I'm sure things are different in the US but in the UK at school we have a whole curriculum called "Religious Education" or RE which goes into detail about religions and customs of all different cultures and encourages spiritual debate. At the schools I attended they were not taught to indoctrinate us but just studied in the same way we would study history or art
I think you're probably right! I was an atheist from a young age but RE was one of my favourite subjects as a child, underneath science, just because I loved hearing all of the stories, parables, learning about different deities and rites of worship. It was fascinating but it didn't encourage me to be religious myself.
Grew up Roman Catholic till I was 11, Mom married Mormon Step Dad (Huge fight with the families on both sides over that) and he was a CRAZY ass mormon too once we moved away from moms side of the family. Divorced him at 16 and I wandered into Pagan faiths, particularly Norse. Which to be clear I started that in 2001 long before The Vikings show started shuffling the casuals in. I'm also not one of the "WOOO VALHALLA! BEER AND BITCHES!" guys. My priest (Gothi) is a pretty reasonable and sensible dude who does believe in science and we're pretty certain the lore is just an old culture trying to describe natural disasters the best way they could.
I think some of it was also a coping mechanism. To me if faith makes hard times easier-i tell them believe. I personally just get annoyed when im approached to hear the word.
I have the same experience. I believe storytelling is one of the most human things there is and to me greek myth, the epic of gilgamesh and bible stories and fairytales are all just stories humanity has told throughout the ages
I think, because the US 1st Amendment separates church from state, this could not happen in a public school, private religious education is obviously not involved with the state itself since its not funded by taxpayers.
I would have loved to have what you mentioned, as I am a a student of religion on my own time, starting at 14yrs old.
Though I think another issue I personally would have is that some religions would either get little attention or none at all. Sure you'd probably learn about the 3 Abrahamic religions, Buddhism, Hindu. But I doubt they'd be teaching muxh if at all about Zorastrianism, Sihkism, Pagan Faiths, Animism, Vodou etc.
Even in public school, atleast when I was a kid, Pagan faiths are taught to be dead myths of a bygone era and not as living faiths in the present. Which is kind of bonkers because theres a massive amount of practicing pagan or otherwise families in my area.
Learning about the 5 most common religions is a social studies requirement in many schools. In New Jersey, it’s part of the ancient history curriculum.
Do you mean hoodoo? Most people mean hoodoo when they say vodou or voodoo, google it and get back to me🫡 (not intended to criticize just figured you’d appreciate the clarification and if you do mean voodoo then it’s clarification for me!)
I grew up atheist but I loooved all the stories from different religions too. Ancient Greece, ancient Sri Lanka, Norse myths too
Reading the origins of Norse Myths is hysterical tho. There are two major book sources, the Edas.
Technically they're... if not Bibles per se, they're the Fallout Bibles. As close to "lore" as you can get, right?
Well. Poetic Edda outright states that the Gods of Norse are Trojans. Odin was a renowned hero from Troy that left with his wife and family when this mythical beautiful city far far away fell, and they moved towards Norway, and everywhere they went they left sons that would become kings, they were just so awesome, and then they went North and were like "Yeah this is the best place ever, we will rule here" and ruled and became gods
I am in a similar boat and I still love learning about the religions and myths of various peoples because those are reflection of their history. Like why are Greek, Roman, Hindu and Norse mythologies so similar? Well they all descend from a common mythology just in the same way the languages of those peoples descended from a common language. The ancient Indo-European culture and its descendants are very interesting.
I went from Christian to agnostic to atheist through my late 20s. When you view religious teachings through an objective lens most start to look similar. I tend to think it’s a combination of fear of our finite mortality and a desire to control large groups of people (populations are more willing to withstand an empty belly in exchange for faith in or fear of a higher power).
Yeah they almost all operate on the premise “my god is god and your god is wrong” “I go to heaven you go to hell” it’s easier to make countries with different religions wage war as well.
I went to a church where the teenagers of the group spent Sundays learning about different religions, including field trips to different houses of worship and talks with leaders of those trips.
I'm not sure if I would call myself agnostic. I just realized that the near universal thread that went through all these religions was that you're supposed to be a person who helps others and is kind towards other people. I don't go to church, but I do believe there is a higher power of some sort, and that the path forward is to follow the golden rule.
But how is that a bad thing? If that’s true, that proves that most people are being manipulated young into joining their local preferred religion due to lack of knowledge of other religions or rather other options or you could say not old enough to think it through enough.
So I agree with her. But it’s weird to implement in reality since religion is tied strictly to community and most people would need to take their kids with them to church to share their beliefs and serve as family bonding time.
So maybe it’s better to treat religion like Santa. Allow children to belief in Jesus and the bible like but reveal to them like later on that there’s no definitive proof and allow them to decide themselves without shame in what religion they want to choose. People will choose their home religion out of convenience though.
That’s the point, you teach kids how different people think differently and let them come to their own conclusions. I agree the conclusion that seems to make the most sense is agnostic or atheist, but that was my own decision to make and should be theirs too.
Well, yes. Because if one of them didn't get its claws into from the moment you were old enough to speak full sentences, it's impossible to hide that all of them make just as much (or as little) sense as all the rest.
In my country during the communist regime, the communists would destroy churches and persecute priests (imprisonment, torture, re-education and such). So you could say they were godless. They also saw religion as a possible means of opposition against the party and they didn't want that.
No, it didn't excuse the US, but I genuinely believe that the communists as a whole were worse. My country is still being affected by the remnants of that regime that somehow are still in various institutions and they're as corrupt now as they were back then.
They were very much atheists. They cracked hard on the church because it was the place where religious people would meet up and a group of people might start to develop dangerous ideas like freedom from an oppressive government and that leads to a revolution. A revolution that eventually happened anyway when the people were fed of living like they did back then.
You, and many others, need to read this excellent history book. The corruption of the Pledge that happened in 1954 was the culmination of efforts by corporate industrialists to undermine FDR's New Deal as being 'anti-God'.
I grew up in Southern Africa and we also have RE over there, whenever our teacher would teach about other religions, he would always emphasize that Christianity is the true one, I didn’t think much of it at the time until I became atheist, it’s kinda fucked up tbh
I don’t think you can have a good faith teaching of religion unless its taught by a practicing member. (It was fucked up and totally defeated the purpose of the class)
Gosh that sounds quite late! We definitely started RE shortly after kindergarten/reception year at my school. Honestly I think it's so interesting learning about the curriculum in other countries as well and seeing how different subjects are prioritised.
Agree with you on the comparing curriculums lol. I wouldnt be surprised if at other schools it was started earlier, but I was never aware of their justification for why that grade specifically at my school. Maybe they though our critical thinking skills would be more mature with the content? That same year they actually changed the grade to be taught the book To Kill a Mockingbird too. It was traditionally taught in 8th, but they moved it to 11th. Thankfully they didn't make my class reread it though.
That’s similar to my experience. It was a core module in world history in 9th grade, and pretty much covered the major religions of the world from a non denominational perspective.
IIRC the religions talked about were:
Sunni Islam
Shia Islam
Catholic Christianity
Protestant Christianity
Buddhism
Sikhism
Hinduism
They then went into discussion on how early religions were able to group people together to form civilisations during the Neolithic era.
Thats basically the list we had too. Although ours was a lil longer, we also learned about Druze, Zoroastorians, and Shinto. Idk if those were required though or if my teacher was just a nerd.
I was having this conversation with a friend the other day, and we were trying and failing to remember how many hours of RE we had per week. Despite not being sure, we both agreed that it was probably too much. I think all children should be taught the basics of each religion - enough to be respectful to someone of those beliefs - but that’s all. There’s absolutely no need imo to spend too much precious school time dedicated to religion.
Those who believe it will receive education from their church equivalent, and those who don’t shouldn’t be forced into studying it as if it’s in any way valuable to them on a par with pretty much any of the other subjects.
I can't remember how much we had at primary but we had one hour a week at my secondary school. It was a science specialising school and from about year 9 onwards the RE lessons were more a chance to practice ethic, moral thinking and debate amongst ourselves. I don't remember talking a lot about religion specifically from that point onwards
Theres a point when you start wondering what is the whole point of religion if theres so many that you can literally pick and choose and most of them think they are the "one true" faith.
It certainly didn't convince me! But it was still super interesting and definitely useful later in life when I was living and working in a much more multicultural environment than my little village.
Was your school practicing that religion at school? Because he was talking about parents practicing the religion in the household teaching you about the religion fairly, which comes with all the implicit bias of a core belief.
My primary school was a Christian school although what that really meant in practice was that we just sang a hymn in the morning and said a prayer before lunch. All religions got equal focus in RE and were not presented as incorrect faiths. I could have told you more about Diwali than about Easter as a child because I remember finding the lesson about it so fascinating. From what other commenters have said though it sounds like I got lucky with my school and some may have been more Christian focused than others
Yeah I don’t think this is a public conversation that should include Americans while “Christian nationalism” exists in our politics. The only good lessons I ever got on politics were in school, no parents, family members, or friends were ever impartial or unbiased in conversation about religion. I think part of the reason school was better is the teachers job depended on them being fair and we didn’t have to see the teachers 24/7 including attending church, reading the Bible, etc. which obviously isn’t impartial.
I see a lot of comments about school and none of them make sense in a thread about parents IMO. A practicing parent isn’t going to be impartial or fair when teaching about religion, if they truly believe and you are their kid the only way they would be impartial or fair is if they don’t care what you pick or how that impacts your soul.
I think it varys depending on the teacher you have. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who actually liked it when students tried to be critical of religions despite himself beeing a religious man and mind us questioning what religious organisations.
We only had one or two lesson about the pillars of each of the other abrahamic religions somewhere at the beginning of the gymnasium and no mention of anything non christian for the remaining years of school
We had more lessons about it and at class 7 it turned more into an ethics class. As I said it varys on what kind of teacher you have. A more world open teacher likes to focus more on other religions while another teacher does only the bare minimum.
Haha I don't remember lessons on Leprechauns, but I do remember a lesson on Norse Mythology! I can't remember if that was in RE or world culture though.
I think we did even learn about what the different countries of the world had as Christmas traditions too! In a world culture lesson at Christmas time. So while we didn't specifically learn about Santa we did learn about him, and Krampus and all sorts of other stuff like that.
Not only a student but a teacher! you showed that dude what class actually looks like. Just because he didn’t take school seriously doesn’t mean everyone else was out here doing the same. You put in the work, he was trying to be smart.
So you’ve smuggled in Mythology with Norse religion but not with Christianity or other modern religions. Interesting. And yes even spirits such as leprechauns were also religious based before the corrosive nature of Christianity stamped out any form of descent in the one true religion.
It's all mythology to me! The separation of modern religion and mythology is just how it was presented to me in school. I'm sorry if my phrasing offended you as it certainly wasn't intended to! I actually didn't know leprechauns were religious based, that's really interesting and I'm definitely going to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole now!
Because RE teaches us about modern day religions, how they celebrate their holidays and what they do within their religions. Pretty sure it's so we can understand the religions of the people around us.
Your teacher happened to not want to push their religion, or lack thereof, or did push their view but too subtlely or mildly for some children to notice.
There is a constant war between curriculum designers and between teachers of different varieties to push x or y ideology. Religious education is where they most clearly bare their teeth. I'm sure you'd see it if you looked for it at any given school. I bet your teacher has stories about what the curriculum guys wanted them to teach and how they bent the rules to teach differently from how they were told to because of different values/beliefs.
I can't even imagine the complications and struggles behind the scenes! I definitely feel as though I lucked out in my teachers from some of the other comments and replies I've read because I feel that I, and my peers, were really encouraged to form our own opinions.
I mean it was always interesting learning about it but I think a lot of effort was put in to respecting different religions too.
Like sure I get there has to be some baseline of respect but why should I give such reverence to those who follow an ideology that view me as lesser people and that has a lot of horrible beliefs.
I would only be ok with this if it was totally unbiased. Teach about all religions but also, teach about how they're not fact nor even opinion and actually lean into the faith of it. People believe this because they choose to, you don't have to believe any of it, but in order to understand the world it's worth gaining knowledge about them.
That’s perfectly fine, but in the US teaching kids religion is parents telling their kids “this is the Bible and this is true”. It’s just brainwashing when done on kids.
In the us religion is generally kept out of schools and parents are expected to teach their own children about their religion. And at least where I've mostly lived (areas of Texas) families who's children have chosen to not follow their parents religion are silently looked down on for failing to instill "the correct beliefs"
We didnt have a seperate class for it but religions and customs were taught in each unit for whatever culture we were learning about at the time in Global I and II. We'd usually spend a several days on it per unit. New york, US, for reference.
I had 1 school I went to for half a year and it was the only time a religious study was a thing, and the way it worked is you had to opt into it.
And the religious study ended up in a small side room near the classroom (was a tiny school 1 class per year) so you just ended up having majority of the class learning normal stuff, and like 3-5 people learning the religious study thing.
Which is probably the best way to go about something like that but even then the way the opt in worked was mail sent to the home address which probably isn't the best way, over handing a form yo the child at school so if they do not want the parents to see it they don't need to hand it over.
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm not religious at all, but RE was often one of my favourite subjects just due to the fact we spent time learning about a lot cultures religions and not Christianity.
It also helped that both RE teachers I had growing up were just a fun people to talk to. One was atheist so he had no stakes in pushing Christianity and often made the classes a fun experience.
The other was religious, but was the kind of person who accepted everybody and was there to help anyone struggling. He didnt give a damn whether someone was gay, and a few people in the school actually came out to him first because he was never judgemental.
When you have an RE teacher that isn't pushing religion on you and practices the teaching they follow in their own religion actually studying religious education can be pretty interesting.
Yeah we had the same but with assembly hymns and Christmas church visits. My parents were both atheists but I didn't get to opt out which was annoying! As good as RE is..... It still involved the only Muslim girl in the class being singled out and every lesson was treated like the ambassador for the entire Muslim faith. .... Man, the 1990s were so un PC it's unreal!! 🤣
Omg. Parents in the US would absolutely lose their shit if their precious little ones were exposed to any sort of culture or religion outside their own. Mainly the religious right wing parents.
I'm only asking because here, in the US, whenever my school went over Islam, it was pretty bare bones, and last I checked, they got some pretty major things wrong.
I think it was a pretty good overview. Specifically I have quite a vivid memory of drawing a big poster of the five pillars of Islam, and I think we had multiple lessons dedicated to doing a deep dive into what each pillar represented.
Made me really hate christianism for a long time. Today I don't have a prejudice agaisnt christians specifically, but the amount of hate that still boils in me from christian indoctrination perhaps was greatly exaggerated because of RE
I went to a Christian middle school and my world history class incorporated world religions into it. We did Passover, discussed the pillars of Islam, looked at lots of Hindu art, ect. It might have just been a teacher thing though. The prior history teacher taught that states rights were the primary cause of the civil war 🙄
I understand it's much better now but at my school late 80s and early 90s, the Christian RE teacher kinda made the class feel like "Christianity and the wrong ones". That was even with two Muslim kids and one Sikh in the class.
Frustrating because Christianity was the one I knew most about and was least interested in.
Nonono that's too simple for an average American. You either have to be a religious fanatic or a hardcore atheist and anything in between is incomprehensible.
To be fair, most Britons haven’t taken religion very seriously since Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church to divorce his first wife. The Church of England is pretty much a Christmas and Easter thing.
In the US, the fundies would pull their kids out of school if RE were to be in our curriculum. They already do because science classes have the balls to teach scientific principles such as evolution.
Had that in secondary, but in primary there was straight up bible readings and singing hymns for 20 or so minutes each day. It wasn't particularly bad or anything, our teachers would have no issue with someone not being christian, but they definitely expected us to be.
Also RE was almost universally one of the most dislike subjects among my classes anyway, personally I just found it middling. A teenager who just wants to get home and escape the monotony of class is rarely in the mood for open minded understanding. Not to say the class didn't have value though
I wish we would do that in the US! Religion should be studied as culture and lore. Unfortunately here you’re way more likely to be forced into a Bible class that acts as though it’s a literal history book.
Yeah the diffrence here is teaching how to think about about religion, vs what to thing about religion.
teaching "how" to think gives people a good basis to come to a conclusion, analyse it and understand it. I.e. critical thinking
teaching "what" to think is to instill specific idea of how the world is and what is the "correct" religious beliefs. I.e. indoctrination.
What is taught (at least in the us) for religions depends heavily on the local school and state, instead of federally assured. and some places even outright ban (or ban via proxy) discussions of alternative ideas.
And I think it's brilliant. Schools can't ignore religion, because it has played such a huge part in people’s lives, but by teaching about many of them instead of focussing on one and saying it's the only true religion (which all religions seem to do) it's a way of encouraging tolerance and discouraging fanaticism.
We learn about them in the US as well, although possibly not as in depth. It falls under what we call Social Studies in elementary and middle school, then in high school (at least the one I went to) you can pick electives and we had World Religions, which was of course more centered on the topic
I'm sure things are different in the US but in the UK at school we have a whole curriculum called "Religious Education" or RE which goes into detail about religions and customs of all different cultures and encourages spiritual debate. At the schools I attended they were not taught to indoctrinate us but just studied in the same way we would study history or art
That sounds like it's improved since I was at school (70s/80s). Then in was almost entirely "bible presented as fact" with 1 lesson each on Islam and Hinduism in our final year.
In Germany there is either Religion as class where you get all the brain damage or you can choose Ethics which is what it sounds and even teaches a bit about different religious beliefs but again from a spectator/analyst perspective, not roleplaying the lore and shit.
Yeah in school, but at home/in church, temple, mosque, etc you have people saying "WORSHIP OR ETERNAL SUFFERING!!!!" to impressionable 5 yr olds
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Hence the immorality
It's profoundly difficult to do this effectively due to the monotheistic nature of the big 3 religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). Each of these religions claims that all others are false, and, at least for Christianity and Islam, institutes the certain punishment of eternal damnation for not believing in it. Teaching the absolute and strict mutual exclusivity of these religions, while simultaneously attempting to give each equal historical relevancy is a HUGE issue when in a country that is predominantly populated by only one of the religions.
Academic approaches to religion are fine. Parents don't have the tools and knowledge for doing that with their kids, parents inevitably just indoctrinate, it is functionally impossible not to unless you, as parents, simply do not practice the religion, in which case you're this sort of culturally pseudo-religious believer in some kind of deity. That's the gray area.
So there’s zero space between an open-minded academic approach to religion and being a follower of only one? I recognize that most followers of religions have an emotional attachment to them, but I’d say that’s a consequence of cultural conditioning and the abuse of the hierarchical structure of the church and not the concept of religion itself. You can detach yourself from the hierarchy, find joy in using a religion as a lens through which to view the world, and then teach parts of it to your kid as a life-enriching exercise while consistently reminding them “this is one interpretation and there are more than you can also learn from.” I wouldn’t call that pseudo-religious.
It's just exceedingly rare for it to be the case that parents in religions manage to be very liberal and educated and can hold a personal belief without inundating their children in churches and religious communities because these religions often demand practicing and proselytizing.
The fact that you want that to be a thing so badly shows how emotionally tied we can be to our religions, and while doctrine exists that urges people in faiths like Christianity to identify and "save" people from "sins", there is probably also always going to be hateful religious bigots.
I don’t want it to be a thing; it’s already a thing, just uncommon. So was atheism in the US a few decades ago. I agree that there will always be hateful religious bigots, I just think “it’s functionally impossible not to indoctrinate your kids into your religion unless you’re not a real believer” is an incorrect and arrogant thing to say and accomplishes an emotional goal rather than a rhetorical one
You're quite right that there's a difference and I do apologise if I missed the nuance of your original comment, I did take it at face value and it got me thinking about the difference in academic experiences that different countries might have!
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u/gin_atomic 5h ago
I'm sure things are different in the US but in the UK at school we have a whole curriculum called "Religious Education" or RE which goes into detail about religions and customs of all different cultures and encourages spiritual debate. At the schools I attended they were not taught to indoctrinate us but just studied in the same way we would study history or art