As a recovering catholic who endured 12 years of indoctrination, I am completely against forcing anyone’s religious beliefs on children.
How about this: come up with a curriculum that would give an overview of all religions, belief systems, mythologies, gods, devils, angels and demons? And of course there would have to be sections on doubters and nonbelievers.
I’m thinking at least children would have a chance to compare and perhaps realize they are all the same: a sales pitch to insure control over the masses.
LMAO! That cat makes my day.
This is a strange situation that likely depends on your geographic location. I don't think that the humanities are the enemy of the hard sciences. Especially in academic circles. (My sympathies on 12 years of indoctrination. You must have an inner strength of steel. That sounds rough.)
From what I can tell, it's better to have (in this case, religions) in an "academic" circle than at "home." At least you get a better chance of broader exposure to different ideas and without the auspicious overtones. In Europe and Australia where religion is a given, nobody attends churches/mosques. In the US, where it is verboten outside of private schools, there is a strong radicalized religious culture in certain areas.
I will echo the other minds who have already said, "teaching the history of religions," whether you call it social studies or the humanities, would probably be the most popular with students and the best way to shed light on the sham of religions.
Once you know how to identify iconography/propaganda/smoke and mirrors, you can't not see it.
This gets into the weeds of many educational systems. When is knowledge a luxury? There are only so many hours/staff in a school day. If it's not going to be on a standardized test, for most students in the world now, you probably won't have to worry about it being taught.
There is no academically accepted parameter for differentiation of a religion vs. a mythology. If more people understood that, the world might be a little kinder place to be.
Teach ALL religions from an objective viewpoint.
When scamgelicals talk about freedom of religion, what they mean is really he "right" to preach their religion and shut out any othrers (and, of course, to discriminate).
If you're not familiar with Mrs Betty Bowers on youtube, look her up.
Teach ALL religions from an objective viewpoint.
Nobody would ever graduate.
Last I heard, 500 different recognized major religions. Thousand more unrecognized religions, including my sham The Last Temple of the Great Black Muffin Mistress. It says God hates all of us.
I came up with it so when the fundamentalists start quoting scripture at me, I could quote my scripture (High Holy Book of Whoppie) back at them. Sure, let'em find a copy and quote it back to me.
The only answer to this is to teach all religions. Either you teach all, or teach none. Educators know this. Others who fight for America being a "nation of god" do not. Also, the Constitution has nothing to do with it. Arguments of what part of the world you are in mean nothing. People of various religions may go to your school but it does not mean you will teach them only of Baptists or Evangelicals.
This gets worse when people start thinking that we need to teach religion in public schools because they want kids to be taught "both sides of the controversy." I ask what controversy? Suddenly you think science which can back itself up should give way to religion which absolutely cannot. This is what you have all of your different churches and mosques for. If this is what you want, take your kids to church.
That would be a really long class. I mean how many do you teach? Even an overview of the basics Christian, Islam, Buddist, Taoism etc, would take a while. That`s without even touching on sects and splinter groups baptist, anabaptist, 7-day Adventist shoot it would take me all day to type them.
Then you have bios. My daughter attended a Catholic college where they had to teach all religions (our laws are different than yours). She said it was like "Here they all are but ours is the only real one"
I’m all for it. My first serious doubts came in the 3rd grade when we studied the Eskimo culture and I realized that had I been born there I would have believed their religion. My immediate response was to feel thankful I had been born into the “true religion”, but soon I had the disturbing realization: If I had been born there I would be thankful I had been born into that “true religion.”
Religion is a subject like any other, It should be taught in schools but pupils should be taught about them and not told to believe, indoctrination has no part in education.
Unless you go to a Catholic School, all State secondary schools in the UK teach RE as a comparative subject, and even in the RC schools, comparative religion is taught as a subject alongside their normal Catholic ethos, due to them having to follow the National Curriculum.. It’s often seen as an easy or soft subject to choose at “A level” and is quite popular for that reason.
Sounds good.
A friend has two kids that went to HS in town and took the religion class. The class covered many religious. As a result, according to the older son, by the end of the class in addition to himself, all the classmates had become atheists.
As a former teacher, I've long felt that teaching the history of religions (not religious history) in the public schools as a secular, comparative (similarities and uniquenesses) examination, might actually open the eyes of many.