the loss of this credit, or perhaps to take an additional class in that subject so they don't need that credit (most universities require X number of years or semesters of study in each area). And because the university has notified the school of this, guidance counselors are in a position to advise students on how to insure that they get access. And regardless of how distinguished one might think Wendell Bird to be, much of what he says here appears to be inflated rhetoric, not facts. It's not accurate or reasonable to say that the UC rejects these classes "because of their Christian perspective" because, almost assuredly, they accept many other courses from hundreds of Christian schools around the nation that are also taught from a Christian perspective. So why are these being singled out? Not because the university just wants to reject anything Christian or because they're biased against Christianity, but because they find them to fall below their standards and that they will not adequately prepare students for college coursework in the UC system. We at least should be able to agree that this is the sort of analysis that universities must do every day involving a wide range of courses and that it is perfectly legitimate to do so. And we ought also to be able to agree that just because that happens to impact on a particular religious group's beliefs doesn't necessarily mean that there is illegal discrimination going on. Let's take this example. Suppose a student attends a Muslim school and that the science textbook they use begins with this sort of premise: "The only true means of understanding the world is through the revelations handed down by the Prophet Muhamed (Peace Be Upon Him) in the Holy Quran. Whenever the scientific facts appear to contradict a literal reading of the Holy Quran, those scientific facts must be wrong. It doesn't matter how compelling the science may seem, it doesn't matter how well it explains the evidence, and it doesn't matter what the evidence says - only the Holy Quran matters." And suppose that from that point on, the textbook continually referred to various suras from the Quran as proof of their interpretation and contends that 99% of all the scientists in the world and 99% of all the science they study and teach is completely wrong because their interpretation of the Quran says so. And suppose it goes on to advocate positions that have been thoroughly and completely disproven by scientists for over a century. Would you regard this as a class that prepares students well, that equips them with a reasonable understanding of science and with the knowledge to do college level course work that, rather than studying the Quran, relies upon testing hypotheses against the data of the natural world? Would a college be illegally discriminating agaisnt Muslims if they believe that it does not meet their standards? It seems to me that the only possible pedagogical standard that such a course could meet is no standard at all. But this is precisely analogous to at least one of the classes in question here. Ed Brayton

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