droomph said:
Maybe it's because of the "Religious" in the class name, but if you think about it, what it is, is basically teaching tolerance. And maybe in Australia your core principles are focused on only allowing one group of people to dominate (hey, I don't live there okay) but I'm positive that at least the US has a policy in the Constitution that explicitly gives religious freedom and tolerance as one of its core values of America. So if it's in the core values, it should be in the core cirriculum as well. After all, weren't we the most open country in the world at one point? We should strive to maintain that position, and since the world is opening up, it's not just the US now - it's the whole world that should teach tolerance in school.
I believe that inherent within the 'freedom of religion' clause is 'freedom
from religion'. If people don't want to learn about religions they shouldn't be forced to as part of a core curriculum. I don't support that. Nor do I support the hipocrisy of a nation claiming to promote such 'freedom' enforcing its core values - no matter what they may be - on its student populace.
Your point about teaching tolerance is well-received, though. Even then, I don't support a compulsory course in something that isn't necessary for survival in the world, but supposing I did, there are
far better ways of teaching tolerance than through learning about religion. Why not a course on different cultures in general? It could absolutely
include religion, but it's quite short-sighted to focus on exclusively religion when there are so many other aspects of different cultures that students could be learning to 'tolerate'.
droomph said:
Was I particularly happy to learn about a fake religion? No. But I got over it, and I'm still a Christian, not some Olympia-worshipping freak.
droomph said:
Just because I think it's fake doesn't mean I have much prejudice against them. Now, if I had said "dumb religion" then that would have some problems to it.
For somebody so gung-ho on the idea of teaching religious tolerance, you certainly aren't showing a lot of it yourself. I'm not even religious and I'm beyond offended on behalf of the 'Olympia-worshipping freaks'.
Lets do a hypothetical: say a Wiccan posted in this thread and said, "I was taught about Christianity last year. Was I particularly happy to learn about a fake religion? No. But I got over it, and I'm still a Wiccan, not some Jesus-worshipping freak."
How would that make you feel?