It is faith and that is fine, but it isn't science. No wonder the California Schools have such a high drop out rate.
The issue looked to be how students are, or are not, free to express their views in their assignments. Are they, or are they not, free?
My biology teachers were Darwinists. They taught evolution. They knew that I understood the material that they taught, and they didn't see how failing me for my responses would help me.
I had a wonderful time throughout, citing the textbooks as being books of faith and hope, not science.
“Scientists believe that . . . “
“Scientist conjecture that . . . “
“Scientists hope to prove that . . . “
I turned in a review of my Junior-year biology text book with more than 160 quotations with words just like those, and the teacher, a Ph.D. from Texas A&M (waiting for a slot to open for him at Cal State, Hayward) accepted it as a worthwhile report. It proved I had well-studied the textbook and knew its contents.
In that report, for illustration purposes, I included an equal number of quotations I recorded from a 90 minute lecture on evolution I attended on my own at Chabot College, and paralleled the subject matter and the quotations with those in the texbook.
I also included transcripts from three consecutive Sunday morning sermons preached at Huntwood Baptist Church in Hayward, and demonstrated that the words “believe” and “hope” (e.g. “hope to prove smth.”) are used as often, or more often by the evolution “preachers” I sat under as/than used by that Christian pastor who was a creationist.
My conclusion was that the California state textbook used (1972) was a book promoting FAITH and HOPE in a system. The report got shown to the entire science department at the high school, and I was quite popular, never openly ridiculed (although a lot of humor was created -- not necessarily at my expense). Several teachers (evolutionists) told me that they wished their students would at least read the textbooks that thoroughly.