Teaching of religion worldwide

University admissions departments must have a really hard time of it then! How come there are no comparative religion courses? I understand that the seperation of church and state is important in the USA, but I wouldn't have thought comparative religion courses would fall under that umbrella as long as they were truly unbiased. Is it that people who ARE religious don't want their children being exposed to "harmful" knowledge from other faiths?

Here in the UK the religious education courses aren't particulary great (or they weren't when I was at school around 10 years ago). The teachers were simply drafted in from other subjects as it wasn't a very big course, and I never enjoyed any of them. When it reached year 10 (14-15 year olds) and it was time to pick subjects for GCSE (the ones we are examined in just before we leave school), I think only one person in my school picked RE, out of about 1300 pupils. Obviously the course couldn't go ahead that year. It was compulsory for the first 3 years of secondary school though.