Should Sacred Studies be part of a general public school curricula

I verge on complete computer illiteracy..thanks for the clarification...I was a bit surprised.

Hopefully there are still readers out there who have an opinion on this. I invite all of you to respond and let us know how you would feel about Sacred Studies as a part of general education.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I think it's a good idea in principle.I'm not enormously familiar with the current state of education in the UK (not having any kids) but I suspect that in practice there's little chance of it happening here. My impression is teaching in the UK is currently so focused on the existing curicculum as to leave no room for any significant new content.Any Brits with school age kids could give you a better idea of the situation over here.

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09/04/05 - Sharks attacked
30/04/05 - Wasps swatted
14/05/05 - More of the same ?

Jar,I see an understanding of religion as crucial to a child's education, especially in a cultural environment that is loaded with religious references (as in the US and many other countries).A child who knows about the history of religious thought will not only have a valuable source of knowledge about the history of human ideas, and a basis for understanding much of western philosophy, but will also be best equipped to understand the origin and ideology of the new religions (i.e. various strands of born-again christianity, etc) and best equipped to deal sensibly with the debate on intelligent design and biology.Mick

I used to be very against the idea of bringing religious studies into public classrooms for some of the reasons already mentioned---that it is not likely to be without bias and would probably slant heavily toward the predominant local religion(s). Then in college I took a comparative religion/philosophy class and it really was slanted heavily toward the predominant local religions, and slanted even more towards the beliefs of the professor and the students with the loudest mouths.And yet I thoroughly enjoyed the class for what it gave me, and that was exposure to many other religions around the world. Until that point my personal studies were too haphazard and directionless, consisting of brochures and perhaps a few books to try to shed light on other practices. This class was more about history than the religions, by that I mean it demonstrated when certain religions appeared, where they originated, what their major indoctrination was and what influences determined their branching from the belief system that preceded it. Sadly, all too often the class was spent in an unruly debate that never went anywhere and usually had nothing to do with the assignment. In the end, our final grade was based on a paper, researching one religion or philosophy and hitting all those points about it's history I mentioned above. That was fine, except that you ended up not getting enough exposure to the rest of the world's religions because of how poorly organized the class was.Oh well.But now I think that if it were accepted more widely as general curriculum, it could become more standardized and laid out so that even a novice or biased teacher could get along nicely with presenting the material properly. And my opinion of "properly" is to remain objective and unbiased, try to be as all-encompassing as possible, and try to stick to facts and not values, such as "this religion holds this to be fundamental while this other one differs thusly" and so forth. In this day and age, the better one can look at the different religions that exist around us---what their dogmas are and especially why there ends up being conflict between factions, for examples Muslim vs. Jews, or Catholics vs. Protestants---the better we can understand our own prejudices and overcome them. Most preconceived judgments tend to be based on ignorance of the viewpoint held by the other side. It is ridiculous for anyone to vehemently declare themselves to be right when they do not know what they are comparing themselves to.

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"When in argument, those who call upon authority use not their intellect, but rather their memory."-----Leonardo daVinci

I too was glad to learn that != meant "not equal to" and now that post seems to fit in better with the rest of what you have written.Always nice to learn something new.

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"When in argument, those who call upon authority use not their intellect, but rather their memory."-----Leonardo daVinci

My answer is "yes, definitely, absolutely." Children and youngsters must learn about world religions. They should be exposed to texts like the Bible, Rigveda, Al Q'uran, writings of Lao Tse, Confucius and others. It does not matter one bit, I think, whether the school is public or private. There should be classes explaining the concept of religion, the role of religion in the life of the humankind, and there should be reading assignments on that, both in secondary school and university. Of course, there should be no indoctrination in these classes (and again, it does not matter whether the school is public or private). --RichardThis message has been edited by ProfessorR, 05-08-2005 08:55 AM

And is always called, "bang equals".JSMTN (just some more trivial nonsense)

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

If this is a good idea how could it be implemented?Just to make clear what I'm suggestiong, I'll try to do a short summary.

• a multi-year, multi-semester course.
• beginning about midway through Primary education and continuing until graduation.
• integrated with other disciplines, for example
  
  • in history religious components of different cultures would be included.
  • in mathematics, the contributions of the Greek and Islamic world would be included.
  • in current events the influence and effects of religious viewpoints would be included.
    
• it would cover many different religions.
• philosophy, including naturalistic ones would be covered.
• testing would be done based on objective as opposed to subjective criteria.
  
  
  questions would not be on what you believe but rather
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  • "What did Mencius say about ..."
  • what is the "Eight fold Path?
  • who drove the Jews out of Spain?
  • who offered those Jews sanctuary and provided transportation for them?
    
  
  

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This is the only part I don't like. Where Greek culture has made a contribution to mathematics or whatever, then it is already taught, is it not? Everybody learns Pythagoras' theorem, for example. And everybody is taught how to use arabic numerals. I'm not sure what useful thing sacred studies would add to the existing maths syllabus.As for history and current events - again, these should already cover comparative religion to some extent. I remember as a 14 year old studying the history of medicine, and we covered the contribution made by major civilizations of various religions.Sacred Studies should be taught, but i don't see it as the bedrock of study, that has to be "integrated" everywhere in the syllabus. In fact that sounds a little alarming.

Spend some time over in the Faith forums and you'll find out how seldom that is understood or acknowledged.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You kidding me? Anybody that's taking a high level graduate math level can tell you that proving theorems are a pain in the butt. By adding the religious side to math, we can now finally shorten the whole proof to "goddunit".

Well, okay.I agree that it would be ideal for all scientific and mathematical classes to include some work on the history of these disciplines. That is something I personally feel I have missed out on. I am okay with the "cutting edge" bits of my own biological research, but my historical knowledge even of my own field only extends in detail back through a few decades. I get very sketchy when we reach the pre-wwII period, and more vague still in the nineteenth century. So your aim in and of itself is admirable.The problem is that the quality of maths education, worldwide, is already quite poor. For many kids, just understanding simple differential equations is a struggle. If we were to sacrafice classroom hours to studying the detailed history of the discipline, I don't see that the quality of maths education would increase.In fact one needs to understand the power and beauty of something like maths, before one can understand the magnitude of early culture's contribution. If you don't understand trigonometry, then the contribution of ancient greece will likely seem trivial.

Well now, let us not go too far with the idea that religions have had all this influence on other disciplines.I have children who will begin schooling soon enough and of course I want their education to be the best it can be. What I might consider more adequate is a two-part course, one in middle-school level, as an introduction, and then one that should be taken sometime in the high-school levels that would be more in-depth and encompassing wider ranges of religions and all that---like what I said up there ^But the main reason you have religious influences upon the early sciences is that there were usually only two types of people who could get any sort of advanced education---the wealthy ruling class and the religious class. The ruling classes did produce many scientists as well, but in general there were plenty who were too busy with ruling to go off into the sciences and the arts, and so there was a lot of space available for the clergy to move in. This is especially noteworthy because the ruling class was usually very restrictive in flow because of hereditary lines, meaning you were pretty much either born into it or else would never be a part of it. The religious class accepted anyone of almost any social standing and gave them near equal opportunity for advancement.That is perhaps the best reason you have such a tremendous influence of religion on the early sciences. You also have to take into account their limited understanding of the greater picture and their use of mysticism to explain away those parts of the natural world that science had not yet revealed to them.But to say that religion is responsible for the advancement of science is a lot like claiming for yourself all credit for your house appreciating in value. You own your house but its value is driven by other forces. So too was the advancement of science---educated people wanted to fill in the spaces where knowledge was lacking, and religious organizations were the best place for most to get that education.To go further than this two-part class requirement would, in my opinion, start to get much more involved than it has to be for the average person. Someone who wants to be a preist or other clergy certainly should have much more intensive exposure, and of course private schools can do whatever they want with their requirements and offered coursework, but there is no need to go overboard.This message has been edited by SuperDave, 05-08-2005 03:08 PM

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"When in argument, those who call upon authority use not their intellect, but rather their memory."-----Leonardo daVinci

If you take high school world history you would have a basic understanding of religion and its impact on the world, but i agree that there should be an elective looking more in depth into the topic.This message has been edited by Jaadoo42, 05-09-2005 02:50 PM