The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Everyone in my Sikeston writing class believes in creation science. Granted, that is not a lot of people, perse, only 5, but that’s still enough to make me my jaw drop.

Now, when I told CJ this, his response was “Well, love, do you remember where we live?” Maybe that’s a relevant point. I’m in the Bible Belt. People believe in things here, and in general, that’s cool. I’m down with that. Beliefs are fucking awesome.

But this sort of thing… and everyone… and they’re in college… I just… I don’t know.

The thought process required to believe actual science and also believe in your religion is so simple, I really have no idea why people have problems with it. God made everything. Clearly he made these natural systems that work the way we are finding. Done. Science go. But I guess that’s too hard? That would require saying, I guess, that the Bible is not a history book but instead a story book filled with damn good ideas that are worth following like, you know, don’t be a dick to people. And people won’t do that, I guess. That’s across a line. So they’d rather ignore what we as a species have learned.

I don’t know. Believe what you want. These students aren’t hurting me by believing all that. In fact, I really like my little class. They’re all pretty great people and more engaged than a lot of my other classes. I’ve had a lot of fun teaching them this semester. But it just makes me worry about their future. I mean, the paper that sparked the conversation which caused me to learn this that one of the students wrote was just… wrong. Even the creation science was not in line with what I know about “serious” creation science, and the science he was trying to refute was even MORE wrong. I’ve got to tell him to fix all that in order to have a good paper, and I did. But if he seriously isn’t about to look all that stuff up before I prompt him to for the assignment, what hope does he have? Like, how does he actually learn anything? I do wonder. It worries me. He’s a good guy, and I want him to succeed.

People who believe are awesome. I 100% believe, and have proof, that you can be seriously religious and not fall into these sorts of major learning traps, and it is those sorts of people I really respect. (Well, a sort of people I really respect.) But as an educator, I’m just filled with fear at learning this about my class. I’m an English teacher. I don’t teach science. I can’t try to tell these people this is wrong. That’s not my place. I’m going to help this guy write his creation science paper, and it is going to be the best creation science paper. And I am going to disagree with it fucking completely. And I’m going to worry about what happens when he takes a science class, or meets someone who doesn’t understand his beliefs and actually attempts to tear him down, or he has to make some sort of decision based on either science or religion, but probably not both.

He’s awesome. I know he could handle thinking it all out. Will he, though? That’s what I don’t know. And that’s scary.