85
13 votes
Mar 27, 2015

Religion, teaching, and schools are very, very broad terms so some specifying is in order. To preface, I agree that all children should be exposed to some unified information regarding all religions, but within the current education framework as a whole it does not warrant as much attention as a dedicated class would provide.

Working backwards, school begins with kindergarten, say 5 years old, and for our purposes ends with high school, so at roughly 18 years old. Within that 13 years, society expects that we learn and retain quite a bit. One very important note though, prior to high school, nothing is optional. So to even explore educating elementary children about religion, we must accept that this education would be mandatory and standardized. Because a religious survey course is pretty conceivable at high school age, we should focus on the more interesting topic of education children about a variety of religions. In summary, school will mean elementary aged, public school attending, youths.

Now teaching. Obviously this topic collides head on with those who would object to "indoctrination" because frankly, any teaching that is not exactly their preferred flavor of faith, is a form of indoctrination. To counter this, I propose that we use a very widely accepted genre of teaching as our parameter, history. By accepting that any religious teaching will only be done within the context of history, we can (ideally) avoid the ocean of subjectivity that trying to teach different "faiths" would introduce. Now I recognize that the more philosophical points about religion may not be directly covered in a history class but then, these are elementary schoolers, what sort of philosophy did you expect? Also, the broader philosophical points are not lost just because the teacher doesn't underline it on the board. The exposure to various religious texts and histories raises these points no matter how you frame it, we are simply choosing not to define them so explicitly that we are forced to choose a side. To recap, we are now teaching all elementary schoolers a basic history of world religions. I at least find that a bit more palatable.

So we are left with the essence of the question, "should" we implement this? As a fairly militant athiest, it is hard for me to say that I think we "should" do much of anything to religion besides acknowledge its continued existence and take solace in its inevitable decline. That said, I would truly support the implementation of more teaching about religious history in schools. The content at younger ages is seldom relevant and rarely more than a place holder for a more basic skill being learned. Why not learn to write paragraphs or make a diorama in the context of one of humanity's longest lasting and most controversial institutions?

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100
main reply
2 votes,
Mar 27, 2015

The constitution expressly forbids government from getting involved in religion. If you look at the Arab world you see how great a strength this turns out to be. People are free to exercise any religion and not have to fall into the framework of just protestant Christianity. Most churches offer religious school of some sort and that is where the religion should be taught; who better than those who share the same faith as the parents. To cover all religions the class would have to be too broad and it would upset the parents as well as confuse the kids. It is better for the parents and their own church to be the source of religious education. I myself am an atheist, but I would want my children raised in a religion simply for the moral foundation it establishes. Then when they are in high school I would expose them to my own ideas and let them decide to continue their own religious education or not. By then the moral framework has already been established.

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100
2 votes,
Mar 27, 2015

I think people over-read the Establishment Clause.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion..."

Simply, this reflects Congress implementing a "state religion" and imposing said state religion on citizens, who are free to engage in their religion as they see fit. If a religion class in school is completely optional, then it stands to reason this, in no way, reflects any imposition of a religion being taught and promoted by the state.

I see significant value in teaching about world religions to those who are interested. There is a lot value, socially, in understanding other people's cultures and beliefs, often wrapped up in religion. For example, what does the average American know about Islam? I'm guessing that knowledge comes mostly from news networks that act as the propaganda arms of the respective political parties. Teaching kids about religions, what their tenets are, the cultural practices, etc, opens a door for individuals to assess the media/talking head interpretations skeptically. That can't be a bad thing.

Furthermore, this is entirely doable in a single class. You're not going to spend so much time digging down to the nuanced details of every religion, but you can certainly hit the major ones in a single semester. You state above, " Most churches offer religious school of some sort and that is where the religion should be taught; who better than those who share the same faith as the parents." This results in the problem we have already: children indoctrinated into a faith because it's what their parents believe. An optional "world religions" course at the high school level would introduce children to more critical thinking about their own religious beliefs and moral codes. Discourse is far better than indoctrination.

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100
2 votes,
Mar 27, 2015

I agree. In a perfect world, schools would teach the basics of all religions, so that students wouldn't be brainwashed into thinking they're something that they aren't.

But it wouldn't work that way. Discussing all religions would take too much time and there would undoubtedly be cases of specific teachers bringing their own agendas into the classroom.

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100
1 vote,
Mar 27, 2015

I don't think a broad overview of religion taught in the context of history or even alone as a comparative religion class would be too broad or confuse the kids. I have no doubt that it would upset some parents because when religions are examined objectively, side by side, you see the commonalities in that so many different people believe the same things. You learn that Christian, Jews, and Muslims worship the same god. You learn that religion is not nearly as divisive as its adherents would have you believe. Nothing moves a kid indoctrinated in one religion toward agnosticism faster than learning the truth about other religions.

In practice this would be hard to do well. Teachers would come to the class with their own agendas and use subtle, possibly even unintentional, shading to mock religions other than their own. If the class was taught by an objective, non-evangelical atheist, it would probably be very good for the kids, but there's a lot of room for this to go astray.

Still, I don't see any Constitutional issue with teaching facts about religion in the context of history or simply as a comparative study. The problem to date with religions persisting so long has been that we've left this to the parents, and too many children accept what their parents teach them as truth. As a society, we're better off with a school system that doesn't leave science and math and grammar up to to the parents, and I believe the same holds true for the facts about religions.

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100
main reply
1 vote,
Mar 27, 2015

Teaching our children about religion, all religions, in a historical context should be mandatory, not optional. In the course of my public education I had a course on Greek Mythology. May have included some Nordic Mythology. In many ways this course was important. At least it can me a base of knowledge for many literary references. Yet somehow I came out of it without desiring to offer sacrifices to Zeus (Visiting the Oracle at Delphi is a different story). Presenting all religions, not just current religions, in the context of differing and/or similar beliefs in the origins of the Earth and Man, corresponding story arcs and characters, and how different cultures have been shaped by these beliefs can only be beneficial (IMHO). Maybe we should throw in Science and Evolution also.

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0
User voted Yes.
0 votes,
Apr 2, 2015

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" That is the sum total of what the First Amendment says about religion. It doesn't say you can't learn about the various religions in school; it simply says that Congress can't establish a state religion, and it can't prevent you from exercising your religious rights, which by abstraction would also mean Congress can't prevent you from choosing not to be part of a religion.

If we taught only one religion in all public schools, that could be interpreted as an establishment of a religion, or religious indoctrination. But if you want to teach about the many religions of the world, well, we sort of already do. How can you write about European history and not mention the influence of the Catholic church or the Protestant Reformation? How can you talk about the early American Colonists without mentioning that one of the motivations for coming here was to escape the oppression of the Church of England and the many nations who imposed the Catholic faith as the state religion? And how can you gain a real understanding of these conflicts without understanding where these faiths disagreed with each other? But we need to do more.

When I went to school we didn't learn anything about the Muslim or Hindu faiths. In college, I remember learning a little bit about Native American religions, and a little about the Mayans and Aztecs, but that was it. And we need to learn about atheism too. Religion is integral to culture and culture is integral to history, particularly where cultures come into conflict with each other. Learning about religion is crucial to understanding our past, but also to understanding our present and to learning to get along with each other in the future. This not understanding of other people's religious beliefs, or their atheism as the case may be, is often what brings us into conflict with each other. Christians and Muslims look at each other as "us" and "them," and atheists have an "us" and "them" relationship with all religions. And to nmb 93, if you "take solace in [religion's] inevitable decline," I dare say you have a lot to learn about both history and religion. Religion will always be with us. Let us embrace the knowledge of all religions and of atheists so we can all better understand each other and thereby get along better with each other.

Many of you have brought up the issue of teacher bias with regard to teaching religion. That is an important concern, but bias also exists in the teaching of history class and government class. If you go on to college, you'll find bias in your philosophy and psychology classes too. And on the cutting edge of science, there will be professors who gravitate toward one theory more than another, until such time as data disproves one or both theories. That doesn't mean we should eliminate the teaching of any of those subjects. We simply need to learn to recognize bias and limit it as best we can. Hopefully, we will all pursue knowledge of religion beyond one class in high school, either by taking college classes in the subject, or independent reading, or both, thereby countering the bias of one teacher/author with the biases of others, and eventually formulating our own opinions.

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50
main reply
2 votes,
Mar 27, 2015

Absolutely not. It is totally up to the parents. It can be mentioned in history class where it can be taught that many of man's inhumanity to man has a basis in religion. Students who want to know more can be referred to the religious institution of their choice.

Teaching religion in school would be a major breech of the constitution in many countries including the USA.

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100
2 votes,
Mar 27, 2015

History of the western world (I mean Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia) is inseparable from religion. You literally cannot teach a large portion of ancient history without covering the basics of the religions involved and their involvement in the politics of the time.

But beyond that, it's a bad idea.

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