Imagine walking into a college calculus course on the first day only to have the lecture interrupted by a student who rejects the mathematical tenet that 2+2=4. Or watching your study partner struggling with physics assignments because she refuses to acknowledge the law of gravity. Or listen to your roommate creating a ruckus in his history class when he publicly disavows the existence of Nazi concentration camps.
Sound absurd? Sure it is. It goes without saying that to grasp certain subjects at a college level, one must accept the keystones of various disciplines from which all else follows: the syntax of the English language for a writing class; properties of numbers in a math class; or evolution in a biology class.
The UC system alleges, correctly, that gaining a decent knowledge of high school-level biology only follows from grasping the theory of evolution and that Creation-centric science programs don’t do enough to prepare students for college-level science courses; nor do they fulfill UC admissions requirements. In retaliation, the Association of Christian Schools International, representing more than 800 Christian schools in California, is suing the university for discrimination. According to them, enforcing clearly defined admissions requirements is tantamount to quashing freedom of speech and religion.
Taylora Dial, the principal of one of the schools in question, Calvary Baptist, alleged in an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin article that graduates are put at an unfair disadvantage by the university’s admissions requirements. She fails to acknowledge, however, that the Christian high schools themselves are putting students at a disadvantage. Most high schools list “college preparation” as their primary goal, and those that take it to heart equip students well for writing essays, critical thinking and other challenges of college. It’s abundantly clear that Christian high schools, on the other hand, are doing nothing of the sort. How can they ever expect their students to do well in college when their science curriculum has Creationism at its center while evolution hovers awkwardly in the shadows, at best?
One Christian school, the Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, isn’t just botching its teaching of biology — the University of California also refuses to accept its physics, history, government and English courses because the texts used are “primarily religious texts.” What, then, are these kids being taught, if not biology, physics, history, government or English? A few words of Spanish between Bible study and chapel, perhaps?
When a student’s high school education is so obviously lacking, the University of California is hardly displaying “hostility towards Christianity” (as the suit alleges) in rejecting such courses or such students. It is displaying hostility toward ignorance and closed-mindedness.
It’s not surprising that in the ACSI’s mission to Christianize the university, it attacks the very right of the university to enforce any admissions standards at all. Yes, the UC system is public; but every university, whether public or private, has admissions standards of some sort or another. Not only do they make sense, they’re necessary — a university can’t be expected to bring students up to par on elementary knowledge.
Of course, it is worth remembering that a certain percentage of such Christianized high school graduates wish to pursue a nonscientific course of study in college, and their ignorance of evolution becomes moot. No doubt a staunch Creationist could do fine as a literature major. Yet, still, we come back to university’s goal of providing a well-rounded student, and only accepting students who have already completed a broad, well-rounded course of study. And even nonscience majors often have to pass science-related general education requirements in college, which often entails taking at least one class that has evolution as its obvious or implied cornerstone.
One must also remember that there are Christian students aplenty in the UC system, proving that being Christian and being able to function in a world where evolution is the basis of science classes are not mutually exclusive. Few of such successful Christian students came from as fundamentalist Christian of high schools as the ones represented in the lawsuit, and the pigheadedness of the suit reminds us why.
When the ACSI builds up the straw man of the University of California squashing freedom of speech and religion, they forget the legions of Christian students who are, at this very moment, enjoying freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and are also willing to familiarize themselves with evolution (even if they don’t accept it as fact) so as to pass their science classes. Being Christian and being educated aren’t at odds; they only clash when certain religious schools teach such a dismally narrow curriculum that their students emerge without the knowledge needed for college or the real world.
After all, a student cannot survive college courses on Christian dogma alone. Well, unless it’s one of the many Christian universities around the country, like Bob Jones University — which graduates of Christian schools are welcome to attend if the University of California is truly too stringent and narrow-minded in its admissions standards.
