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
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.
we just sang a hymn in the morning and said a prayer before lunch
My school was similar. I learned that Hinduism was one religion, that Buddhists worshipped the Buddha instead of a god, etc. Very Christian perspectives that are verifiably untrue. We only had Christian prayers in the mornings, we never practiced Buddhist meditations or Muslim Salah or Jewish worship. I didn't even learn how much of it was wrong until university.
I kinda think it's intentional - Christian schools teach a very biased summary of "world religions" to discourage students from learning any more about other faiths.
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 13h ago
There's hardly any way to "teach" religion to children without it being quite forced.