A Diction Question: Is Calling a High School Principal an Idiot Redundant?

I’m beginning to think that the world holds more unicorns, hippogriffs, and yeti than high school principals with IQs above room temperature. It seems like every place you look, there’s another story about another principal doing something colossally stupid: suspending a girl for getting highlights in her hair, throwing a cheerleader off the team for refusing to cheer by name for her rapist, censoring a song the school choir had been working on for months because (gasp!) it was written by a gay guy.

The newest entrant in the World’s Most Incompetent Principal sweepstakes is Stacey Pullen of Bastrop, LA. Here’s the story: on Tuesday of this week, Ms. Pullen received an e-mail from a student who identified himself as an atheist. The student, who turns out to be graduating senior Damon Fowler, threatened to call the ACLU if the traditional prayer was included in the commencement ceremony. [Note: Fowler says in his Reddit account that he contacted the superintendent rather than (in addition to?) the principal.] After consulting with the school’s attorneys, Pullen decided to change the program. Speaking of programs, in the other sense of that term, the late decision also required re-printing the written documents describing the evening’s events at an “undetermined” cost.

So far, with the exception of having had a quite likely unconstitutional prayer as part of the graduation proceedings for rather a long time, no doubt, Principal Pullen had done nothing wrong. Jack Marshall is a lawyer and I’m not, so I’m going to believe him that prayer per se is not inherently unconstitutional. But here’s where our commentaries diverge: Marshall argues that the prayer might well have been legal, and that Fowler acted legally but unethically in insisting that his wishes not to have a prayer ought to trump those of the overwhelming majority who wanted one, and that, after all, a two-minute prayer is unlikely to do him lasting harm.

I, on the other hand, would point to the ready capitulation of the school after consulting with their lawyers, suggesting that there’s not only a really good chance that this particular manifestation of prayer not only is illegal now, but has been for some time. Laws, especially those dealing with rights defined by the Bill of Rights, need to be enforced even when no one complains: relegating African-Americans to the back of the bus wasn’t ethically supportable the day before Rosa Parks refused to move any more than it was the day after. If the school felt its actions were legal, of course, the correct course of action would have been to tell young Fowler that he was free to call the ACLU or anyone else, but there was going to be a prayer as part of graduation.

Moreover, I have a little experience with this sort of thing. I’ve never spoken at a graduation, but I was asked to deliver the invocation at the Honor Banquet my senior year. I was given strict instructions, however, not to privilege a particular religion over another, or indeed over no religion at all. That was 38 years ago; I might have hoped we’d have moved forward rather than backwards as a nation in terms of diversity in the intervening years.

But here’s the real kicker. It was the world’s worst-kept secret that a crowd of loud pseudo-Christians were conspiring to co-opt the moment of silence that had been substituted for the prayer and to turn it right back, not only into a prayer, but frankly into a rather nasty, divisive, one masquerading as something remotely inclusive. Note: prayers offered in humility to invoke God’s blessing are not greeted with whoops and cheers. I should mention that the video linked above is actually from what appears to have been the best-attended graduation rehearsal in history. But the graduation ceremony itself also included a senior girl, Laci Mae Mattice, detouring from the prescribed moment of silence to offer up the Lord’s Prayer, leading the audience in its recitation “if they wanted to,” presumably with Pullen standing mutely by. They might not be good at much at Bastrop High, but whoever teaches their course in Disingenuous is remarkably proficient.

As noted, the plans to carry out this little religious insurgency were public knowledge. Fowler had written about them: “they're talking about organizing a large vocal prayer during the moment of silence despite what I've done.” No, Damon, because, not despite. So Pullen had to have known, too. And rather than take over the moment of silence herself, or to take the microphone away from the girl who so smugly disobeyed the principal’s decision, Stacey Pullen did bupkes. Twice! Once at the rehearsal and again at the actual ceremony. Or, rather, she facilitated the whole charade by giving the floor over to the sanctimonious little brat who proceeded to do what everyone knew she was going to do.

Pullen, in other words, was either so incompetent she didn’t know what was going to happen, based on what student was given charge over the “moment of silence,” or she actively participated in undermining the intent, if not the letter, of the law. This latter possibility, which I suspect is the more likely scenario, consists of a smirky nudge-nudge-wink-wink born out of petulance towards Fowler and a seething contempt for real American—or Christian—values.

In the words of Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie S. Esman,

Public school officials must remember that they have a duty to uphold the law, to protect the rights of all of their students, and that any failure to do so costs money that should be spent in the classroom. Religious freedom has flourished in this country because we do not allow the government to promote one faith over others.

That sure sounds reasonable to me.

People who know me know that one of my favorite compliments is that a given individual is “good at his/her job.” I apply this to everyone from actors to veterinarians to waitresses, and it is an expression of great respect, whatever the job in question. It may be, as Jack Marshall writes, that Damon Fowler might grow up to be a jerk. He might even be one now. But Stacey Pullen is far worse: she is either colossally ignorant of her own students or a contemptible co-conspirator in a coordinated effort to embarrass one of her own seniors at his own graduation. Either way, she’s not good at her job.

I didn't ace this survey because I'm agnostic; I aced it because I'm educated

The recently-released Pew Research Center U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey yields some fascinating results, most notably the most headline-grabbing finding, that “Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.”

Still, it’s difficult to be surprised, for two reasons. First, those whose belief systems are outside the boundaries of normative cultural Christianity are more likely to know why they occupy that space than do those who are content to worship as their parents did, without much need for evidence or argumentation. Second, and probably more importantly, while the survey does ask a few questions about specific theological matters, it seems much more designed to test respondents’ general knowledge about religious elements in historical and cultural contexts.

To be sure, it’s pretty embarrassing that over half of Christians and nearly half of Catholics got wrong what amounts to a true-false question about transubstantiation, or that 81% of Protestants and 91% of Catholics don’t know that the former but not the latter believe that salvation is achieved through faith alone. And that fewer than half of Protestants could identify Martin Luther from a list of three choices (the others being Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley) as the driving force of the Reformation is pretty sad. Even stuff any 2nd-grader should know seems to boggle the minds of a lot of people: on a multiple-choice question (!), over a quarter of Christians couldn’t identify the town where Jesus was born. Apparently they sang “O, Little Town of Jerusalem” in Sunday School.

Still, on questions about Christianity, Christians (barely) outscored the general population, averaging 6.2 correct answers out of 12 questions. White evangelicals averaged 7.3, beaten only by Mormons (7.9). But both Atheists/Agnostics (6.7) and Jews outperformed Christians in general on questions relating directly to Christian teachings, history, and world view.

It’s on the questions about world religions, especially those with relatively few US adherents, where Christians in particular fared poorly. Whereas Jews (7.9) and Atheists/Agnostics (7.5) both got over two-thirds of the 11 world religions questions correct, Protestants and Catholics alike managed well under half, both averaging 4.7. Similarly, the leaders in understanding of the role of religion in American public life (1st Amendment provisions, for example) were once again Atheists/Agnostics and Jews, at 2.8 and 2.7, respectively, out of 4 questions; Protestants and Catholics both averaged 2.1, or over 20% lower.

Overall, the bottom line here isn’t that there’s really a huge difference. To the extent that we can generalize at all, the conclusion is that American self-identified Christians know slightly more about the tenets and historical figures of their own religion than do non-believers, whereas those same Christians under-perform the norm by an even wider margin in areas like basic knowledge of world religions and the relationship between religion and, for example, free expression. Importantly, the level of sophistication required here is pretty low. Respondents are asked some pretty easy stuff: the Dalai Lama’s religion, the name of Islam’s holy book, the basic text of the 1st Amendment. In fact, anyone who gets more than a handful of wrong answers is either really stupid or purposefully ignorant… alas, that’s a whole lot of folks.

Indeed, for all the fact that the Pew folks themselves lead with the whole atheists-know-more-about-religion-than-religious-people-do thing, the real bottom line here is the stolidity and/or downright laziness of the average respondent. OK, so I’m probably not the typical American on this—whereas the average score was 16 out of 32, I got them all right (I confess that I wasn’t entirely confident of two responses). Of course, I fit a good deal of the profile of someone who, according to Pew’s analysis, would get a high score: I’m white, male, US-born, well-educated (including a single college-level religion course some 36 years ago), middle-aged and childless (why a couple of these criteria matter, I have no idea, but there you go). I have an on-line identity named for a bodhisattva. And, of course, I’m agnostic. I’ve also taught elements of both Hinduism and Buddhism in Asian theatre courses, so questions about who Vishnu and Shiva are, or what religion espouses the concept of nirvana aren’t likely to trip me up. But, of course, I knew the answers to those questions long before I contemplated taking, let alone teaching, anything about Asian culture.

There are some interesting seeming contradictions—for example, Republicans outscore Democrats in raw numbers but, all other criteria being equal, it’s the other way around. In other words, the Republicans polled may have been, for example, better educated than the Democratic respondents. Thus the average Republican score was higher, whereas college-educated Dems did marginally better than college-educated GOPsters, etc.

And that distinction is really the one that matters. It doesn’t make headlines because it’s simply to be expected: education makes a difference. Respondents who participated in religious education as children scored marginally better than those who didn’t (and we can assume the difference came in questions about their own religion). Those who have a high level of commitment to their own religion score slightly better than those who don’t. Those who discuss religion with family and friends do a little better than those who don’t. But the big distinction is also the most predictable: people with graduate degrees got over twice as many answers correct as those who didn’t finish high school (22.2 to 10.7). Those who took a religion course in college average more than four more correct answers than college-attendees who didn’t take a religion course, who in turn got five more right than those who never went to college. Well, duh.

In short, while there are some intriguing “gotchas” here, the most fundamental lesson is remarkably simple: if you want to learn about a topic—any topic—you’ll gain a little knowledge from someone trying to influence your opinion. You’ll learn more, though, from someone who wants to provide you with the facts with which to make up your own mind. Religious instruction vs. religious studies courses. My blog vs. my classroom. Fox News vs. real journalism.

But something else is clear, too. These scores are awful. Any reasonably intelligent, reasonably curious, and reasonably attentive high school graduate ought to be able to get a score in the mid-20s on this test. I’m frankly a little embarrassed that I knew only 30 answers with absolute confidence. And yet a 26, or a little over 81% (a B- in my grade book), qualifies as “top 10%.” A 23, less than 72%, i.e., a C-, would be better than the mean for people with graduate degrees. The average Christian got fewer than half of the questions right (I started to write “more than half the questions wrong,” which would have been inaccurate: “I don’t know” accounted for about half of the responses that weren’t the correct answer. If this were Jeopardy, those folks would have kept their money on those questions; they just wouldn’t have won any. So we could presumably add another couple of points onto lower scores if we wanted to give people credit for good guesses and not penalize them for incorrect answers—the way most Scantron tests work today, for example.)

Any way you slice it, though, these scores are deplorable, especially given how easy most of these questions are. Americans are consciously, unabashedly, willfully ignorant. And it’s getting worse. That’s how Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Sharron Angle have any suasion in our public life. It’s why the modern GOP is fast modeling itself on the Know Nothing Party of the mid-19th century: secretive (e.g. major funding of the Tea Party by the just-folks billionaire Koch brothers), rabidly chauvinistic (in the 19th century, the enemy was Catholics; now it’s Mexicans/gays/Muslims/blacks/single parents/teachers/unions/fill-in-the-damned-blank), and ultimately driven more by paranoia than by evidence. They probably think I’m equating their transcendent quest for ignorance with the phrase “know nothing.” That’s because they don’t know American history any better than they know the religion they purport to espouse.