I have children; and a religious wife and parents in law.

[efish]

Scientific knowledge is the history of science.

Not sure what you are attempting to say, but if you google "John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White" you will find plenty of credible H.O.S on the cultural persistence of these myths and legends of yore which are still very popular.

People like fairy stories with a happy ending in which the forces of evil are vanquished by the men in the white coats.

No idea what you're own perspective is but modern ancestors of Draper and White's conflict thesis in regard to science and religion are still widely used in popular science books.

Things change but it's always good to know the history of where ideas come from and how they have evolved.

Personally, I am athiest not a particular fan of religion, but I love history, I know how dire some of the stuff is, older New aithists in particular, lot of myths in circulation, drives H.O.S historians nuts.

 

[Ross Thomson]

Fairy stories are not science. I have no idea who Draper and white are or what a new atheist is.

 

[efish]

....... I have no idea who Draper and white

That's why I suggested google and gave full name search term. It's basic science history class 1.a. stuff but most people do not read science history.

New atheism is far more commonly known so assumed it would be familiar.

Wiki has an ok page on the basics of Draper and White, which also contains a very basic introduction to modern H.O.S and differences. Refer you here should you have any further questions.

It's easy to find plenty of credible material for yourself as with any subject these days.

Fairy stories are not science

History of science is not science, its a narrative or story about the evolution of science. 'Nonsense' in history is referred to as myth or legend ( non-historical accounts, which are often distributed widely within cultures and believed to be historical) or less formally as fairy stories.

 

[GR63]

You are going to need to provide evidence then, because based on the PISA study, which is the only collaborative global study on attainment across schools the US do not fare "shockingly bad". In fact if you use the 2018 results the US is one of the best large primarily English speaking countries in reading (2nd to NZ). We can compare them to the OECD averages in that report:

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png

US: Reading (505), Maths (478), Science (502)
OECD: Reading (487), Maths (487), Science (489)

The data doesn't really match up to your supposition that the USA scores are bad, they are well above OECD level in Reading and Science but do attain very badly at Maths (only, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Chile and Mexico score worse as OECD countries).

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_USA.pdf



The above goes back to the previous post I made, the US suffers from pretty hefty inequalities and that means there is a larger range in the test scores based on poverty (not religious) metrics as indicated by the larger than OECD average in the performance gap (99 vs 89).

How do Americans do at Geography?

 

[signal11th]

Just to answer the original poster, I'm the same, My wife is Catholic, I'm totally against organised religion, My parents were both COE but decided it was my choice when I was young, I have followed the same path, My and the wife decided that if my child wants to get baptised etc etc it will be their choice to make not ours. Caused a bit of friction with the French in Laws but that's been smoothed over.

I told my nipper to read everything they can about history and religion before making their mind up then it's their choice.