[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 05:54 -0400, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> One way to find out would be to have your Critically thinking students
> parse and
> historically contextualize the first amendment. You might be shocked to
> learn what they don't know.

For the past several weeks in my critical thinking classe we have been
reading various literature on Intelligent Design theory, and we have
been reviewing the principal supreme court cases since around 1968 (or
whenever Epperson v Arkansas was decided). Just now I am reading student
essays on the topic. Most of the students are writing awful essays
(because no one has taught grammar in grammar school since about 1963),
but at least the majority of them are showing signs of having some
understanding of the First Amendment. A few, however, are managing to
shock me with claims that not allowing Intelligent Design to be taught
in Biology 101 classes is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment
and an egregious (okay, okay, that's MY word) abridgement of the freedom
of speech. There are several right wing students in my class. They all
sit together on the (you guessed it) right side of the room. One of them
holds up his cell phone and aims it at me, I presume so that someone on
the other end can get a load of all the liberal crap I am forcing down
their throats. (I assume he's working for  Stephen Lane or some other
watchdog.) In addition to the right wing ideologues I have a whole bus-
load of born-again Christians, whose political and social views, and
whose intellectual capacities, cover a surprisingly broad spectrum.

As I think I have mentioned before, there was an interfaith event in
Albuquerque a few months ago at which one of the ministers of
Albuquerque's biggest and fastest-growing megachurch told us all that
the purpose of the establishment clause of the First Amendment was to
protect Christian churches from the government, and that liberal
revisionists (like Dan Lusthaus and I) are busy rewriting history and
trying to make gullible uninformed people believe that the First
Amendment was meant to keep churches from taking over government. He was
quickly shot down by a brilliant ACLU lawyer, but it was plain to see
the megachurch minister was not about to believe anything a Jewish
lawyer had to say about the constitution of the United States.

As Dorothy said to her faithful pooch, "This isn't Canada, Todo." And
because it isn't Canada, it is much more difficult to teach critical
thinking here, and immeasurably more difficult to teach Buddhism. Still,
I try. And the more I try, the more I fail. Not being of a temperament
that gives in easily to discouragement, I have nevertheless found my
experiment in trying to educate Americans quite unsettling and
profoundly disheartening. My hat goes off to those of you who have been
doing this all along, while I was safely ensconced in Toronto and
Montreal.

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"When a stupid man does something is is ashamed of,
he always says it is his duty." -- George Bernard Shaw