From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Subject: Re: Religion in Schools
Organization: Glassboro State College (Secular Humanism Is Our Religion)
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:45:16 GMT


Michael Kline writes:

> I was talking with my Unix guru Atul Jain, a undevout Hindu, about this
> same subject during my lunch walk.           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> [...]
> I told him I knew he wasn't a Christian, and maybe the reading of the
> Bible would offend him. He said it wouldn't. Why should it?

Mr Jain is not, by your description, a *devout* Hindu.  Even if he were, his
religion is much less exclusive than some others.

Let's try this using a devout religious person who is a member of an exclusive
denomination: let's use you (I know your kids learn at home, but this is just
a hypothetical example).

Mr Kline, suppose your kids came home from school and said that they had read
from the Book of Mormon, and they read about how Jesus came to the Americas
and preached, and how he told Moroni (or whoever) that God had a body of flesh
and blood, "just as a man has".  Would you be unhappy about this?

Or suppose your son came home quoting verses from the Qu'ran, and said (in
perfect Arabic) "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet."  And
further suppose that he told you God "begets not, nor is he begotten"; after
all, they did read this in school.  Would this bother you?

Not to stoke the flames of the Roman Catholicism wars, but suppose your kid
came home and quoted verses from the Apocrypha.  Suppose he said that because
some person in the Bible said a prayer for a dead person, he had said a prayer
for his dead grandma/goldfish/whatever.  Would this bother you at all?


When the discussion of religion in schools changes from reading the Bible to
reading the Book of Mormon, many Christians suddenly begin to favor separation
of Church and State.  We do not want other people confusing our children by
reading to them from religious books we don't accept as Scripture.

This strikes me as a simple and obvious situation where the Golden Rule is
directly applicable; you don't want somebody telling your kids to believe his
religion, so you shouldn't tell his kids to believe yours.  Why so many ignore
this, I have no idea.

 --

I personally think that public schools should teach ethics, and that kids
should be able to ask religious questions.  My idea for getting around this is
to have a class in ethics/religion -- where the classes are assigned based on
the kid's religious orientation.  The school building has sufficient space for
all the kids to sit, so you allocate classrooms as needed.  Each class can be
taught by a volunteer (possibly the pastor) from a local church of the
relevant denomination.  The Baptist kids get Baptist answers, the RC kids
get RC answers, the LDS kids get the LDS answers.  For parents who are
atheists, they can provide somebody to answer the questions, or the kids can
just read something published by atheists; for the parents who profess no
religion, a completely secular source that takes no stand on religion can
probably be found.

This isn't an ideal solution -- in this rough form it isn't really any
solution at all -- but I think it IS workable.  It addresses a few problems:

 - a kid can ask a religious question in school and get an answer (if it
   isn't the ethics/religion class, the teacher can say "You should ask your
   religion teacher", much as a math teacher might respond to a question
   about history).

 - it dissolves the notion that religion is something you do only on the
   weekend.

 - it teaches the kids to get along despite differences; in a situation where
   everybody's beliefs are hidden, you don't know there are differences there.
   Then you might get along with the RC kid, but you don't know it and you
   don't realise that RCs are people just like you.  (I personally think the
   people on this list could use a lesson along these lines.)

 - since kids are put in a religion class at the direction of their parents,
   nobody's religion is being stepped on.  Since ALL the kids are being
   shuffled around for ethics class, no individual kid is being singled out.

 - since the ethics/religion leaders are volunteers from the local churches,
   no extra tax money goes to pay for religious teaching.

 - because the volunteers are of the same religion as the kids, there isn't a
   religion gap.  (Do you really want a Hindu to explain the Trinity during
   Bible reading?  I suspect the explanation won't be exactly orthodox.)


The idea has problems, of course, but I think it could work.


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be
 in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when
 these people clearly are raving space loons." -- Dave Barry