any opening to get their religious propaganda into the public schools. So no, not a good idea at all.

The ACLU is being perhaps deliberately naive in order to appear fair. Having experienced what the fanatics will do to exploit any opening with my local school system, no thanks.

the ACLU does not share your agenda, and your rather narrow view of theists.

The religious are arrogant thinking that society needs to let them work their way into all our lives.

I'm sure they understand that it rarely actually happens that way.

The ACLU most likely does not stand against the teaching about religions in public schools but does not condone teaching religion in public schools. The religious are wrong to take comfort in misinterpreting what the ACLU stands for, it does not give you permission to inflict your doctrines on public school children.

religious teachers, administrators, and school board members can't be trusted to deal with religious subjects objectively. Too many of them see the teaching of any such material as an opportunity to proselytize to their captive audience. Very often, they're doing this with the enthusiastic support of the religious community. Students who object to religious indoctrination, prayers, and such in public school are often ostracized and threatened. Sometimes, they receive credible death threats and require police protection, while political and religious leaders publicly slander and demonize them.

but I also agree with the ACLU position.

As well, students who do not wish to say the pledge of allegiance are also ostracized. All part of building social cohesion.

in any objective way at all. Bias toward one or another religion always creeps into such efforts.

Given that, I'd prefer that parents be left with the job of teaching about religion. It doesn't belong in our schools, especially since objective presentations are essentially impossible. When teacher has a bias about religion, it is that bias that is taught. No matter how carefully such instruction is monitored, it will have bias in it.

Perhaps your own bias influences your response.

By your logic, history should not be taught as well.

It is filled with bias.

Religion, on the other hand, is almost never taught without bias. Even at the college level, the biases of the instructor become part of the instruction.

As I said, I have never encountered any unbiased classes on religion in my lifetime. Not once.

I have, however, observed history classes that were free from bias. Why is that, do you think?

Perhaps your own bias, or lack of specific historical knowledge, led you to feel that the classes were free from bias.

Bye.

This happened where I went to high school - I had already graduated, but my brother was still attending one of the high schools in the district. A group of Christians brought a suit that a bunch of the textbooks being used were promoting "secular humanism" as a religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause. Some of them were history books. A Christian federal judge, W. Brevard Hand, ruled in their favor, and the textbooks were taken from the students and removed from the classrooms. The appeals court reversed the ruling, and after that the Christian group let it drop.

I was surprised to find a summary online:
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1987/12/09/07390026.h07.html

It is impossible to find historical teachings without some degree of bias. I can imagine that will be true forever. Can you imagine how President Trump will be portrayed by history teachers who lived through his tenure? They're bound to be either in the MAGA camp or absolutely despise the man, as DUers do. Hard to call it "down the middle" with such a divisive and polarizing figure.

And much of what is taught as US history is an agreed upon narrative that happens to favor the rich.

are nationalistic propaganda and a disservice toward the mission of cultivating an informed citizenry.

In many cases, what is called history is only an agreed upon narrative that supports what the rich want.

so governments are free to abuse children by indoctrinating them in utter bullshit.

I took a high school course called "The Bible as Literature". It was taught in the english department. The real point of the course was in order to understand much of western literature, you have to understand much of the bible story. The teacher was very good in that it was less about faith than it was about how the bible influences western literature.

I suspect something similar could be taught about religions in the sense of how they have affected western culture, and really cultures around the world.

The problem of course is that we can't hardly teach history without arguing about the facts. I suspect religion would be even worse. Can you imagine if the same people that write history books for Texas, end up writing texts on comparative religion studies or some such topic?

Instead, we had a "religious release" program, where students were released from school for an hour once a week. During that hour, they went to a church of their choice for religious education. They, meaning those who wished to do so and had permission from their parents.

I didn't count, but about 75% of students participated. We had that program in elementary school, as well.

I didn't participate in it. Instead we stayed in our normal classrooms or went to the school library. I remember sixth grade, too, when that hour was used by my teacher to give us lessons in Spanish. I think there were four students in that classroom, and we actually learned some decent conversational Spanish during that school year. In high school, we spent that hour at the school library.

Sunday School on Wednesday was what that amounted to. The churches loved it. Some even sent a bus to take kids to their religious release program.

I learned conversational Spanish.

But the churches were bad at taking attendance and the kids were really good a using it to skip school.

Can't wait to throw this back at you.

It is obvious that you did not use the scientific method because the statement is based on nothing.

One might assume, then, that the ACLU's opinion is of supreme importance to you.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

From an ACLU press release on their website. Apparently religionnews.com knows the ACLU better than the ACLU does.

Well, as long as it says something Monsieur G wants to believe.

I feel like I'm repeating myself in this thread.

Win some, lose some.

harm than good.

Go to church and perform your rights but get the hell out of the lives of those who do not want it!

You really have to understand the influence of various religions on their cultures, which means studying them to begin with.

everything in moral immoral good and evil terms. Religion’s place in society came from human inability to understand thus humans credit a higher power be it god or a tree.

The religious need to believe that society needs religion when actually society could become more further developed with out religion. The current attack on women’s reproductive rights is a case in point.

It's probably better described as a symbiotic relationship, but it is difficult to separate most cultures from their religions. It's pretty hard to understand western European culture without understanding the history of the christian/catholic church. It's hard to understand much of the history of the larger region without understanding the conflict between middle east religious history and the conflict with Christianity. It's not so much a deep dive into theology as it is understanding how that theology intersects with the history and traditions.

This is not 'the American Civil Liberties Union's joint statement'.

Last edited Thu Jun 13, 2019, 04:57 AM - Edit history (1)

Typical.