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Trying to teach art history...young earth view getting in the way...what to do?


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PLEASE do not turn this into a debate. I do not believe in young earth but I respect the right of those who do to thier belief. I will not argue the point one way or the other.

 

Here is my delima. I'm teaching an art history class at co-op and while I don't know for sure all of the families' beliefs, I know that many of them are staunch young earth believers. I had planned to talk about the Lascaux cave paintings and do a cave painting project to kick off our semester. Well, obviously to respect the beliefs of many of the families I don't want to bring up the dating.

 

Should I skip this project altogether and start out with later examples of art (and if so when\what) or should I do the project but say that there is debate about the dating (I'm still not sure if this would be offending since I'm saying that it's possible that it is as old as they say it is.) Help! I don't want to offend anyone but I also want to be as accurate as I can with my lessons.

 

Thanks for any insights or suggestions.

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Skip the project. That is the only real way to avoid offending the families if that is your goal. Just start with artwork that is recent enough that the dating is not offensive to young-earth creationists.

 

If I was the one teaching the class, though, I would be tempted to just warn the families ahead of time that we were planning on studying cave paintings. They can choose not to attend that particular class if the dating conflicts with their religious beliefs.

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...

If I was the one teaching the class, though, I would be tempted to just warn the families ahead of time that we were planning on studying cave paintings. They can choose not to attend that particular class if the dating conflicts with their religious beliefs.

 

 

This is what I would do.

 

But, how old are the kids? Are they young enough that you can just skip over talk of dates by being general? Or are they old enough to understand that there are differences of opinion about the age of the earth? How detailed do you need to be regarding dates? Seems like an important topic to just skip, depending of course on the age of the kids.

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What level class? What are the expectations of the co-op, was there some sort of statement of faith or of the core beliefs that you agreed to? Are the YE people so staunch that they are not even ok with you mentioning that there are other views?

 

It seems that you could be respectful while still teaching about the cave paintings.

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Why would the caves at Lascaux be a problem? There are perfectly fine, young earth/creationist explanations of them. I suggest you present both views and go on and do your project. There's no need to skip it. If you need the references, you can probably google or look on AIG's website and find something. We read about them in a book on caves that they sell.

 

Here's the first thing that popped up when I googled. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n2/who-were-cavemen

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I think I'd just say, "Here are some very early examples of human art. They are the oldest paintings ever found intact." (or whatever) then carry on. If a child specifically asked "What year are they from?" Say, that's something you might want to look up with a parent's help. And then carry on. Doing an art project doesn'g need to involve knowing the year of the originals.

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I think I'd just say, "Here are some very early examples of human art. They are the oldest paintings ever found intact." (or whatever) then carry on. If a child specifically asked "What year are they from?" Say, that's something you might want to look up with a parent's help. And then carry on. Doing an art project doesn'g need to involve knowing the year of the originals.

 

 

I agree with this. I'm. . . undecided. . . about the age of the earth, and honestly, I don't really think it matters. Early cave paintings -- it just doesn't matter if it's a million years ago or a few thousand.

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If I was the one teaching the class, though, I would be tempted to just warn the families ahead of time that we were planning on studying cave paintings. They can choose not to attend that particular class if the dating conflicts with their religious beliefs.

Agreed.

OP, remember the other side to this - some old earth families may get annoyed if you skip something so important (I would be slightly annoyed if an art history class skipped such an important part of art history). You run the risk of offending somebody, no matter what you do, unless you simply do as minivanmom suggests (which sounds like the perfect compromise to me).

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I wouldn't skip it, and I'm young earth myself. I would just say that we have reason to believe that these are the oldest intact paintings made by people, and that they are so cool that there must have been some even earlier ones, and that maybe they will be discovered during YOUR lifetime--how exciting is that! And if someone asked how old they are I would say that I'm not sure exactly, and move on.

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I think avoiding it is a bad idea regardless of which side you and the other families take. You just don't teach a History class without putting a date to things. When it comes to material from Ancient and Pre-History times in a co-op, the teacher(s) and parents need to hammer out ahead of time what their expectations are, and if they didn't, they're not allowed to complain when it happens one way or the other. People who care enough to complain if it's not in keeping with their views should be people who care enough to check it out before signing up. I'm a hard, old, salty, co-oper with little patience for parents who don't do their homework before hand but will complain after the fact that they weren't consulted and their preferences catered to no matter which side they take in a debate.

 

I would just teach the class, date the cave painting with my view of the earth, mention that there are other people with other views on that and without detailing the other views, move on. I would not go into detail about the other view-I don't think a YE person would go out of their way to detail the OE view or an OE person would go out of their way to detail the views of a YE person. This isn't a class on worldview or the validity of Scripture.

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I think you can't win and you will just have to do the best you can. But you could tell YE people to skip the first class and give them the pictures to show to their kids at home and explain however they like.

 

Otherwise the these are the oldest paintings known and they are so old we don't have exact dates might be fine if the kids aren't too old. If they are older one is bound to say that their encyclopedia says etc.

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You've gotten good perspectives here ... I do know there is an old thread RE the YE dates for cave paintings. I understand that the idea is that civilization went through a seriously low/degenerate phase after The Fall, and it was around then that the cave paintings originated.

 

So the debated-date thing is a good option. Or the glossing the issue. IMHO. I <heart> the cave paintings, though.

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I'm not young earth but am part of a co-op where that is the norm. I would keep the class but not be precise about the early dates, just out of respect for others' beliefs. If the students are young enough, you can probably gloss over the dates without it being a big deal.

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If the co-op isn't specifically religious, you'll probably lose the other families if you do drop that lesson. We're not Christian, and I'd pull my dd from a co-op that compromised academic standards to fit with one group's beliefs in a second. Also, if you change this to cater to their religious ideology, what else are you going to have to change later to keep from offending anyone? No paintings of Greek (or any "pagan") gods? There goes a good chunk of famous works. No nudes, either, of course. And you'll probably want to make sure that the religious artwork you show doesn't have any conflicting doctrine, or they could get annoyed about that. Better chuck anything with a saint in it, just in case.

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I was also wondering what you might do about later art lessons that might not please everybody. Better to have a personal policy on what your conscience allows or requires you to teach, and then letting perspective families know where you stand so they can decide if they want to have you teach their children.

 

Honestly, that's the only ethical option I see.

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Did you read the article in The Old Schoolhouse magazine? I believe they handled it without dates.

 

I skipped many, many dates in the early part of ancients for my co-op history class and focused on a continual timeline of progress for my mixed bunch. What they could learn from it was more important than pinpointing a year.

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When any of this came up with my own kids (no co-op) I had them consider both options (old and young) and the reasonings behind each. I also told them I don't care which one they align with. Many, many things in history can be debated as they simply aren't repeatable and there's no "film at 11" to see what really happened. To me, it's important my kids know as many different options as they can. We did not skip anything in art history (or history, or science, etc). Mine can carry on a good conversation with people from pretty much any viewpoint on these issues. I find it limiting to only present one view when there is debate (this goes for politics too). My kids have a brain and can figure out what they feel is more probable.

 

Even some of those things we THINK are set in stone (lately 0 Kelvin being the lowest possible temperature where all matter stops) can change based upon new discoveries.

 

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146

 

In my family, we point these things out whenever anyone discovers them... and I've already noted this latter change to science teachers at school. ;)

 

I just really prefer teaching "thinking" rather than teaching one thing and expecting pure acceptance of it (where applicable, of course). The Cave Drawings are fact and should be presented IMO. No one can dispute they are there. Beyond that is speculation that should be contemplated. (Been there, done that - had fun with the discussion!)

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Thanks so much for all the responses. I talked to another mom who has a YE view and between her input and all of your's I've come to a decision.

 

It's an enrichment class...no grades...2 different classes ranging from K-8th. I'm moving chronologically through time, but have decided to only speak in general time frames, no specific dates. I'll be introducing the cave paintings from several different time periods so these specific examples will be presented as "the oldest known...pre-dating the first known civilizations."

 

I decided that since this is enrichment I'm not going to stress over it. I basically want them to know that art is old, every culture has it, and give a good representation of art and artists throughout history.

 

I'll let their parents worry about filling in the specifics according to their beliefs.

 

Thanks again!

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