Religion in Schools
An article in a daily Irish newspaper recently claimed that there was a lamentable lack of religious knowledge among those aged 14-25 in Ireland and that something should be done to change this. There is, however, no justification given for the inclusion of religion as a subject in schools – it is simply assumed that religion has some kind of right to ‘muscle up’ along side real subjects like Mathematics, Science and English. Where did this idea come from or is religion simply assumed to have “divine right”?
School is for education and learning how to think, it shouldn’t be a place for one groups agenda to indoctrinate youth, but it is.
There are very few arguments that can be made to support the teaching of religion in schools. “But it’s always been that way”, which is tantamount to stubbornly retaining a bad habit out of simple laziness. “It gives children the context to develop their morality”, which conveniently puts aside every scientific study that has shown that religion is not required for the development of morality. “Ireland is primarily a Catholic nation, its part of our culture”, other parts of our culture include alcoholism, poor driving skills and child abuse but we don’t teach classes to maintain those as ‘cultural identity’.
There is absolutely no excuse for the state of play right now in Ireland. Religion is still a pervading force in the lives of many people, not because it gives them any tangible benefit, but because of irrational superstitions and hocus-pocus.
In Ireland there are about 3000 odd primary schools, most of which are under the control of one religious sect or another. Our constitution still retains the abhorrent section protecting the position of the Catholic Church in Ireland (a political concession made in order to garner more support for the government at the time). Many of our laws are still based on religious rhetoric (the illegality of abortion, the only recent allowance for legal divorce, the Good Friday law). Even our Taoiseach recently complained about the “aggressive agnosticism” and lack of belief in god that he felt was present in modern Ireland – good to know he is concerned about the well being of his imaginary friends as well as his corporeal ones.
There is a case for educating children in the cultural differences of their peers, reflecting where they came from and the identity that comes with that but why must it be based on religion rather than sociology? In fact this argument for keeping religion in schools is that the very argument is exclusionary. Will religion teachers be offering the ideology of Western Reformed Humanism? How about the teachings and stand point of the LeVay Church of Satan? Shouldn’t there be a section of the curriculum dealing with the beliefs of the Rastafarian movement? A truly liberal and integrated course will require explanation and teaching of the Atheist view point – can it be expected of people who are already indoctrinated into a specific faith to be completely dispassionate about the subject matter from all points of view?
No, it can’t.
(please excuse the formatting peculiarities, blogger is not co-operating today)
