The position that “anything that we don’t understand we can just say ‘God did it’” is sometimes referred to as a ‘God of the gaps’ position. Any gap in scientific knowledge can be filled by a liberal application of a sort of divine caulking. (The opposite, a ‘non-God of the non-gaps’, where anything science can explain is assumed to happen completely free of God’s control, is equally insufficient.)

I do not think it is rational to discard completely any explanation on the grounds that it ‘is too easy’. The explanation may, in fact, be incorrect, but ease is not a grounds for dismissal. Great thinkers from Ockham to Sherlock Holmes have suggested in fact just the opposite: the simplest explanation is often the best.

In my personal opinion, true believers in both camps, the theists and the scientists, do themselves, their explorations, and their conversations great harm by delegitimizing the worldview of the other. A man of God who cannot accept any of the discoveries of science – a spherical earth, medical advances, Hubble pictures of the rest of our universe- misses so much about the power and character and love of God. In the same way, a man of science who cannot accept the existence of any sort of explanation beyond his own reach is equally close minded, stunted, and arrogant.

In this week’s readings Howard-Snyder and Bergmann make an elegant point: “…future ignorance implies present ignorance…” It seems an incredibly arrogant and debilitating position to take, as Mr. Simmons describes Pennok of suggesting, that something could be “irrational because it exceeds our mental capacity.” This world would be bleak if it only contained things I understand, or have the capacity to understand. Science undertaken as an act of worship, a quest for connection with your creator seems to me like a much more alluring quest than the science of an atheist, a fearful scrabbling to learn as much about this planet as he can before something -telomeres, radiation, cancer, lightning – that he couldn’t quite conquer eventually does him in.

Faith makes science worthwhile, while science expands faith, suggesting new facets of God’s incredible taste for beauty, elegance of design, desire for connection, attention to detail, or sheer unknowableness at which to marvel daily. Shutting out the discoveries of rational inquiry OR an openness to a fully different and greater being makes as much sense as closing one eye to see better.

I do not believe that Social Studies should become two subjects, artificially separating History and Geography apart in the world of education. I also do not believe that Geography should be separated from Science, or Science from Math, Math from Dance, Dance from Phys Ed, Phys Ed from Drama, Drama from English, or English from History.
As learners, we begin our educational career, generally speaking, in one classroom, with one teacher teaching us not only most of the subjects listed above, but also life skills, deportment, and to always always remember to close the bathroom door behind us. However, as we progress through the wide world of standardized education, our areas of study become increasingly segregated. The theory is that as we go more ‘in depth’ in a subject, it is no longer possible for us, or our teachers, to study in as much ‘width’. While in Kindergarten we can sing a song where we count the days of the week, with actions even, a Ph.D. student may spend years “Investigating galaxy evolution in group and cluster environments, using wide field imaging surveys with photometric redshifts.”
Robert A. Heinlein, a well known science fiction writer, said this:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
In ‘real life,’ even the Ph.D. student rarely goes through even one day where she is not asked to consider more than “galaxy evolution in group and cluster environments, using wide field imaging surveys with photometric redshifts.” She has to buy groceries, write an e-mail to her supervisor, cook herself supper, and so on. Real life is not neatly categorized.
To understand the significance of the role played by the historic Courier De Bois, for instance, you also need to understand Canadian physical and political geography at the time, as well as the relationship between France and Canada. The fur trade however, might also spark a discussion around the specific food chain in which beavers play a part, which may in turn lead to an exploration of the physics of beavers dams and their role in Canadian geography, in Canadian water systems. Making connections between discrete pieces of information is how we learn, how we memorize, and how we are inspired to seek out more information to fill the holes in the growing, multidimensional puzzle of knowledge in our heads.
It would be wonderful if school always felt like, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie…” rather than like a struggle between teachers and their students who feel like they are being forced to memorize thousands of distinct facts. In the model of the popular reading comprehension strategy, rather than being separated, our subjects should be connected to other subjects, to the world around us, and to ourselves.

This is one of several journal topics assigned in a class on teaching social studies.

Nationalism is a very dangerous concept. Love for one’s country can lead to xenophobia, racism, arms races, wars, non-fair trade, and so on. If the highest power, the greatest good and the strongest pull on one’s allegiance is her country, then politics grinds to a halt, international agreements disappear, and global domination becomes a focus. People, students, teachers and everybody else, need to follow something higher, something more important, than their country. There needs to be a motivation towards peace, towards equality, and towards understanding. It is important that people are not ‘ghettoized’ into little communities of ‘like-minded people’ who aim for the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, as long as they are within that closed community.
That said, how does the school system go about presenting citizenship, a mandated part of Ontario Social Studies Curriculum?
Here I think a phrase which has recently become a part of the collective vocabulary, ‘global citizenship,’ might be the answer. When teaching citizenship, ‘go wide!’ Aim for an understanding of the global impacts of our consumer decisions, the global impacts of our political apathy or engagement, the global impacts of our education, and so on. The focus of citizenship study should be in instilling a desire to discover and do the ‘right thing’ based on a criteria which needs to be exponentially more than “It makes me feel good.”
With this in mind, Canadian Heritage takes on an important role in the teaching of citizenship. Canadian history becomes a morality tale of failures and triumphs to be studied critically, with an awareness of our own biases and the biases of our resources. The general Canadian reaction towards our citizens of Japanese background after the attack on Pearl Harbour, rather than a disgrace to hide and ignore is an example of what not to do the next time we find ourselves faced with aggression closer to home. Maybe if the internment of Japanese Canadians had been taught everywhere as a critical thinking exercise the public reaction to Sikhs and Muslims in the last decade might have been more admirable.
We, as a country, are in the hardly unique position of having a heritage of justice and injustice, or bravery and cowardice, of rational thought and illogical decisions. Like every other country, old or new, we have some things to be proud of and some things to regret. Hopefully this balance will help us regard and present Canadian history with only the sense of ownership that comes from knowing that here alone have we got any chance of not appropriating someone else’s stories, with only passion that comes from using neutral material teaching important life skills, with as many perspectives as can shed light onto this planets collective stories. Canadian Heritage is only more important to us because it is ours, not because we are generally uniquely important. It is available to anyone who is willing to own it as a whole, to ‘drink this cup.’ Since one of the things we hold to most tightly as a positive part of our heritage, of what we can claim as Canadians is an accepting attitude towards varied cultures, then we cannot paradoxically restrict access to that accepting, ‘Canadian’ attitude from those who would accept our culture into their lives. Since we base our identity, in many ways, on our binary opposition to the USA, if we want to maintain our ‘tossed salad’ status, rather than their ‘melting pot,’ than we need to allow ourselves to be a diverse community of differences, with the strength that comes from variety, the lesson we learn from our heritage in agricultural genetic studies.
We are first citizens of this planet, not of this country, and we learn about ourselves and others through our own imperfect heritage just because we know it best and can connect best to it. In this way we can avoid the dangers of ignorance and fear and work towards a prouder citizenship on this planet.

“⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”

Genesis 3:5&6

Sometimes we get more than we asked for in the search for knowledge. Isn’t it interesting that the symbol for temptation has also become the symbol for education? An apple for the teacher…

In the pursuit of higher education I am often presented with questions which have the capacity to inspire deep thought. The cheery educational skin just covers what can be a much deeper inquiry into philosophy, religion, epistemology, and so on. After four years spent working on an education degree and an arts degree concurrently, I have started to answer simple questions with incongruously pretentious answers, in search of some deeper meaning than my degrees. As a teaching student, I want to see everyone, myself included, learn more than the facts, I want to consider life, to examine foundational assumptions, to decide where the lines are and whether or not I want to colour inside them.

A simple education can be worth something if I let it inspire thought which will last me longer than to the next exam season. I have decided to allow myself to ponder, using the spring board of real questions from my classes. I am tempted by the possibility of wisdom that these simple apples offer, and I’m taking a bite.