Religion should be taught in schools.

This is my first debate on this site, so here goes...

The topic is: that the study of religions should be a part of all schools' curriculum.

In this proposition i am not advocating any form of religious indoctrination be including in public or private education. though religious myself i am fundamentally opposed to indoctrination of youth into any religion, including my own.

I propose that the study of religions, particularly but not limited to the major world religions, should be included in the curriculum as a matter of the social sciences in order to empower students with information to make better informed judgments about the world around them. it certainly isn't a new development that religion plays a role in much of what happens in world affairs and domestic politics. excluding studies of religion from schools handicaps students ability to understand their world, its people and the issues confronting it at any given time. That same lack of knowledge contributes to prejudice, discrimination and hatred in society.

im confused to what you mean ? religion should be taught in schools ? i would like to point out here in scotland it is a subject called religious , moral , philosopic studys or as we know it R.M.P.S which is required to be learnt as long as this pupil is still in highschool education.

religion is taught in most first world countries at school from a young age it always has been im not sure about where you live but it is in the vast majority of schools.

but heres why i think it shouldnt anyway

i was taught it in school when i was young and my teacher was a very serious christian. She would ask me if i belivied in god or jesus or what religion i was . when i told here i didnt belive in religion i was an atheisit , i belive the theroy of evoultion . she screamed at me and tryed to get me excluded from school. i Thought to myself why? when kids learn about the religion they are suppose to be in school the vasg majority feel pressured by a teacher as if they were doing something wrong by not beliving in christainity and other religions.

even in this day and age the teachers still say things like " if you commit a sing you WILL go to hell and spend forever there " now this is often told to young children etc forcing them to belive religion is the true meaning, if they wanted to teach them she could start off by saying something like " the christians belive ... " most teachers teaching religion are very biased because they are reiligous themselves , i accept a great amount are not but a large amount are.

i know this world is full of hatered etc and people should learn respect . but have you ever stopped to think that religion is the main cause of death and vilionce in this world and in this worlds history excluding disease .

i mean by my proposition a purely academic understanding of religions: an understanding of their fundamental tenets, major divisions or denominations, common history... that sort of content. i am aware that in many places there is religious education already in schools: i propose that where such study is already in the curriculum it should remain and where it is not it should added. though i don't know much about the scottish education system it sounds like the subject you mentioned fits the bill of my proposition.

Counterarguments:

1) With regard to your anecdote about your own education i sympathize but i addressed that in my first argument. in this proposition i AM NOT advocating institutionalizing religious indoctrination. in fact the opposite is true. for a teacher to attack a student in the way that you describe is the antithesis of my suggestion because it is indoctrination rather than education.

2) I believe that an education system that provides people with at least a rudimentary understanding of the various belief systems in the world will help both in the long and short terms to weed out hatred (most of which is based on uninformed fear) and help people be more respectful toward each other.

3) I disagree that religion is the main cause of death and violence. Rather there are many causes of death and violence (disease, economics, war etc.) and religion is usually a misappropriated scapegoat when people try to hide behind twisted interpretations of a particular religion and play on others' misconceptions for control and domination.

ok i am still rather confused the system that you want is already installed in our schools and i cannot argue for other countries as i have no ideas but i presume that it is there in kost countries.

but back to my arguement. This system is in place already in several countries such as my own and i have to say it is incredibily unsuccesful our country has a huge rate of teens commiting racially motivated attacks and religious etc and infact you will find that in countries were the system is not in place the attacks there will be much likley lower , you see the children here feel religion is being forced upon them and resent this so i belive ( apart from the drug taking and alchol abuse ) this is why attacks are so high here , not assualts but assualts because you are from a diffrent culture or race and quite often even if you are from that country and follow that countrys offical religion then you will still be attacked for this. The truth is kids dont want to learn these sort of things , im not saying all but most do not and haste it with a passion and belive that religion is nothing but hassle.you notice how racially motivated assults never were as high as they were today? you know why because back then if you didnt know to much about that person if they looked diffrnet you may look at them strange but you wont attack them for it .

but yes its a fact religion is the biggest killer its not used as a scapegoat maybe on sevral occasions it has but no religion i belive kills hundreds maybe thousands for every person it may save.Religion alone is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths for example jsut imagine religion wasnt around , back in wwII the majority of those millions of jews may have lived because they werent picked out because of their religion . the only thing that can beaqt religion on the killing fields is disease even then religion is slowly catching up ...

if the example of a teacher you gave me before is common then of course it is unsuccessful because the model that is currently in place doesn't reflect what i proposed. i proposed a purely academic study of the basic tenets, history and practices of the major religions NOT indoctrination. if a school is offering religious indoctrination they are in fact NOT implementing a system of religious education such as the one i am commending.

too much so-called religious education at the moment focuses on an attempt to indoctrinate a student into a particular religion by the teacher so of course they resent it but that isn't what i'm recommending and so isn't the topic of debate.

as to your assertion that there were fewer racially motivated assaults... race and religion are not the same thing. there are muslims of european descent just like there are christians of arab descent so yet again the problem is revealed to be ignorance, misunderstanding and the fear that results from that... all of which it is the place of a strong education system to combat. i would also suggest that perhaps there is simply more recording of assaults in recent times? the percentage of attacks and crimes actually being reported is higher nowadays so what you put forward as an increase in assault may just be a statistical anomaly. without actual numbers or evidence that point is hard to debate though.

religion is not the biggest killer... by definition it cannot be as a religion is not a tangible object with the capacity to kill. killings that are committed by misguided individuals in the name of religion are not killings BY religion. it just means that someone decided to misapply and pervert a belief for their own ends. a christian who murders does so in violation of their faith and their act is the fault of them not the faith that they have fallen short of. those jews you mention weren't killed by their religion they were killed by nationalist socialists on a quest of ethnic (not religious) genocide. the jews weren't the only ethnicity to feel the nazis' ire either... i understand that gypsies were also targeted.

look i am trying to make my point short and simple i fully understand your system but the only people willing to teach this would most likley be religious ones as they would also most likely be the only ones with those qualifications to become that kind of teacher. What we have to remeber is a religous person normally feels strongly about their religion and will oppose any opposition to it most of the time and often be biased. I learn this not from assuming this fact but knowing this as i have exprinced this and for example out of around 20 teachers at my school who taught religous studys all of them were storngly biased for there religion and against others. You cant change that in a person but the only way to get around this would be to have teachers who are non-religious but are intrested in religion and are willing to teach it which means there would never be enough.

as for religion does kill i feel its off the subject but why not debate that to ?
religion does kill , imagine it if there was no religion there would be no murders or wars assioctied with religion in the first and place. saying it is not an actually object religion is in a way not true sure it physically doesnt kill the other person but if religion wasnt invovled in the first place, this misguided indivdual would never have commited this act. thats like me saying the person firing the gun didnt commit the murder the gun did and this person was simply misguided.
the jews would of been saved if they were not religious because think logically , sure they were targeted by the goverment , but if they never had this religion in the first place then the goverment never would of targeted them .

also like to apologise for spelling and grammer .