Religion should be taught in public school extensively.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." I am in college now, but when I was in High School I participated on our "In-the-Know" team. I went to a good public school. I lived in a good area. The kids were smart at our school and as a result our ITK team always did well (better than our football team many times). We were definitely at least an above average team, but every time we faced a Catholic school...oh man, it was never pretty. Of course, my argument does not only rest on that anecdote, but I'll admit it did get me thinking. Right now I am living in a dorm and one of my roommates graduated from a private Catholic school. One day I was looking through one of his old social studies binders and noticed an extensive amount of history. It was a wonderful resource and better than probably what most public schools provide. Of course, it did have some Christian spin to it when it judged certain historical occasions, but I will still say that it still provided an in depth look into history. I was telling him how good the binder was and a conversation occurred. Somewhere in the conversation he said (and this isn't verbatim), "With religion out of our public schools, it's no wonder we have lousy Social Studies scores." And that got me thinking. Here is a summary/ retelling of my thoughts after that: I first thought about what is religion. I came up with the idea that religion is one trying to come to terms with the constructs of reality. Religion is trying to figure out where we came from. Religion is trying to understand how we should behave in this reality. Even dictionary.com defines religion as: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. Looking at these definitions alone one can assume then religion is going to be a big part of people's lives. And history affirms this. Religion has played major roles in cultures, governments, wars, etc. It is in fact, a fundamental aspect of the human race. Yet, when it comes to public schools, because of our lack of understanding of the Constitution and the desire to be "Politically Correct" we barely touch the topic of religion. I remember, my freshman year of High School, we talked about the major religions for probably a week. And for example, what I learned about Islam was very minimal (and dealt nothing with what is happening everyday in the news with their religion). This is a terrible mistake to make because through our education we should be studying how society works, yet without understanding one of the main driving forces of society, we will only get an incomplete picture. Today we see so many people who do not understand other cultures and we can help remedy this by further teaching religions. We teach our students in-depth the ins-and-outs of the major religions in fashion a Preacher, Priest, Rabbi, etc. would teach about their own religions. Of course, this should never be done in a mandatory fashion, whereas our teachers would assuredly be telling our students they will go to Hell if they our sinners. But they should get educated on Judaism they way a practicing Jew would. This is my first point. My second point is that by teaching religion it will also allow our students to expand their realm of thinking to the constructs of reality. In the early days of the American University going to church was mandatory and other religious facets were very incorporated in to the student's college life. It was thought that for one to have a complete education one would have to not only educate the mind, but the soul. I believe that notion to be true. I believe that if one contemplates religion in the way that I have defined it, he gets a better understanding of reality. I am not asserting that to be educated, one has to be a deist or a theist, but that by questioning and thinking about the ground one stands on or the rules that society or "a deity" says you have to follow you will be more educated. Doing this through religious study is a very practical manner. But sadly, our society puts off the heavy thinking to the latter years of human development and sometimes ignores heavy thinking all-together. Here is the summary of my argument. We should teach religion because: 1) It helps us understand our complex society. 2) It allows our student to academically challenge the constructs of reality.