Ban religion from schools

I don't think that's inherently an unworkable suggestion, just not an easy fix.
it presents a few problems that would need to be fixed in implementation (ie, lack of significant minority populations in some rural areas especially could result in limited choice of schools or no choice of a school that suits their needs, potentially no neutral choice if all are private) but the piecemeal approach to improving education has not been very successful so far, so a solution involving a fundamental change in style might be ideal.

 

I agree and acknowledge that elimination of compulsory state schools, replacing them with privatized schools, would have to come only prior to much more fundamental economic changes.

The point is the state has failed at providing education, and in fact seems to use their coercive schooling paradigm as a means of controlling the populace rather than actually providing a real, meaningful education. The market would be able to accommodate providing true education much more efficiently if it were allowed to, but this can't be achieved without first re-evaluating economic and domestic policies.

It is reasonable to speculate that rural areas may be much more limited in terms of options in a privatized market of schools, but there's always the option of homeschooling too... which, at the moment, I would advocate 10x more than any compulsory school, if it's truly education one is interested in... and not just institutionalizing youth.

 

I'm an atheist, but I do believe school's should teach religion. By religion, I mean all religions.

I went to a 'normal' school for a period of time, we didn't have bible studies or anything, but we did have to sing Christian hymns and pray, and if you didn't agree with it- tough luck, you had to sing to a God you don't believe in. That, I disagree with.

The only reason I think religion should be taught in schools is because so much art and literature has religious connotations that by not teaching us anything about religions, we wouldn't see all the symbolism that there is.

Religion has affected the history of our world since it was formed, without some sort of understanding of religion, it would be very difficult to piece together all the wars that have been fought in the name of it

 

See, the problem is simply a different perspective. I went to a high school in Canada that had none of these problems.

Mandatory attendance's only consequences was the mandating of that lack of attendance (ie suspension)
My experience of school was pretty mainstream, so I only had positive experiences, but I know many of those who didn't; some of them dropped out (a good thing, and something that shouldn't be restricted) but almost excessive opportunity was given both to graduate and to re-enter the system in an environment that was catered to their needs.
The teachers presented everything fairly; my civics 11 teacher told us her political history on the first class, and the libertarian free market principles I was a fan of (a huge contrast to my NDP sympathizing, liberal card carrying, female, and union member civics high school teacher) were treated with equal intellectual respect.
Religion(s) were only taught in social studies; there was never mandated religion of any form. We probably spent more time on Islam and Judaism than Christianity, but given that a Christian religion was context for the majority of time spent, which was on western history and has a context of christianity anyways, this makes alot of sense.

So.. tl;dr my public education was pretty much without reproach, both the student with exclusively positive experience is catered to by opportunities, and the student with primarily bad experiences is handled in a positive manner as well. We were told to question, not accept, and I appreciate that I grew up in a style of education where I was encouraged to pursue my own opinions, and more importantly achieved meaningful education without a political agenda.

edit: I just realized I should make this clear.. I'm describing the exception, not the rule, and the reason I don't think the problem is inherently with state run schools, but primarily the methods of implementation and motivations for their existence.

 

While I certainly see the advantages, how do you suggest you pay for those private schools? Do you suggest each parent pay the $5k-10k per year it requires to educate their child? It would take A LOT more than a few fundamental economic changes to make that feasible, borderline impossible I think.

 

I see what you're saying.

Maybe both should be taught to an extent. And not just creationism and evolution but the countless others. For example, confucianism, hinduism, plato, and the list goes on.

I mean people are always arguing and stuck inbetween christianity and evolution ..
Children should be learning about all different types of theories. To an extent, I mean the lil guys already have backpacks the size of boulders.

Because imo, just teaching evolution does not mean having intellectual ability, one is still limited to only knowing about evolution.

Religion and origin of life can be quite different I believe, it can be. Maybe not.

There are gaps in every theory, which is they're not laws. Simply theories.

Science does not have give 'solid' evidence on origins of life. But children should have an array of theories to anaylze and study.

I agree. Neither should claim to know the truth, because it simply is not true.

It should be made clear that there are various, and conflicting theories. But never promote one nor the other.

If one is promoted or favorited over the other, I agree it is not fair and irresponsible.
If not, then by all means teach them about all of them.
Having to pick inbetween two, doesn't give us much options to begin with.

 

Not when you consider the prosperity that would come from a change in economic and monetary policy. Costs and prices would drop, value of the dollar would rise, wages would increase. Then of course there would be charities, scholarships and the like.

In any case, we already pay for school now with our tax dollars, there's no reason to think we couldn't pay for it willingly.

This is just like roads. We already pay for roads, but roads are terribly maintained by the government--the government is grossly inefficient in everything it does involving expenditure of money.

What makes you think the state can manage your money better than you can?

 

So since you felt conflicted in school you believe we should remove the confliction. Well why not remove science because that is equally a contributing factor to the confliction you had. I mean you have your belief that religion is wrong and should be banned. The religious parents and such would only get defensive and retaliate by trying to get science kicked out. I personally do not care in my opnion both are wrong, but I will defend either one against radicals.

The confliction is more or less a fantastic thing to have in school. It gives the perspective of both sides, allowing a person to choose the path he/she wants to follow.

 

Children lack the intellectual capacity to realize that Santa Claus isn't real; they certainly don't have the intellectual capacity to see through the bullshit of someone intentionally attempting to manipulate.

I agree; they should have an array of theories to study, but the problem is, it takes so long to learn the generally accepted answer (ie, evolution. 99.99999% of the arguments on the internet about evolution are PURELY caused by misunderstandings of the actual theory..), it's difficult to decide when they have the ability to distinguish applicable evidence from evidence that applies only to varying extents, or is being falsely attributed as a cause.

In my opinion, the only way to learn this is to make arguments yourself, and have them formally assessed for validity. It's important to make the distinction that practice does not make perfect in this case; since the difficulty is in assessing good from bad EVIDENCE rather than logically true or false arguments.

No. We tell children what's true because they don't have time to come to these conclusions themselves. This is how knowledge advances; someone figures something out, someone else summarizes it so everyone can understand it, and then if its actually valuable it's added to our education (ie, if hunting worked well, you teach hunting to your kids)

There is a reason we have science (ie evolution) in a science classroom, where we teach the most established theory, and religion in the social studies classroom, where we study the cultures, and myths of our own culture, as well as those throughout history.
Simple. Keep science, and science alone, in the science class room.

It establishes credibility, an INCREDIBLY value thing in the age of the internet where access to information is much higher than before, but false information is even more prevalent.

Impossible. There is simply too much to learn. Even learning "most" theories of VERY defined specialties is almost impossible with the wealth of quality literature that now exists.

I guess you've never taken a political science course in a university.. the sheer amount of reading would probably awe you.

 

Not trying to take a stab at you here, but what do you believe if you don't believe religion or science? Truly just curious

 

I guess I don't really believe in anything.. Religion and Science both have so many holes in them that in my opnion niether can be right. Both were created to answer the questions:

How did we get here.

Why are we here.

What will happen when I die.
-----------------------------------

I do not care how I got here, But here I am here.

I don't care why I am here but I am.

I don't know what will happen when I die but I am excited to find out.
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Some people need answers to these questions, and both religion and science provide these "answers". IMO niether of them know no more than the last and therefore I belive in niether of them.

But like I said I will defend a belief against a radical trying to disprove another belief, because we should let people belive what they want as long as they don't take it to the extreme, sadly people do take it to the extreme and IMO those people should get a fist to the face..... Make sense?

 

I don't disagree, it would present some significant challenges

If I may present the following as tentative solutions that move towards a solution (as someone who studies science, I presume you understand the intellectual importance of ideas/papers that are based around 'moving towards' a solution, since the process of finding solutions can be quite difficult... sorry, tangent, but I just find it frustrating that few grasp that concept):

1) The first step would be abolishing or reducing the Department of Education, and the Federal government's role in education. Those tax dollars taken from the states (only to be given back to the states) would instead never be removed from the states, allowing the states themselves to make decisions concerning education.

2) The second step would be allowing public school districts to operate in a similar fashion to private schools and universities, in that they could be permitted to build endowments which may be donated to.

3) The third step would be removing the unfortunate limits on charitable giving imposed by the state and federal governments, at least in regards to education donations. Allow unlimited charitable donations to schools and allow them to be 100% tax deductible. Persons could give to public or private schools in this way. Since these donations provide pure benefits to the state, it really is a pure win situation for the government.


Finally, I think it's worth considering that the role of religion in skills is largely inconsequential in terms of science. So what if a student is taught creationism? No really, so what? So they hold an idea deemed incorrect by some? Big deal? If they are interested in science they are going to pursue it in college anyways. So what does it actually matter?

I assert the following:

It would be better for our students to leave high school knowing how to read and write well, having read the great works of western civilization, to speak and read multiple languages, to be able to undertake at least calculus, to understand civics in depth, to have a good understanding and deep appreciation for the natural world around us, and to understand how to think critically... and to have an incorrect understanding of a particular scientific idea that will probably have no impact on their lives at all...

than it would be for them to tow the party line on evolution and the date of the earth's formation, but to suck at reading, writing, be illiterate of the works of western civilization, to be barely able to speak and read their own language much less others, to be functionally unable to engage in math, to have no understanding of civics, to have little appreciation for the natural world around us, and to lack all critical thinking skills.

Education with a religious focus has a deep and long history of producing the first sort of student, and even then we find that a great many deeply religious persons have made monumental contributions to science. Over 35 craters on the moon are named after priest mathamaticians and astronomers. George Lemaitre, the man who came up with the Big Bang theory, was Fr. George Lemaitre.

Indeed the world's leading universities were all founded with religious ideals-- Harvard, Oxford, the University of Paris. Harvard's original motto was "Truth for Christ and the Church" Oxford's remains "The Lord is my Light" I don't know the motto for the University of Paris offhand.

Given these things, I think it is impossible to assert that the mere presence of religion and/or religious ideas is a problem for education. If anything it has been foundational to education and science in the west, and has contributed greatly to it.

The state... however... the role of the state in education has created a great many problems indeed.

 

Your answers to those questions are the same as mine, but I do lean more towards Science, mainly because it has the physical facts of what will happen after we die without claiming to know what happens to our soul/consciousness/whatever. They've got theories, but they don't act like it's solid truth - which I appreciate.

And I agree with you on that second point. Radicals really do fuck everything up. It's pretty much impossible for me to take such close minded people seriously anymore

 

Well if you think about it scinece is no more than a modern religion

 

wow, im fucking nerd raging and i'm not even a science major.

science acts as a religion for some people in modern society in the way it dictates their beliefs, and I would never suggest this is admirable.
I simply think it's preferable that if you are going to accept things without questioning them that you at least verify the credibility of the speaker.

the difference between science and religion, however, is that when science encounters new evidence it changes to incorporate it.

when religion encounters new evidence, they discriminate against or silence the person who discovered it.