Should Sacred Studies be part of a general public school curricula

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

EZScience,I don't think that religious *indoctrination* has its legitimate place in any school, public or private. Even if the cost of kids' education is covered by their parents who all belong to the same religious group, it still does not justify brainwashing these kids, or, especially, grooming them in the spirit of exclusivity and/or animosity to other religious doctrines.From much the same standpoint, I do not think that "broad public tax support base" justifies "making education completely secular" - if the latter means not teaching kids anything about religion, eliminating the mere word from textbooks, etc.Richard

Of course, teaching religion in schools (public or private) should ALWAYS mean teaching "about" religion. Preaching, fostering a particular faith is not a function of a school, but of a church or other strictly religious organization.EZ, I understand very well what you mean - I live in the Bible Belt of Bible Belts (east-central Mississippi). That really is a horrible problem and I don't know how to fix it. I think the STATE, the government must simply close schools where kids are taught literal 6-day creation in science classes, etc. Parents' will should not be taken into consideration at all, IMHO. That's one element of governmental dictatorship that I would support. After all, the US government will close down a school that teaches its kids that the earth is flat or that all Jews are evil monsters. Pretty much by the same token, it should not give accreditation to schools that substitute narrow-minded literalistic interpretation of certain religious texts for education.Richard