Projects of The Brights’ Net are solely supported by donations from registered Brights, and although we frequently mention in the monthly bulletins our larger-scale actions like the Evolution Poster Project, we only infrequently include information related to some smaller efforts.

Recent correspondence prompts us to remind you of the A Little Brightness newsletter project, now in its 7th year.

With production help from Brights Central, the ALB endeavor is coordinated by Joel, a Bright in Texas, who initiated the project and continues it still. The ALB newsletter offers some secular sensibility to interested persons incarcerated within U.S. prison walls, where coercive use of religion is widespread.

BC sends the (usually 8) pages by postal mail to prisoners who request a subscription. As ALB editor, Joel always incorporates material from the monthly Brights bulletins (since prisoners cannot proceed to any online links contained in Brights bulletins, he adapts somewhat and adds on some material more directly pertinent to needs of prisoners). Reprinting of some personal exchanges based on mail he receives from the prisoners make the newsletters meaningful for the subscribers.

Last month we promised that June’s bulletin would offer a brief background account of how the Brights’ Evolution Poster Project first came about.  So, here it is.

Q: How was it that The Brights’ Net gained sole rights to reproduce and disseminate the unique image shown on its Earth and Life: changes over time poster?

A: It was the initiative of a Bright, of course. (Actually two Brights!) 

First there was an email that Bob Ling, a science professor, sent to Paul Geisert, who co-founded The Brights’ Net and was himself a former university professor of zoology. Both together transformed an image that Ling’s science faculty intended for the inside walls of their building to our nonprofit organization’s duplicating and disseminating posters to high school science teachers.

Ling informed Geisert that his college, the science department was developing a compound graphic utilizing copyrighted images for key design elements. Here is word-for-word how Ling, at that time, was picturing the final rendering to be painted on the walls.

“[It is] a 60-foot long, 12-foot-high screen printing of the time line of evolution and the formation of the solar system, planets and the earth.  It will span two floors.  The life science floor will have the evolution of life while the physical science floor will have the rest.  The time line will be between the two floors, which are open, with arrows identifying the time of the events.  I have attached a rough draft.” 

Later, as described on the Brights’ website, the image was submitted to various science entities and vetted for accuracy. At last, the final image was painted on the science department’s walls, although not in quite as dramatic a fashion as Ling had at first envisaged. A recent communication to BC enclosed a picture, explaining: “We weren’t able to get the funding to get it to extend up to the third floor as originally planned so we have one of these on each floor.”

The newest guidebook published by the National Council of the Social Studies ©2019 is a 235-page compendium of essays contributed by what its editor terms “some of the leading scholars and teachers in the field.”

This new NCSS manual, directed toward public school teachers, begins by arguing the necessity of religious literacy for public education.

As its editor Charles Haynes contends in his introduction to Teaching about Religion in the Social Studies Classroom, there has been a historic failure to “get religion right” in public schools. The history of controversy and litigation has produced a reluctance on the part of teachers to broach this “touchy subject.” Haynes, an authoritative voice in the field, sees the necessity as mounting as our society grows increasingly diverse. He contends it is “unfortunate and dangerous” that schools are so unprepared at a time when they most need to teach about religion and beliefs.

“Religious literacy is a critical mission for public schools because religious literacy is a critical mission for citizenship in a pluralistic society. Can we prevent hate, discrimination and violence by educating for religious literacy and religious liberty?  We must.”

To reduce reticence and help teachers move in a better direction, the volume directs the bulk of its guidance toward its editor’s idea of addressing religion and beliefs appropriately. 

From a naturalistic worldview perspective, it appears that “getting religion right” in public education is not yet on the horizon. Even a manual compiled by a notable expert cannot really help teachers deal with beliefs literacy. The guidebook is sorely in need of guidance of its own.

At a time of increasing secularization in the American population (or so it has been reported), the just-published guidebook for teachers entitled Teaching about Religion in the Social Studies Classroom has almost totally overlooked nonreligious literacy as a component of religious literacy. 

Any scrutiny of that book today will reveal the distinct outlier status of freethought and skepticism and secular viewpoints. Apparently, religious literacy is to be perceived with their complete absence from consideration. That defect can hardly be countered by inserting one chapter in an attempt to wedge it in from the side. 

In the book’s index, for example, the varieties of Buddhism make their appearances throughout the 235 pages, racking up 14 categories of index entries spread across 41 pages. And yet, deism, a topic so crucial to understanding the people and times of the nation’s founding has its sole mention in Futrell’s Chapter 19. Outside of that chapter, agnosticism and atheism garner a total of but 5 mentions (when named as words in listings, with but no narrative elucidation at all). The concept of doubt is never broached; nor is the key concept of shared human yearnings that can be fulfilled by either religious or nonreligious outlooks on the world.

From this guidebook, teachers encounter just a shallow and incomplete “religious literacy.” What is missing, and what educators need to grasp when preparing youth for their future citizenship, is an overarching vision of a civic landscape. It is one of inclusion, in which citizens with shared human concerns gain an understanding that different belief systems can address those concerns through diverse means, and not solely through religions’narratives and traditions. That civic view, crucial to comprehending the full human worldviews spectrum and appropriate to educating a diverse citizenry, will surely not be imparted.

Humans aren’t the only animals that innovate. There are numerous examples of innovation in nature too. A recent trial on orangutans may offer a glimpse into how humans became so resourceful.

Researchers wanted to see if orangutans — a close relative to humans — would spontaneously “invent” a tool to retrieve food from two puzzling apparatuses, even if they had never seen an example of one before. The work was compiled into a research paper published November 8 in Scientific Reports.

If “innovation” means coming up with a new way to solve a problem (one of the most basic definitions of the term), then it is definitely on display with orangutans. In fact, their “hook-bending” talents, as compared to young children’s, yield surprises!

Like prior little "Hotline Tales" for children, this information about orangutans is available in both Danish and English languages).