Pseudoscience I Was Taught at a British Creationist School (article)

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Are you British?

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No.

Stupid question.

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It's a difficult problem. On the one hand one cannot recognise qualifications which are based on teaching of incorrect theories. On the other hand one does not want to refuse access to education to gifted individuals unfortunate enough to have had this crap imposed on them.

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's a difficult problem. On the one hand one cannot recognise qualifications which are based on teaching of incorrect theories. On the other hand one does not want to refuse access to education to gifted individuals unfortunate enough to have had this crap imposed on them.

Its a question of what is being recognized and why. Does the recognition imply the students have prerequisite skills for a given university course? Does the recognition imply the student is a good learner and can do better at university than other students without qualifications?
I would say that in the former case, it might be a problem in that the university will have to spend extra effort not only teaching things that should already have been learnt, but also unteaching things that shouldn't have been learnt.

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I had a similar experience, having attended the First Lutheran School in El Monte, California from 1 to 8 th grade.

We were fed a lot of nonsense in science but we learned a lot of other skills, like algebra by grade 7 and so forth.

So by freshman year of HS, all that nonsense was paved over and forgotten.

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No school should be permitted to teach ACE.

Nobody should accept it as a qualification.

Period.

People who have been abused by subjecting them to such trash should
be given the opportunity to catch up on the education they missed.

Which should be paid for by fining the morons who teach this nonsense
more money then they have and bankrupting them out of existence.

Teaching this nonsense is child abuse and shouldn't be tolerated or condoned.

It's really that simple.

Claiming otherwise is to become a hand wringing moral subjectivist.

What ACE teaches is factually wrong.

Saying that universities should accept such a 'qualification' is moronic.

But then I don't expect anything better from you.

Finally. Take it to spirituality.

This isn't a science topic.

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's a difficult problem. On the one hand one cannot recognise qualifications which are based on teaching of incorrect theories. On the other hand one does not want to refuse access to education to gifted individuals unfortunate enough to have had this crap imposed on them.

You can help gifted individuals without accepting that ACE is a valid
qualification.

And in the big picture, by not accepting it as a valid qualification you
provide a strong incentive for parents not to send their kids to schools
that teach it. As they will leave with no recognised qualifications.
[Personally I wouldn't permit any schools to teach such nonsense in
the first place].

Otherwise what you are saying is "we accept ACE as a valid qualification
but its useless so have some extra education to teach you all the stuff
it missed out or lied to you about". Which is nonsensical.

Originally posted by googlefudge
You can help gifted individuals without accepting that ACE is a valid
qualification.

And in the big picture, by not accepting it as a valid qualification you
provide a strong incentive for parents not to send their kids to schools
that teach it. As they will leave with no recognised qualifications.
[Personally I wouldn't permit any schools to t ...[text shortened]... ducation to teach you all the stuff
it missed out or lied to you about". Which is nonsensical.

If the parents are so stupid as to believe men walked with dinosaurs, they probably would send their kids to those Christian fundie schools anyway. They wouldn't let such a minor detail as accreditation issues be an impediment to the one TRUE education. "Those kids don't need anything more than 8th grade education anyway''.....

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I think googlefudge has a point that recognizing a qualification, or refusing to do so, may have an effect on the desirability of these schools. I think the solution might be to partially recognize them ie the university could officially state that the qualification is recognized for certain subjects but not for science.
Here in SA, although I believe you can get a general certificate for completing grade 12, ('O' levels), the universities actually look at your grades in given subjects before deciding to accept you for a given course. So for example, to do engineering you must have good grades in mathematics.

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He is not saying the ACE should be rejected as worthless, he is saying it should not be given any official recognition. Similarly, if a soviet student has a qualification based on a history course which contained significant amounts of false history, then that qualification should not be recognized - even if the student in question is perfectly capable of being a good scientist, or a good historian.
A student who presents an ACE certificate to an institution should be told that it is not evidence that he has any worthwhile scientific knowledge. It may be accepted, depending on the actual courses involved as evidence that he has some knowledge in other subjects such as English literature, or Art.