Doing good and Meeting Each Other

In a greeting early in his papacy to delegates representing faiths and sects other than Roman Catholicism, Pope Francis made a wonderful gesture when he stated:

We also feel close to all men and women who, although not claiming to belong to any religious tradition, still feel themselves to be in search of truth, goodness, and beauty, God's Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and who are our precious allies in the effort to defend human dignity, in building a peaceful coexistence between peoples, and in carefully protecting creation.

Though clearly directed at the so-called "nones," the growing mass of people who consider themselves "spiritual but not religious," the comments have also been taken by some to be an offer to atheists and agnostics as well.

If the pontiff is extending his hand to atheists among other nonreligious, I accept.

All of us should accept this offer, even if we might take exceptions to Francis' equation of truth, goodness, and beauty with God's capitalized version of these worthy pursuits.  We should accept because  we can all agree that defending human dignity, working for a more peaceful world and protecting the biosphere that supports us all are goals that atheists and humanists are concerned with.  And inasmuch as the Roman Catholic Church works towards these goals, we ought to consider Catholics our allies.

We won't agree on every aspect of the Church's agenda, and whenever it it conflicts with secularism in our own countries we should stand ready to oppose it.  But where they Church agrees with us, where its aims dovetail with ours, we should unite in common cause.

It will be argued by many, on both sides, that this is an unacceptable compromise.  I will leave it to the religious to deal with fallout on their side.  Some atheists, though, may accuse me of offering aid and comfort to the enemy.  They will claim that by working with the religious I give tacit support to holders of, as some would call it, an irrational belief in the supernatural.

I can say only this: Up to the point where Catholics (or members of any religion or sect) attempt to impose their religious strictures on me, I hold their beliefs to be harmless.  The rationality or irrationality of their beliefs is immaterial.

More to the point, of all Christian sects, Catholicism is the one atheists should find most congenial.  For one thing, the Church is friendlier to science than most Protestant sects.  In response, one might bring up Galileo, and his persecution is certainly a black mark against the Church, but against this must be weighed the invaluable contributions of Catholic religious to the sciences.  Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, discovered the basic principles of heredity; Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, extrapolated the idea that would be known as the Big Bang, as well as the expansion of the universe, from Einstein's math.

The pope's own order, the Jesuits, has long been known as an incubator of scientists and scholars (Francis himself holds a graduate degree in chemistry).  Scientific achievement occurred not in spite of an inchoate anti-science position, but because of a pro-knowledge attitude that has generally prevailed in the Church.

This does not mean our ally is immune from criticism.  When Catholic position of human dignity conflict with our own, we should stand fast in our beliefs.  When the Church is a bad actor, as it has been in many places with its protections of pedophile priests, we should stand with the victims.  Our cooperation does not imply our consent to everything our ally does, and when our ally does wrong, we should say so.  We should also expect similar consideration.  That's what friends do.

The potential gains far outweigh the risks.  If we, as atheists, can abandon the need for the rough sort of doctrinal purity that suggest we can only deal with people who believe as we do, we can achieve much. How can we not, when we can potentially join 1.2 billion people to our causes?  Why should we not, with all this potential?  Because the goals Francis outlined in this wonderful address- defending the dignity of our fellows, working toward a peaceful world, protecting the environment for future generations- are humanist goals.  They focus on the betterment of peoples' lives in the here and now.

They are compatible to a great extent with secularism.  And isn't that what we really want?

Help me out with this survey

Regular readers of this blog (which is probably about six of you) are well-aware that I have been in the teaching business for the last several years.  I am currently in the midst of a transition within that realm.  Though I have been teaching at the college level for the last four years, my run is at an end.  My lack of a PhD has limited my opportunities, and I feel fortunate to have had the two years of full-time employment that I had.

Since part-time work doesn't pay the bills, I have embarked on a Master of Arts in Teaching with an emphasis on Secondary Social Studies.  This is an intensive course, which is compressing the work of the degree and teacher certification into just over a calendar year.  As part of a course on Inquiry and Professional Development, I have been required to conduct a survey about professionalization in teaching.

The ten questions of this survey are below.  I welcome responses from anyone and everyone.  If you'd like to start by telling me about yourself (that is, if I don't know you already), that would be great.  You don't have to be in education.  I'm on a short schedule here, but I only need fifteen responses for this particular project. Be as brief or as thorough as you like, responding with a comment, or by email at mgbazemo@ncsu.edu  I'll post my write-up in a follow-up post.

The survey is here.

Below you can get some sense of the thinking.  I altered some of these questions when I realized my "essay" format wasn't going to work out.

Thanks!

1.  The very first of the standards articulated in the North Carolina Teaching Standards is that teachers “take responsibility for the progress of students to ensure that they graduate from high school, are globally competitive for work and secondary education, and are prepared for life in the 21^st century.”  Do find this vision adequate?  Or is it lacking something?  Is there any place in it that you think too much is being asked of teachers?

2. As a follow-up to question one, regardless of where you were educated or when (feel free to say a word or two about that), does this gibe with your own educational experiences?  If not, what was the most significant difference?

3. The second standard states that “Teachers Establish a Respectful Environment for a Diverse Population of Students.”  What are the responsibilities of teachers and schools in accommodating cultural diversity?  Please say something about the diversity experiences in your own educational process.

4.  Diversity is about more than culture, ethnicity, and language, it covers different styles of learning and learning disabilities as well.  What is your perception of the diversity challenges faced by teachers in this realm?

5.  North Carolina states that teachers should “recognize that educating children is a shared responsibility involving the school, parents or guardians, and the community.”  How do you feel this responsibility ought to be apportioned?

6.  Thinking about question five, how does this gibe with your own experiences?

7.  North Carolina makes explicit that teachers should be experts in their content areas, teaching along the lines of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.  What is your sense of the knowledge teachers bring to the classroom?  Do you expect that they will be content experts?

8.  In regards to expertise, how do you feel the teaching profession today stacks up against when you were en elementary or secondary school student?

9.  The primary aim of teachers is, of course, to educate.  In order to do this, they must find ways to approach different kinds of learners.  What is your assessment of the way that you learn?  Did you find primary and secondary education was able to reach you?  What succeeded and what failed?

10. We measure teacher success in many ways—through observation, through graduation rates, and through testing, of which standardized testing has become increasingly important.  What is your sense of the importance of standardized testing?  Based on what you know, are schools (and government) relying too much, not enough, or just about the right amount on the results of standardized tests.

Kim Davis is not a martyr

Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who rose to prominence for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of court orders, has apparently been jailed until she is willing to do so.  Her appeals essentially exhausted, she was taken into custody on contempt of court charges.  To her opponents, she is a hypocritical public servant who simply will not do her job out of irrational prejudice, and who ought to be removed from office.  To her supporters, she is a shining symbol of the refusal to yield her religious liberties in the face of rampant secularism, one who is suffering for her beliefs--in other words, a martyr.

Already from the usual suspects like Mike Huckabee (among other GOP presidential hopefuls) and Bryan Fischer have come the accolades for Davis, standing strong in her belief that marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman.  Christian media have repeated the meme, casting her willingness to suffer imprisonment for her beliefs as the kind of courage shown by those who, when offered the choice of renouncing their religion or suffering death at the hands of Roman authorities, chose the latter.

Of course, this narrative of martyrdom is a powerful one and underlies the meme that there is a war on religion in the United States.  Its proponents wouldn't use it if they didn't realize this power.  The whole idea of martyrdom is that the willingness to face persecution at the hands of the authorities for one's religious beliefs is good for the religious community.  It galvanizes the faithful and it elicits sympathy from the wider culture, which can see itself in the persecuted.

This is precisely why Kim Davis falls short as a martyr. She does not come across as a sympathetic figure; she comes across as a bully, using the twin cudgels of her faith and her elective office to beat down those she sees as sinners.

Think about this: early Christians were occasionally persecuted  (or perhaps simply prosecuted) because the dictates of their faith prevented them from participating in state-mandated rituals.  But the key distinction between those early Christians and Kim Davis (not to mention other clerks asking to be excused from doing their jobs) is that the one crying persecution is the state.  She cannot be persecuted if she refuses to do her job because in not doing her job she is the persecutor.

In the martyrdoms of the Roman era, we can see people denied their rights by an oppressive state.  Davis does exactly the same thing when she, as an agent of the state, refuses to respect the civil rights of all citizens.  She dehumanizes her fellow citizens in the name of her personal belief under color of legal authority.

So those defending her have it entirely wrong. In this little drama, Kim Davis is no martyr; she's the Roman authorities feeding the lions.