Religion in Schools?

I don't think public money should go to teaching people religon. If it's a private school that hasn't been paid for in any way by the government then they're more than welcome to do it. I support the right to read the Bible and pray in school but never should it become part of the curriculum.
 
I think that is a tad extreme. Compulsory education ought to be abolished because it violates freedom from speech. But public education, if boiled down to education about the laws of the country, is fine - such an education system would make knowledge of the law easily accessible, so ignorance of the law would be no excuse. Public education in its current form, however, is a bloated machine designed to mould children into what the ruling elites would have them be.
 
Nah, not a unitarian. As for myself, I tend to kinda recoil against anything so organized as the unitarian movement... a product of my own fear of any organized faith. But then, I'm kinda psycho like that.

But back to the schools issue:

This issue is actually probably one of the easiest topics for me to launch into... I sincerely believe that education in childhood sets the stage for the entire rest of a person's life.

So if a person is kept away from certain ideas, certain ideologies... that person will be afraid of those things for the rest of his life.

Take guns, for example. The people who are the most afraid of guns, and the people who are the most irresponsible with them, are the people who've had the least exposure to them, and the least formal training. My solution: gun safety, taught in grade-school, right alongside sex ed and driver's training.

Seems the reasonable way to go, if you ask me.
 
Noooooooooooooooo, Bubby, History ain't no stinkin' science. It is a very biased philosophical look at the past through the narrow eyes of a particular observer.

Just note the current festering in the department of history over "revisionist history," which has generated any number of hissyfits amongst the graying and balding noodles of the primarily white male historians simply because current and upcoming historians dare to discuss the roles of women and minorities in various historical epochs.

It is really hard to get a good grip on what hapened in the past. You need to look at about 100 different variations on what happened in the past to get a reasonable look at the truth. And, that sure ain't science.
 
I would agree with Justine that college is where classes such as you mention should be available. It took a class titled "Anthropology of Religion" there myself.
 
Public schools shouldn't even exist, in my opinion, and should be replaced by vouchers for private education. Private schools should be allowed to teach what they please.
 
I voted yes...but some clarification is in order. I believe "study of all known religions" should be taught. No religion should be taught except to point out the different basic beliefs and doctrine of each religion. Perhaps a matrix chart would be helpful.

There should be no favoritism or unbalance of time spent on any one religion. It would be more like an informative study without any requirements to believe one way or the other.

I've posted this without reading all the previous posts. I'm going back now and see how many of you have similar thoughts.
 
Where are you? I did not think there were any true democracies in action. In a democracy the citizens would vote on EVERYTHING. Most democratic countries are Republics - the people elect representatives who do the law making/voting.
 
I'm not one to determine exactly what should be presented. I just favor presenting information regarding the beliefs of various religions. I think I outlined a simplistic matrix in a previous thread.
 
It is not up to the schools to teach religion, it is up to the parents. Besides, do you know how many religions there are out there??? You would have to learn about every single one, because you could not be biased, and you would have to be fair. Now where would you squeeze in all the extra time in learning religion :confused: Would you cut time from Math???History???English???

It might sound like a good idea to some, but most people have strong beliefs in their religions, and would not take lightly their child being taught differnt things.....
 
At most, the only extent to which schools should teach religion is in the sense of "This is what Christians believe, this is what Muslims believe, etc. you don't have to agree it's just what THEY believe." That is, inform students about the existence of these religions.

However, they should not teach religion in the sense of, "The Bible says this, so it's a fact, and you have to believe, and we'll test you on it and if you don't agree you get an F."
 
State education is actually one of the chief factors keeping the poor poor. State education in itself is a bastion of State-forced inequality - in state schools, the government ranks students as superior or inferior with grades. Under public education, the poor child is ranked by the rich man's standarRAB. The "successful" are merely those individuals who possess the traits valued by the ruling elites - the "unsuccessful" are those who do not. Public schools are not agencies of equality; they are agencies of aristocracy.

The real way to liberate the poor is to allow for free and equal access to uncultivated lanRAB, not to keep them contained in prison-like schools and stifle all traits not valuable to the ruling elites.
 
I am actually very unhappy with the state of public schools as you know if you'd read my posts. The point I was replying to there was "School should be for the people that can pay for it only." Obviously if the poor can't pay for school they can't get educated and that defeats the purpose of a capitalist country. I don't mind private schools, as long as everyone is at least able to go to a school, that's fine.
 
Vouchers won't pay the full price of private schools.

Are you to ignore the need for educating the people who cannot afford private schooling?
 
Footnote to past post:

If you did an experiment 100 times that produced 100 different results and then did a statistical smoothing out of the results, um, would that be science?
 
It looks like a few of us are thinking along the same lines.

Religious anthropology is close to what I mean. Religious indoctrination is far from it. My proposed course would not encourage anyone to believe any particular thing...it would just enlighten them as to what others believe.

For example, I would make it a sociology class and have more printed materials than lectures. The instructor would merely pass out the literature that would include answers to FAQ about religion. Each question would be followed an answer from each religion.

Example:
What fooRAB are prohibited by religions?
Christian-none
*Catholic-meat on Friday
*Baptist-alcohol :xangel:
Judaism-pork
Muslim-pork
Hindu-cows
...
...
...
...

(This is purely a simplified example. I don't know the correct answers to any of them. I just know it's a lot more complicated than I present here.)
 
I agree with everyone here saying that we should teach that it's what they believe, not that it's true. And that is currently what they do. I'm currently in high school and we've been taught about religion. In History we had to compare the religion of the Native Americans to Creationism. We learned about the Jewish religion while reading "The Chosen". As long as it's presented as "this is what they believe" and so on, I don't have a problem.

And it would not be practical to teach every single religion because there are so many of them. You could do the major ones, but then there'd be the minor religions crying for schools to teach them. Plus many people believe things (this would be a religion) that aren't an organized set of beliefs, just what they believe. I don't mind being taught about religion as long as it's not "there is a god" "if you don't be good you're going to hell" etc.

But the school system goes a little too far. They play the pledge every day saying we are "under god". This is not a teacher or even one person, but the government saying we are "under god". That is totally wrong I think. (see the pledge forum on this poll thread for more)
 
I agree it should be taught, though with checks. I remember my old RE teacher:

'So kiRAB that was what Muslims believe. Of course they are all heretical scum who will burn in hell when GoRAB righteous wrath casts them into the lake of fire, but it's important you know what they believe. Tomorrow: how to burn Buddhists at the stake...'

Ok so I exaggerate slightly, but my point is that I think an impartial RE teacher is very difficult to come by. They have to be interested in religion in the first place to want to teach it, and that nearly always means that they are going to be religious themselves, and hence rather biased one way or the other.
 
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