AIBU to expect religion to be taught & practised at religious schools?

[KristinaM]

I am getting rather fed up with the threads that go........

" Although we are not Jewish we have chosen to send our son to the local Jewish school, its got a good ethos and great results. Now he has started we are very angry and upset to discover that they celebrate all the Jewish festivals and have acts of worship with a rabbi present.They even take them to the synagogue.

I don't want to have my child brainwashed with fairy stories.I only want him exposed to my particular beliefs. I am worried he will grow up and have a mind of his own and not believe the same as me. How can I get the school to change to suit me??"

god yes CL . where do we start??

bed..did someone say bed..?

now when you say 'god' NG to whom are you referring??????

aggggghhhhhhh another evening wasted speant on mn!

NG, lol, I know! I just looked at the time and thought "Crap! I wanted to go to bed at 10 today!"

NG - but we're such good company!! And isnt great when just occasionally someone agrees with you!?

KerryMum, you said if anyone saw you on late at night to tell you off!

to you all. yes, it ispretty addictive, isnt it?

Don't you ever wonder if the history of Ireland (north at least) would have been a bit different if the UK had followed the USA's one really good idea - separation of Church and State, in particular with regard to state education? ie kids not segregated along 'faith' (tribal) lines at school?

well, segregation is never good imo, but north shouldnt have been separated from south in the first place. that may have made a bit of a difference. is a teensy bit more complicated than religion, the N Ireland thing.

at a rate of knots it would seem . sadly.

Nu nite KM!

NG - perfectly true. (Actually I can't stand it when Dawkinsite DH blames all Irish troubles on Christianity. ). I was thinking more of how things might have developed in the 60s and 70s.

ah.
well yes, two communities pitched against each other like that with no distraction... had everything to do with segregation and hate and history and hurt, and bugger all to do with any god. i quite like dawkins myself, but to sum up N irelands troubles in terms of christianity is simplistic. and convenient for British people to believe as, in fact, the conflict would be more accurately described as between Irish and 'British' than catholic and protestant.

ah yes suebaroo I meant to say several hundred years and then changed it to say for the last millennia but didn't change it properly sorry sloppy typing.
yes, you are right when you say that Creationist Christians believe the world was created about ten thousand years ago. before being destroyed by a great flood and repopulated by two representatives of each species.
which is pretty much, imo, a killing argument for putting Christianity at the centre of education. because that is total nonsense and the idea of teaching it to children as truth just makes me shudder.

I just want to put my oar in re the OP - there is 1 non-denominational school in our entire town/area, the rest are Catholic or C of E. I may well have no choice than to sent A to a religious school, however I don't want her being taught that these are our particular beliefs and bible stories taught as absolute truth with a limited view of other religions/beliefs.

What do you do then? It is my particular belief (as an atheist) that religion has nothing to do with schools and should be separated out so that people like me can send their children to a school where children are made aware of different religions/beliefs but not taught it as the absolute truth.

Instead I'll probably be stuck sending A to a crappy non-denominational school because I can't risk confusing her over the religion issue or risk her being taught something I don't agree with.

It still amazes me that religion is not taught primarily in terms of its socio-cultural context. We only happen through an accident of birth, history and geography, to be sharing the planet with 6 billion others at a time when the place is dominated by three major monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam).

These religions have had an undoubtedly huge influence on culture, art and thought, as have the smaller ones and the pantheistic ones. But then again, so did beliefs in the the Norse, Egyptian and Greek gods, beliefs which were dominant in previous millennia. So shouldn't these be taught as well?

And really, what are the chances of a belief system which originated in one period of history on one small speck among all the planets of a billion billion stars in one of billions of galaxies... being "right"??

HC, loulou and UQD - i quite agree. how well put.

that puts things into perspective unquietdad!
i had no idea that some areas are dominated but 'religious' schools. i suppose ppl do have a bit of a dilema in that sense. i always remember my primary school, which was not supposed to be a 'religious' school- but the head master was an enthusiastic christian and we had a bible story every day in assembly....cant honestly say i remember them teaching us about any other religion though.