…and there but by the grace of science go I

Or: “A celebration of atheism in China’s schools”

On the walls of China’s public schools you might find Karl Marx and even Friedrich Engels (an overture to more weighty propaganda to follow in later life), but you will also find images of Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin along with detailed profiles of these great men of science. These framed homages often line corridors, or take pride of place in between the windows inside classrooms, as if Einstein’s beaming face or Darwin’s fulsome beard might provide light and sunshine of their own.

It has been heartening for me to see, over the past few years, not the visages of Mao, or Lenin, or any representations of some God or other, on the walls of Chinese schools, but affectionate portraits of scientific luminaries. And, in so doing, are sending out a wholly desirable message to the children: that earnest study, thorough research, scientific rigor, and solid and corroborated proof leading towards an insightful scientific theory that advances the realms of science and human thought – that all of those things represent the very best of human endeavor, and is the best possible conclusion to their current studies.

Thankfully lacking from a Chinese student’s education and school environment are any images or stories of Gods, or any incitements to what Richard Dawkins would term ‘religious delusion’ or ‘blind faith’.

There may be weekly flag-raising ceremonies – which seem rather staged and overly patriotic to us casual Europeans, with every student lined up and forced to ‘dance’ in perfect harmony in time to some vaguely militaristic music – but it’s surely better than a dose of God and religious fear-mongering, which is the mode of most religions to keep everyone singing from the same song-sheet. And it’s religion that peculiarly understands that you’ve got to nail ’em while they’re young. Well, and McDonalds, too.

The children in China are, I understand, being cowed into being one homogenous being, with exhortations to be valuable citizens, with a dosage of fear of being cast-out thrown into the process of keeping the students thinking and acting as one. And yet, essentially because this is outside the stricture of organised religion, it appears to me as a welcome focus on more tangible things, such as striving forward, science, and great effort in the name of achievement. This is in contrast to the religion which pervades schools in many countries, which focuses on moral policing, religious dogma, and a deliberate undermining of science in order to bolster the pillars of whatever religion it is that’s seeking to sustain itself.

Look at the ludicrous situation that is ongoing in the U.S., with some schools in deeply conservative and Christian areas seeking to undermine, and perhaps even remove altogether, the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory in American public schools, in favour of the fairy-tale story of human advancement as it appears in the bible. It’s like the 16th century all over again: before it was the Catholic church against Galileo (who pointed out, somewhat inconveniently for the Pope, that the earth goes around the sun. Oh, and the earth ain’t flat too), and now it’s enraged Christian Moms and Dads with no grounding in science who are seeking to have their children’s education white-washed of anything that doesn’t click with the bible.

What the fundamentalist Christians (and, perhaps, all Christians) lamentably fail to understand is that scientific theories are, technically, just theories, in that they cannot be absolutely judged as being correct, but that they are essentially correct on the basis of a great deal of rigorously tested scientific evidence. And that’s a hell of a lot better than a story, which is, essentially, just a story; and never anything more.

The only possible result of these tussles over Darwinism in America is that the U.S will become even more of a laughing stock and/or pariah than it is already in the international arena (see: Kyoto protocol; Iran; Iraq; trade tariffs), and also that China will overtake America in a number of fields even faster than it is already. Europe seriously needs to sit up and take notice too.

See all those tens of thousands of Chinese kids in universities in the U.S, Europe, and Australia studying sciences, business, and I.T.? And see how they are then snapped up by Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, Microsoft and Google because they are far ahead of most of their Western counterparts in terms of their commitment to success? That’s quite possibly because they wasted no time being taught that some geezer called Noah stuffed every single animal on earth (but not dinosaurs, apparently) on a huge boat, and instead sat in class looking up at Einstein’s cheeky chops and thought, “I want a piece of that”. And, fair enough, they strived to achieve it.

And there but by the grace of science go they.