Public schools in Western countries should be completely secular.

You appear to be going off of a mistaken assumption. In my very first statement, I stated that: "Of course, religions should be studied within school, as they are a major part of mankind's history." Secularity is the state of being separate from religion, or not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion [1]. Students can study the religions that helped to form their countries without being told that say, this religion's beliefs are correct, or that religion's beliefs are wrong. I only object to any religion being held as more real than any other in the classroom. No religion can be proven or disproven, therefore no religion should be treated as true or false in an institution with people of many different beliefs. Let's put aside any debate over the semantics of the word 'immigrant'. The colonists came into an area with existing beliefs, customs, and cultures, and took it over, refused to assimilate. That is a fact. Why should immigrants, who are essentially in the same situation as the colonists (only the immigrants are here legally (for the most part)), have a particular religion forced upon them, when judging from history, it should be them forcing their religion onto the long-time inhabitants? Looking at it that way, is it not a good compromise for schools to remain neutral and have individuals instead teach their children what they want at home? As we should not go on a large tangent about the pros and cons of assimilation with only one statement left for the each of us, let us agree to disagree and drop this particular subject. You cannot say that my statement is incorrect. I simply stated that a lack of religion does not correlate with a lack of morals. If my examples are supposedly sketchy, perhaps these will convince you otherwise: - The prison population in America is only 0.2% atheist [2] - Nearly all of the top 50 safest cities in the world are non-religious [3] - The most secular nations tend to be the most altruistic. [3] - The most violent nations tend to be the most religious [2] Yes, there are irreligious people who do terrible things. But there are religious people who do terrible things as well. All I am pointing out is the fact that irreligious people are the same as any religious person- some do bad, some do good, and a lot are somewhere in the middle. I could quote hundreds of examples of terrible religious people, but that doesn't mean that religious people do not have morals. Thus, in all, I believe that it has been made clear that secularity in schools will not lead to lowered morality in students. Even if you ignore the facts and insist that irreligion most definitely leads to immorality, the idea of secular schools is not to destroy religion, but to allow students to believe in whatever religion or non-religion they wish to without being told that their beliefs are wrong. If you believe that this will lead to students choosing irreligion over religion, you must have a low view of religion indeed. It is even possible that by receiving a unbiased (or an unbiased as possible) view on various religions in history classes or maybe a World Religions class, students could learn to be more tolerant, unlike how they may become in some non-secular echo chambers where teachers only teach one point of view. And so, in all, secular schools appear to be the best option for harmony in a rapidly globalizing world where people tend to meet people of different faiths on an everyday basis. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://www.sachikospace.com... [3] http://www.psychologytoday.com...