A breakdown of Highlands Christian Schools fundamentalist curriculum
Adriana Hernandez
Highlands Christian Schools San Bruno during a Friday afternoon pickup.
Just a four minute drive from Skyline college, first-year Trojan Sheryll Estipona peered bottomward at the appropriate argument for 8th brand Bible chic — six babyish breed artlessly glanced aback beneath the bolded appellation “Love Your Neighbor.” The abecedary promptly instructed her to about-face to Affiliate 14: Homosexual Sin.
Estipona’s alma mater, Highlands Christian School, sits proudly on the acropolis overlooking the Skyline community. The K-8 academy strives to bury evangelical ethics into their acceptance through their curriculum. Evangelical Christianity is characterized by its fundamentalist access to the bible, acceptation the argument is interpreted in the accurate sense.
Each affiliate of “Love Your Neighbor” introduces a amusing affair through a airy and civil lense, alignment from afterlife to cloning to pornography. At the end of these capacity resides a abbreviate “Christian Response” to the issue. The Affiliate 14 acknowledgment states: “The Bible condemns homosexual sin. Homosexuality is a corruption of God’s allowance of sex.”
“Why be agitated by someone’s own sexuality?” said Estipona in response. “The accurate name of the book is ‘Love Your Neighbor.’ If you adulation your neighbor, wouldn’t you account who they’re admiring to? I feel like some Christians aloof blindly acquire aggregate in the Bible.”
For Michelina Ng Solano, a apprentice at CSM and Highlands Christian Schools graduate, the appulse of this mindset befuddled her ancestors indefinitely.
“My half-brother was gay, and he was aloft in a Catholic household. He anesthetized abroad 16 years ago from HIV and AIDS,” said Ng Solano. “It wasn’t until my brother was on his deathbed back my dad aloof accustomed the actuality that homosexuality is accurate … [The stigma is] absolutely the acumen why he didn’t adeptness out for help. I anticipate by the time he came out, it was already too late. He was already actual sick.”
But not every HCS alumni perceives its chic to be adverse or sanctimonious. Skyline apprentice Marion Fuller believes Highlands Christian Schools and “Love Your Neighbor” gave him the all-important foundation to extend adulation and account to others in his claimed life.
“Highlands was absolutely a abode area I grew a lot as a Christian. I’m appreciative to say that. … A takeaway from Highlands I absolutely emphasized in my activity is admiring your acquaintance as your acquaintance or as yourself. Especially today, there’s a lot of abhorrence activity around. Stop hate, you aloof gotta love,” said Fuller.
Highlands integrates its fundamentalist viewpoints into every aspect of its curriculum, not aloof Bible class. In music class, acceptance sing hymns and songs with biblical messaging. In geometry class, acceptance address affidavit on biconditional statements in the Bible. The history arbiter is accounting through the Christian lense. However, Estipona remembers commodity missing from science class.
“In our science textbook, there was an change chapter. We would go through every affiliate in that science book except the change one,” Estipona said. “The abecedary wouldn’t absolutely acquaint us the acumen why.”For Estipona’s developing mind, this meant accepting the evangelical acceptance of conception at face amount and after scrutiny.
“My accompany and I were in a science building for our DC trip. We were in the change area and we were authoritative fun of the absolute idea. We were like, ‘oh my god, we came from chickens, we came from gorillas,’” Estipona said nostalgically. We were so abutting minded. We were adjoin whatever Highlands said.”
Ng Solano additionally feels the ambiance created a acknowledgment bend not accessory to an accessible exchange of ideas.
“They say if you say these words you go to hell. If you don’t acquire in this, you go to hell. It’s to the book with them. I do acquire that there is a God, but there are some flaws in aggravating to acquaint addition what to acquire in.”While Estipona still charcoal spiritual, she carries abysmal answerability and abashment for abnormality from the evangelical estimation of faith.
“Every time I would balloon to pray, I anticipation I would die that night. I would argue myself that ‘oh my god, I’m gonna die tonight because I didn’t adjure to God that abundant today,’” Estipona said. “I still abhorrence that I’m activity to hell.”
Alternatively, Fuller credits Highlands’ accent on scripture for his adeptness to advance a ample life, whether that be in relationships or aural himself. Initially, he beheld abstraction continued Bible verses as boring.
“As I got older, I accomplished that these Bible verses acquire added meaning,” Fuller said. “It makes it easier for me to acquire what is absolutely actuality said in the Bible ballad and why we assay what we read.”
While the Highlands alumni may not allotment the aforementioned beliefs, they all accede that befitting an accessible apperception is imperative.
“I had accompany who canceled me for actuality Christian and assertive what I acquire in, because I was aggregate that they were against, you know, and that’s aloof life,” Fuller said. “But why can’t we aloof acquire that anybody has their own opinion?”
This commodity has been edited to alter the spelling of a name.
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