Makes sense to teach the basics of most popular religions and those locally/culturally relevant. It’s just useful information. Helps in understanding other people.
Here’s how it goes down:
Do you want to teach various creation myths and explanatory myths? That stuff goes into cultural anthropology, or if there’s enough of it, such as Hellenic mythology, then a literature class, but then it’s cross referenced with the values of the age. No-one wants their modern religion taught as mythology right next to others that are regarded as ancient superstition.
Do you want to teach existential questions and morality? Awesome! We have entire school departments dedicated to philosophy. Typically 101 is an intro to existentialism and 102 is an intro into morality. And both of them move beyond religion in the very first chapter. The thing is, religions assert their positions on why are we here? and are property rights evil by mere assertion. Ministries say we have the authority, and you obey. and might even back their position up by scripture. But none of this really answers either why or how we know and even Descartes (a devout follower of the Church) couldn’t find a sufficient answer to his own evil demon except to assume by God is good by default (rather than God being a construct by which a corrupt Church might manipulate their flock). Religion turns out to be a starting point for our purpose, the point of everything and right and wrong, but where we end up after the enlightenment is far beyond the apologists.
I don’t even know what the basics of christianity are anymore. Do you teach it is a monotheistic religion or a polytheistic religion that changed its mind. Do you teach it as them believing humanity stemmed from adam and eve, or adam and eve were the first christians and their 3 sons were to spread the beliefs but acknowledge that humans already existed on earth created by other gods/means. You break bread and it is literally the body of a man, or figuratively. 40,000 versions of christianity that found reasons to not be the same sects. So I suppose you teach a historical touching of how it has changed but by no means could you teach the concepts of Jesus before highschool without upsetting parents these days, even then. Imagine the response to forgiving all drug users, imprisonment being wrong, not having any spending money, etc. Angry parents pissed off claiming schools are teaching Jesus was “some sort of communist.” Was banking not against christian law as well, as you could not ask for interest and such as a true christian would have given it to you without expectation?
That’s how they did it at my college in the Netherlands, which has ‘Christian’ in the name but really isn’t religious at all.
You basically got a primer on the big religions as well as some of the fringes. This was part of my journalism degree. I am fully atheist but honestly didn’t mind since it was just factual information.
They also encouraged us to at least once visit a church, synagogue, mosque, etc. The ONLY one they didn’t want us touching was Scientology after they had some negative experiences in prior years.
okay but the problem with teaching pretty much anything in schools is that the kids don’t care, they don’t want to be there, they don’t care about the subject matter, and how are you going to fit all of the world’s religions into an elementary school class? And expect the kids to care or comprehend it?
I vaguely remember the Mormons briefly being mentioned in a history textbook in high school. maybe one paragraph in the whole textbook. It barely scratched the surface and I would not have remembered it at all if the Mormons hadn’t sucked me in & warped my brain for a decade in my 20s.
In Quebec we have a course like that in grade 4 of high school (~15 years old). I certaintly didn’t care, hated everything religious back then. But now if you ask me what the Torah is, somehow I remember it’s the Jewish bible.
It wasn’t about “all the world’s religions” really, but only the big 5, which we’d spend a fifth of the school year on each. I’d say that’s acceptable and despite being an atheist, I’m still glad I got that course. Now if we could have had an economy course instead of poetry…
My issue with this, is, how do you teach non-religion?
How do you approach telling the majority that their faith is just as valid as another- incliding the lack of it?
It’s better to just not even try, especially in this environment.
Comparative Religion has been an academic subject for centuries as has Religious History. It’s not hard.
Alright. Go show me how not hard it is. Teach these kids.
It’s not difficult when the kids are respectful and the parents aren’t running for the torches and pitchforks.
When the parents are actively trying to get you fired for so much as mentioning something other than their hyper-specific brand of whatever, it becomes dramatically less “not hard”.
The simple solution is to remove it all. Particularly because it’s extremely unlikely that the poorly represented faiths and religions are going to be accurately taught or understood by an elementary school teacher who may not even be able to read or write
Here in Sweden I had a mandatory religious class. They teaced about Hindu, Buddhism, Christianity and so on. We pretty much learned of all the “major” religions and i would say it was pretty beneficial to us all. Did it have shortcomings? Yes, but it was better to get a broad perspective on things instead of just one thing to be teached as “true”. We also had history parallel with religion which tied them both together pretty nicely.
I would say that it is probably one of the reasons. Another is that you are just not thaught about religion as a way of living and more just like any other subject like physics or history. It’s more of a objective look at it and what makes up that religion. Like, Hinduism believes a and therefore does b while Christianity believes c and therefore does d and so on.
It also helps not being raised by religious people of course.
Nope, never heard of them. Like I said, it had its problems but I guess you can’t cover everything.
That’s what we did at my Highschool. Our prof taught us about various religion, including Lavey’s Satanism.
I’m from the Midwest and I took AP World History which included learning about: Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity (origins, Catholicism and the Reformation), Islam, Buddhism (& Zen Buddhism), and Taoism. Non-AP world history students would’ve also covered some of those too. And this was a public high school.
Grew up in the UU (Unitarian Universalist) Church and I’m eternally grateful that this was the religious education they offered.
It originated from Judeo-Christian ideology (Unitarian as in rejection of the Trinity and Universalist as in everybody is saved), but it encompasses all (benevolent) forms of belief and non-belief now. Super religious or atheist, as long as you practice not being an asshole to the best of your ability, you’re welcome.
I agree. Also if someone wants to be religious, they should know about all the options out there and decide what fits their views best instead of being railroaded into the religion of their family.
It’s like being born into a Republican family and never being exposed to the views of democrats, you just always vote Republican because it’s what your family has told you is the way to do it.
Honestly I’ve been ok with religions so long as the people who believe don’t equate religious =good. Being moral should always be more than just believing someone will punish you for being bad. the reason religions have hells is to motivate people to be good people. Not to be the definition of morality. And sadly a lot of religious people forget that. What you pray to should effectively just be your culture. Like your choice of clothes or the songs you listen to. Zealoty is the only reason I’m not religious myself.
I demand all school children submit to Zeus.
Spoiler, they’re the same God. Kinda mirrors the trio of current religions we got going…
As a reformed 2nd caucus of 1297 latter day zeusian, how dare you lump me in with them.
But unlike Yahweh and Allah, Zeus and Jupiter were originally similar but separate deities before the Romans identified their gods with the ancient Greek ones.
Where I live you can choose between a mainsteam religion or ethics class.
Since my parents didn’t have to decide it I always choosed ethics, in order to don’t have to deal with hyper religios teachers, who only belive in “the one true religion”, in the end I had to deal with them anyway
