I had a student in summer school once who had already failed ninth grade English once and was taking it again. By the end of the summer session, he still could not write his name and address. Obviously, he couldn’t do any of the other assignments either. Outside testing was not available to me.
I had no choice but to give him an F on his report card. The principal reviewed the grades first and called me to his office. He said that since this student had already failed ninth grade English once, we should see how he did in tenth grade English. He asked me no questions about the student at all.
In another school, the guidance counselor changed failing grades at her pleasure. That was strictly against the policy of the Board of Education.
In another school, I was required to report one senior English student as absent every day although I knew exactly where she was. She was hanging out in the office of the assistant principal that I was reporting to. I gave her an F. Her grade was changed.
I’m a little confused by what you said. Are you saying that teachers can teach religion in a dispassionate way but they will refuse to? Why would it be necessary to bring in out-of-state teachers to teach objective classes in religion? Are there states without objective teachers? Are there states without liberal teachers?
I’m saying that there are places in this country where fundies are always trying to teach creationism and push Christian prayer in school, and the teachers go along, either out of fear or because they are fundies themselves. On a regular basis I read news stories about schools that try to push prayer, harass kids who are of the “wrong” religion or no religion, and push creationism under one name or another. I cannot imagine such places even trying to teach a class on religion objectively, much less succeeding.
Religious Education is part of the National Curriculum in the UK (the curriculum that is followed in all State and Voluntary Aided schools (i.e. Faith Schools), but not private schools), from ages 5 to 19. RE in the UK.
I went to Roman Catholic primary and secondary schools before the National Curriculum came into effect, RE was a compulsory subject and whilst it was most definitely RC-centric, it did a great deal of comparitive work and we learnt about all the major modern faiths and some ancient ones (Roman, Norse and Greek). The only thing that wasn’t at the time covered was Atheism, which is a shame.
The syllabus for post-16 education now contains:
[ul]
[li]Principal religions of the world, including Christianity[/li][li]Development of earlier study of Christianity[/li][li]Development of earlier study of a world religion[/li][li]Introduction to world religion(s) not studied previously[/li][li]Orthodoxy and heresy[/li]
[li]Traditional and contemporary Christian Theologies[/li][list]
[li]Eastern Orthodox[/li][li]Protestant[/li][li]Roman Catholic[/li][/ul]
[li]Philosophy of Religion[/li][ul]
[li]Existence of God[/li][li]Problem of Evil[/li][li]Death and the after-life[/li][li]Religious language[/li][li]Religious Knowledge[/li][/ul]
[li]Sacred texts[/li][ul]
[li]The study of a sacred text in its original language[/li][li]The use of the reliability and authenticity of sacred texts[/li][li]Ways of interpreting sacred texts[/li][/ul]
[li]Aspects of religious life[/li][ul]
[li]Nature of religious discipleship and experience[/li][li]Prayer in world religions[/li][li]Mysticism in world religions[/li][li]Monastic lives and other forms of asceticism[/li][/ul]
[li]Religion and Ethics[/li][ul]
[li]Ethical principles[/li][li]Utilitarianism[/li][li]Situation ethics[/li][li]Medical ethics[/li][/ul]
[li]Religion and Science[/li][ul]
[li]The relationship between religion and science[/li][li]Origins and creation[/li][li]The nature of miracles[/li][li]Uses of language in science and religion[/li][/ul]
[li]Other aspects of religion[/li][ul]
[li]Religion and psychology[/li][li]Religion and politics[/li][li]Religion as a force for division or healing[/li][li]Religion and the arts[/li][/ul][/list]
So I definitely think that religion can be taught in schools without it being an indoctrination into the faith of the teacher. It needs careful guidance, and professional curricula design, but then that applies to all subjects.
Please. Mainstream Christianity IS internally inconsistent. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. Jesus was quite clear about there being no divorce and about rich people going to Hell. If they’re going to ignore the unambiguous langauge of their central holy figure then their religion is by definition a self-invalidating contradictory mess. But ignorning the obvious is central to every kind of faith not merely religious.
Thing is, this was in the UK. From everything I’ve heard, the UK doesn’t have nearly the problem with Christian fundamentalism pushing itself into everything that we have.
You must have studied at the badchad school of biblical non interpretation. This looks like a thesis from “My Opinion is Obviously Correct 101” It is worthy of a BS degree for sure.
A decent knowledge of history and civics would include a basic knowledge of the worlds major religions. Which is what the OP is about. Nobody is arguing that other education issues aren’t important. Studying the basics of the worlds most influential religions would also further students reading and writing skills as well.
This is also a different statement than your original post.
In order to make this assertion, you need (as cosmosdan has indicated), to be able to prove that scripture is the source of belief. (Hint: it is not.) I have already noted that one may find and indicate that there are discrepancies between what one may read in the scriptures when compared with the theology of different denominations. That is a perfectly legitimate observation–and one which can probably be made about all religious systems, making your specific objection to Christianity a bit odd. You, however, insist on claiming that the various denominations (which you erroneously describe as though they were monolithic), are internally inconsistent to their expressed beliefs. That is a different claim than that their several beliefs may not align perfectly with the scriptures (which each group interprets differently).
This is a prize example of the sort of thing Orwell referred to as doublethink. You say that scripture is not the source of faith. Right, but should a faith blatantly contradict its own main holy figure as written in its holy book? The demoninations that allow divorce and don’t threaten rich people with Hell are still ignoring the explicit words of their central prophet. Therefore, the demoninations in question are either treating Jesus’s actual words as so much applesauce or implying that He either never said those thing or that he didn’t mean them. In other words, a lot of His words and the words of scripture are BS.
And your statement that I describe denominations as monolithic is completel bullshit. Go beat up some other straw man, Sonny. What I am saying is that all demoninations have the same basic problem: If they believe everythying the Bible says then Christianity is a flat-out barbaric relgion that preaches love but culminates in torture for everyone except the true believers. If it picks and chooses or otherwise “interperets” the Bible so as to allow things that are explicitly and even memorably forbidden, it is implicitly allowing that its holy book and central prophet are at least partially full of hooey.
As an experiment let’s look at an example from Mark 10 regarding what Jesus has to say about divorce:
11 "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.
12 “And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
And, of course, everyone knows the commandment which goes “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Now, I say that any denomination which allows divorce is being internally inconsistent with the Bible. What I need for you to do is explain, how a denomination’s allowal of divorce is actually consistent. If you can pull that one off, I think you may have a case. If you can’t then you’ll have helped prove my point. And remember it’s got to make sense.
Which is why over and over I’ve referred to how it would be unworkable in many places, because the people there would never allow anything but religious indoctrination for their particular sect. If you grew up in a less fanatic area, that’s just good luck on your part. In fact, IIRC one of the major reasons for founding the Catholic school system you seem to approve of was that the Catholics of the time were subjected to Protestant religious indoctrination in the schools of the time.
You pick the word “blatant” and you put the interpretation on what should and should not be accepted. That is your problem, not that of the religions you hope to condemn. Anyone with a knowledge of the development of scripture (aside from those limited groups of biblical literalists (Christian and atheist) who have arisen in the past 200 years), is aware of many contradictions and many discrepancies between belief and scripture. Your claim was that the religions were internally inconsistent, but you can only support that claim by imposing your interpretation on how you believe they should read scripture. You need to be posting this on a board populated by likeminded biblical literalists, not in a place where people are aware of the disparate sources and uses of scripture.
And if you are going to use rather silly phrases such as “Christianity is” while ignoring significant differences among the various Christian groups, then my accusation that you are treating them monolithically is accurate, not a strawman.
You seem to be saying that any religious school is not going to be able to present an unbiased, or balanced education, especially when it comes to world culture and other religions. IF that’s not what you’re saying, I appologize.
We had a course just like this in high school back in the early 70s. It was designed to give students an awareness of various religions without endorsing any of them. I would hope they’re still teaching this unit today.
I accept your apology, since that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that the people in much of the United States are so dominated by fundamentalism that they are neither willing or able to teach about religion objectively, whether the school in question is offically religious or not. As I said, IIRC the Catholic system was set up in part because the “non-religious” schools of the time were so religiously biased. A Catholic school run by tolerant, reasonable people is going to teach more objectively than a “secular” school where Jews get beat up during Christmas season and students are harassed and terrorized into “voluntary” prayer.
So, you are admitting that you really have no idea what you are talking about, but you think you can make some sort of point by playing games with a literal expression of scripture when the entire point that you miss is that it has never been used that way, and thus has no reason to be used that way, now.
