Religious Education in Schools

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How does it work where you live? Should it change?

This is how it is going to be where I am, and I love it:

My local paper wrote:

Quote:

ANY belief system could soon be taught in Queensland state schools following changes to the laws governing religious education.

The changes will allow any group - religious or not - to offer spiritual instruction to children, provided their parents agree.

The Beattie Government has pressed ahead with the changes despite the protests of Christian churches worried about marginalising religion in schools.

They are included in the recent overhaul of the Education Act, which will herald a new era for Queensland's 470,000 state school children.

Currently, state school students as young as five take part in religious education classes unless parents formally write to the school allowing them to "opt out" of the lessons.

Under section 75 of the Education (General Provisions) Bill 2006, due to be enacted this year, no student will attend religious education lessons unless their parents write to the school requiring them to do so.

And in line with anti-discrimination laws, religious education classes will no longer be taught solely by church representatives.

Groups with a non-religious system of beliefs - providing they are apolitical - will also be allowed to teach religious education classes.

The Australian Humanist Society expects the Bill to be enacted in July and has already drawn up a syllabus dealing with science-based education, creative thinking, ethical responsibility and the separation of the church and state.

State secretary of the Australian Humanist Society Maria Proctor hopes to become the first atheist religious education teacher in a Queensland state school

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Where I live, by law, the main focus must be on Christianity. By law, all pupils must attend some form of Christian worship in school. This applies only to State Schools.

In practice, this is usually not the case. The law is broken in quite a large number of state schools.

Representative of a religious group usually do not teach.

That new Queensland law sounds kinda fun. Soon pupils will be taught about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn too.

Unfortunately, it opens up the way to the extremely litigious and ruthless Scientologists.

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Re: Religious Education in Schools

Eorl, quoting a news article, wrote:

Currently, state school students as young as five take part in religious education classes unless parents formally write to the school allowing them to "opt out" of the lessons.

It is appalling that this were ever true.

Wolf_ODonnell wrote:

Unfortunately, it opens up the way to the extremely litigious and ruthless Scientologists.

Nonsense--the new statute calls for parents to send in written instructions for the religious education of their children. If they send in such instructions for scientology, they were already intending to indoctrinate their children.

The only way to make this statute better would be to bar religious instruction altogether in schools. That sort of indoctrination should be done in the home, or an intentional religious setting.

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Re-read Eorl's article, Setanta. The new law opens up the class to any group that would like to teach their particular beliefs. That includes Scientologists.

The children that attend will still be subject to their idiotic teachings. The majority will not be opted out, as is the case over here..

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In our experience, they've been teaching about Islam because they aren't allowed to teach about anything with the word "Christ" in it, so they had to pick something to meet the requirements.

It's a joke.

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Wolf_ODonnell wrote:

Re-read Eorl's article, Setanta. The new law opens up the class to any group that would like to teach their particular beliefs. That includes Scientologists.

The children that attend will still be subject to their idiotic teachings. The majority will not be opted out, as is the case over here..

You re-read the article, Wolf--either you didn't thoroughly read it, or you failed to comprehend it:

Quote:

Under section 75 of the Education (General Provisions) Bill 2006, due to be enacted this year, no student will attend religious education lessons unless their parents write to the school requiring them to do so. (emphasis added)

Clearly, the Scientologists can't get at the kids unless the parents send written instructions to that effect. I'm frankly surprised as your lack of reading comprehension, Wolf.

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Fer chrissake, CJ, stop makin' **** up . . .

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I'm not making anything up! That is the truth - which again you just deny. California schools are likely vastly different from your area, depending upon where you are.

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Not sure what they currently do in public schools now - I remember once when I was in high school, trying to accommodate everyone's religious (or non-religious) beliefs; they tried various options during our moment of silence. The moment of silence in the past was supposed to be simply a moment of silence where you could pray, meditate or just space out for a couple of minutes (all silently). It occurred every morning after the pledge of allegiance.

Well, the big change was that during this moment of silence (it became extended to 5 or 10 minutes), a student could have the option to offer to say a prayer out loud. If the other students/teacher in the class didn't want to participate or be subject to this prayer - they could walk out into the hall and stand until the time was over. You can imagine with high school students that whenever there was some one offering to say a prayer that 90% took advantage so they could mill about in the hallway.

I had an earthy crunchy type home room teacher - her subject philosophy. She was so sweet and - you really couldn't say no to her. She suggested that we use the time for various activities. One was from an ancient culture that would bring families and friends together - believe it or not we all participated. She even had us singing Kumbaya once. Anyway as you can imagine with the disruption of many students walking into the hallways, this bright idea was cancelled and we went back to the old boring moment of silence.

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In my area in MA, I believe currently you cannot provide religious teaching in public schools. However, there are many private schools that are run by religious groups and those of course teach that particular religion.

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We never had religious teaching in the NY public schools, at least not when I was there. I went to Hebrew School and that was more than enough. My neighbors went to Sunday School at local churches and I'm sure they found that to be adequate, too. Some didn't go to anything, of course.

I'm kinda surprised taxpayers are footing the bill for this stuff. Doesn't it bother any of 'em that they're paying for all of this?

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No religion should be taught in public schools. Teaching religion in public schools takes away from other learning experiences that children could have.

Religious instruction belongs in the church or church schools and/or in the home.

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Nothing to argue with there--which doesn't mean that no one will argue with it . . .

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Setanta wrote:

Nothing to argue with there--which doesn't mean that no one will argue with it . . .

I disagree.

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The teacher is in "loco parentis".The classroom is connected to the home and some homes are connected to the churches.More in some places that others.

They are not students-they are people. I think they are more malleable to the liberal imagination when they are thought of as "the students".

Foucault thought so anyway for what it's worth.Which isn't much. What he thought is a minor matter although he does go on at some length about it in his book about control freaks.

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See . . . contrarians abound, ipse dixit . . .

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Setanta wrote-

Quote:

See . . . contrarians abound, ipse dixit . . .

au contraire monsieur.

Twas moi dealing with the the contrarians. Don't put the cart before the horse and think your readers are too stupid to notice.

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What a conceited clown . . . my remark about contrarians was addressed to George . . .

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Ethmer wrote:

No religion should be taught in public schools. Teaching religion in public schools takes away from other learning experiences that children could have.

Religious instruction belongs in the church or church schools and/or in the home.

I guess I agree. While I like the idea that atheism and secular humanism can now be taught, I'm willing to bet that the churches have more "resources" to throw at schools.

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Now you introduce a factor which i did not originally notice in your local newspaper article. Will religious organizations pay the cost of the religious instruction?

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I really don't know Set. I was assuming the job was a voluntary thing - one hour, once per week, local church Sunday School teacher kinda thing. I'll look into it and get back to you. Do you know how it works in the States?

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