Jar writes:
IMHO religion, as opposesd to a specific religion, should be taught in schools simply because they play and have played such a major role in the history of the world.
Yes, this would be a very handy thing for everyone to understand. However, are there enough CR teachers out there to put one in every public high school? Actually, you would probably want more than one. My (public) high school offered a comparative religion course. It was a half-year elective, two classes taught by one teacher (the other half of the year was a philosophy course). Both sections were always overfull at ~40 students, but Mr. Lamb had five periods of English to teach- that was his primary job, the CR/Phil elective was a secondary interest.
How would we make sure that a CR course isn't "Indoctrination in whatever the teacher believes 101"? How would we make sure that it wasn't "Indoctrination against whatever the teacher dislikes 101"? That is difficult enough at the college level, where more detail and more sophistication in student thinking is expected, what would it do at the high school level?
Of course, religion can show up in other classes as well. My (Buddhist) AP Lit teacher had us read a bunch of books of the Bible so we could understand it from a literary point of view- we never discussed it in class, though, or wrote anything about it, just read it. My girlfriend's private religious school wouldn't let women teach biology because Paul (1 Timothy) says women should not hold authority over men in scriptural issues.
Chris
™ Version 4.2
