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No, I quite simply rescind that statement (which didn't say or promise very much to start with) in the sense that I no longer care to discuss religion in this thread or on this forum. I'm quite prepared to leave to get away from it all in fact.
And I'm saying this is an attitude that is allowed to strive when you give religions special privilege in schools. And in this instance, supposedly secular schools.
And it's bad enough in a faith school. In a secular state school I'd say it's borderline criminal.
The ones I'm confronted with:
- Catholics, but typically foreign (African, Polish, ...)
- Protestants (the worst!!)
- Muslims
No Jews, Hindus, ... in my school.
Could you elaborate about the issues each group brings?
Somehow I'm not surprised Protestants are the worse.
That's good advice, @Creasy47 and it's clearly what I must do now.
It clearly works on some though as this is from the homepage of my school and that guy was in my class. He was reasonably bright (not in my league obviously), but certainly not an idiot, but even then myself and my little cabal of religion disbelievers used to ridicule his happy clappy schtick. I just googled his name on a whim when thinking about the school brainwashing we were discussing and (not entirely unexpectedly to be fair) seem to have hit the jackpot:
http://www.bwh.staffs.sch.uk/News/New-Lay-Chaplain-to-enrich-pastoral-care/
That's given me a chuckle. I thought I had made a shambles of my life but to see a bloke who used to be extremely popular with the girls now fatter, balder and with a far rougher wife than me, not to mention working in the service of the Lord, is most gratifying.
I'm almost tempted to actually sign up for Facebook and Twitter if it produces such enjoyable levels of schadenfreude on a regular basis.
You do yourself a disservice Sir:
'There is evidence out there too that proves it is factually correct.'
That promises a great deal. A veritable revelation in fact. Ok it was followed up with sod all but you can't have everything I suppose. Promising a lot and then not delivering makes you no worse than SP after all.
Anyway I agree with @Creasy47 it would be a shame to see you go. And seeing as you started the thread you clearly feel religion is a topic worthy of discussion so let's discuss.
Instead of retreating into the shadows tell us what is you actually believe and, more pertinently, why you arrived at those conclusions? I can't really phrase it in a more open and respectful way.
Of course I cannot promise to not disagree and then attempt to refute your point of view but isn't that the definition of a discussion?
In short:
- Catholics are mostly troubled by the notion that I am not a person of faith yet teach in a Catholic school. Unfortunately, a vast majority of Belgian schools is "Catholic" (though in name only in my experience) so statistically speaking, the chances of ending up in one are high. That said, many atheists and/or secularised individuals teach in our Catholic schools. Some of my students nevertheless think I'm being a hypocrite and an intruder that way and they flat-out say so. They're probably right, so I let them. Once. And then I proudly continue.
Whenever I make admonishments regarding being told by others what to think or how to think, or when I comment on the Bible and whatnot, some can get pretty angry or leave the classroom to complain in the principle's office. I've been asked to keep my critical voice down before, albeit just a little bit because even my superiors aren't the most Catholic of Catholics. The "director" of my school is a married gay man whom I suspect is also entirely atheist. We get along very well, except that he thinks I shouldn't be too outspoken about certain things, even if I'm right.
- Protestants... Oh wow. I've had my share, let me tell you. Evolution, Big Bang, quantum physics, particle physics, serendipity, entropy, ... it's all nonsense. Everything is a part of the Lord's Creation. There's an intention, a plan, a design behind it all. It's all just about 6000 years old. And none of that astronomy or physics BS is true. Empirical evidence matters not. Only the Bible does. I've had teenagers storm out of my classroom when I was teaching about cellular evolution. Solar nucleosynthesis, including half-lives and the way we calculate Earth's age, all have sparked tremendous resistance. I've had students turn around in class to face away from the blackboard or computer screens when carbon-14 dating was being discussed.
I've had protestant parents demand to see me after school to lecture me about "Our Lord Jesus Christ" and how I was "polluting" my students' minds with my science which, after all, "is merely one way to look at things", while the Biblical version is at least as valid as an alternative. One protestant girl, two school years ago, burst out in tears during organic chemistry class. I still, to this day, have no idea why. We were discussing the chemical composition of petrol. Perhaps it was my very matter-of-fact review of our best hypotheses regarding the origin of petrol that did it. Either way, a note was slipped in my school mail the next day, anonymously, inviting me to a gathering of "Our Lord's Servants". Frankly, the first idea that popped into my head was, "am I being invited to some Satanic metal band's rock concert?"
- Muslims are the politest. "Mister, I respect you and I like you as my teacher, but you will burn in hell when you're dead. Just saying." Or, "Mister, you are the best teacher I've ever had. You have had a lot of patience with me and you've helped me to understand chemistry. However, since you refuse to believe in God, you are a lost soul." Truly, I like my Muslims on average more than my Protestant pupils. They remain calm, do as they're told, they learn their lessons and present decent to good answers on a test. They just calmly mention, with a charming smile sometimes, that my life choices will prevent me from reaching heaven. I'm perfectly fine with that, I guess. ;)
For the record, most of my students are bonafide atheists or, since they're teenagers, "I don't believe in God but there must be something out there" agnostics. ;)
All those poor believers being indoctrinated by Darth and his newfangled 'science'.
Is a priest telling you God exists, and that Jesus died for your sins any more a kind of brain washing than your mum and dad telling you that the Tories are evil and you must never vote for them, or that Jimmy Savile is a great bloke who works at children's hospitals for nothing?
In the end you grow up and make your own decisions. My best mate supported Derby County when I was 5, and wanted me to do the same. But, for whatever reason, I went with Leicester City.
My dad, a miner, was a staunch Labour supporter. I've never voted Labour in my life.
And at school we had assembly and sang hymns, and thanked God before we ate school dinner ( I've tossed that ball in the air for you @TheWizardOfIce ) . And now? I've chosen my path in life and it doesn't involve God or church or Jesus Christ.
No one brain washed me.
A civilised society should care and nurture a kid's brain. It's perhaps the most valuable thing that society can do.
It's a horrible thing and, yes, IMHO, a form of abuse, to take that great potential and waste it by, essentially, lying to kids. The lies carry more weight as they are delivered by figures of authority within a building/system of authority and given legitimacy via it's state funding. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
It's remarkable in this day and age that anyone can genuinely defend religious schools.
As someone said a few pages back if it's not indoctrination by parents and 'faith' based teachers why is it that the majority of Muslims continue to come from Muslim countries, the majority of Christians come from Europe, the Americas and the majority of Hindus come from India? If belief in a particular religion was based on merit rather than social pressure to conform wouldn't we have started to see more of an even geographical spread? Admittedly in Muslim countries non conformity is often a matter of life and death but in Europe you are free to believe whatever you want yet probably 99% of the religious follow their parents faith I would imagine.
I agree with the examples you give about parents indoctrinating children with their political views too but does anyone ever claim that that is a good thing like they do with religion? If someone tried to start up a school that taught children communism or fascism was the best system of government there would be outcry and justifiably so.
As an ex teacher my philosophy was never to spoon feed a child something, but to give them the tools and support for them to discover something for themselves. Religion has to be spoon fed though (well shoved down people's gullets like a Strasbourg goose), because no one with any semblance of intelligence would consider it worthy of any consideration if there was a level playing field and it didn't receive special privilege to protect it from the scrutiny everything else in the world is subject to.
Well said Sir.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43724871
Let me share an anecdote with you.
We usually calculate Earth's age by means of the half-life of one specific uranium isotope. The physics behind it is waterproof; if the full set of laws, formulas and theories works for, say, radioactive tracers in your body, it must also work for every other radioactive isotope, correct? And so a few relatively simple calculations bring us to Earth's age: 4.5 billion years.
Anyone who understands the physics and the math, which aren't very complex by the way, can, with perhaps a little guidance, figure these things out for themselves.
Of course, many students haven't really thought about these matters until they're confronted with them in school. Those who are of a Young Earth Creationist upbringing but not necessarily unintelligent, are suddenly faced with a dilemma:
- their parents, reverents, religious books, ... have told them that Earth is at most 6000 years old and that man walked with dinosaurs and so on.
- the physics, which they understand and logically accept, suddenly reveals a truth entirely different from the one they have clung to for many years.
Well, @NicNac, I have witnessed some rather frightening episodes. I have had two students, independent of one another, run out of the classroom, totally confused, preferring to not hear any of the physics stuff anymore because they know it's correct, they were "tricked" in fact by me into deducing the required conclusions all by themselves, and yet they also understand that it has just torpedoed practically everything their parents have ever told them about the universe. Some fail to cope with this. It's like you telling everyone that your wife is the most faithful partner one can dream of and suddenly you yourself put two and two together and reach the devastating conclusion she's been whoring herself out her entire life.
I've seen worse still: students who rapidly start making up excuses why the science is flawed after all, despite the evidence hitting them hard in the face, or why both "interpretations" can still validly co-exist, or why what works for one isotope mustn't necessarily work for the other, and so on and so on. Some are prepared to intellectually delude themselves in favour of holding on to a false truth that was spoonfed them without any evidence of any kind at all.
Some even refuse to put any sensible answers down on a test. Knowing very well it'll cost them points, possibly more, they are still willing to answer perfectly neutral physics questions with "see Bible, book so-and-so, ...". I usually don't flunk them right away but take them aside and have a little polite chat, trying to convince them that this sort of attitude won't harm them in my courses alone but will inevitably cost them opportunities in life. And some will "conform" (even if they're not always convinced it's the right thing to do) and some will simply not care.
That, @NicNac, is paternal indoctrination at work. And it's scary. Bright young people, having others think for them, while the one true purpose of my classes, more important than anything else, is to teach them to think for themselves. If you can't, you're either a weak element in this society or a dangerous one.
I have tried to talk to some parents too but alas, you can usually tell how large their influence is, how stubborn their attitude. Some have lectured me, as I've already said, about science and how little it really matters; or how I deprive my students of their way into heaven and so on. When that happens, I have a difficult time keeping a straight face. But here's the thing: in my country, you're certainly not going to be fired over this. Now if this were America...
Spooky.
In the UK Jehovahs are pretty much like that I must admit.
That's a false equivalence. The transmission of religious dogmas as facts, whether they are either debunked or unverified, IS indoctrination, and very harmful, while the transmission of knowledge and the development of critical thinking is the mission of schools and what they are for. And the very opposite of indoctrination.
No. I'm saying you're doing a false equivalence.
What do you consider indoctrination in school? Outside religious one I mean.
Intrinsically school is about education: acquiring knowledge and critical thinking. It doesn't mean its mission cannot be perverted. But that this perversion are always not from religions does not exonerate religions from their attempt to subjugate schools to their own agendas.
I didn t say it did. We agree on that one.
The dictionary definition of indoctrination:
indoctrination
ɪnˌdɒktrɪˈneɪʃ(ə)
noun
the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
"I would never subject children to religious indoctrination"
(That's not even my example that's genuinely what you get when you type the word in Google)
Now could you tell me how explaining to a child the rules of multiplication and addition or what the capital of Bolivia is constitutes indoctrination? They are just facts.
I was going to go with this myself:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/ealing-abortion-clinic-safe-zone-ireland-referendum
But that's the beauty of picking the daily religion story - there's just so much choice.