I’ve talked about religious education (as opposed to religious INSTRUCTION) before and I believe the study of all religions should be compulsory in schools.

I have mixed feeling about whether young children should be indoctrinated into their parent’s faith, but Sunday school did me no long term harm in the end.

I guess that if parents insist on doing this, then they should also ensure they are made aware of the other gods that past and current cultures believe in as well.

Insisting on their rights to tell them (or force schools to teach them) about ‘intelligent design’ as well as evolution however is another matter. You will find my thoughts about that subject in other posts.

I found this article at about.com that raises valid reasons that children should be taught about religions.

“When children are raised in a religious environment, what they are taught about religion is relatively obvious and organized — but what about kids raised in a non-religious environment? If you aren’t specifically teaching your kids to believe in any gods or to follow any religious systems, then it may be tempting to just ignore the topic entirely.

That, however, would probably be a mistake. You may not follow any religion and you may be happier if your children never follow any religion, but that doesn’t change the fact that religion is an important aspect of culture, art, politics, and of the lives of many people your children will meet over the years. If your children are simply ignorant about religion, they will be missing out on a lot.

Another, and perhaps more serious, problem with ignoring religion lies in how they will react to religion once they are old enough to make their own decisions. If they are unfamiliar with religious belief systems, then they will be an easy target for evangelists for just about any faith. Your children will simply lack the intellectual tools necessary to fully understand and evaluate what they are hearing, thus making it more likely that they adopt a very bizarre and/or extreme religion.”

I hadn’t thought about that and I agree. I remember well the experiences of a school mate who was one of those down to earth, petrol head kind of guys. He made his first O.E (overseas experience) trip when he was in his early twenties to the US and he told me how he had been targeted by the Moonies - wonder what happened to them, they were big in the 70s? He apparently had been ‘befriended’ and was taken to their compound and realised after few hours that his new ‘mates’ had another agenda besides friendship. He had to do some fast talking to extricate himself and only just managed to  get out to a road and thumb a lift out the place. As he said, he had just been sitting in the airport (and probably looking very much like the young kiwi on his first overseas trip he was) and feeling a little  alone and out of his depth when the cult members targeted him.

If he had known more about all the churches, religions and cults that humans had invented over the years he might have been more wary of ‘friendly’ strangers…

Trackback URI | Comments RSS