ban school nativity plays

my daughter's school spent several month studying the various religious festivals of the "great philisophical / religious traditions." she's five. but it was wonderful. there were three kids in her class who celebrate ramadan, a couple of buddhists, some hindus, christians, all of it. only one who celebrated kwanzaa. and they made all kinds of little symbols while studying them. i hung them on our tree, lol. she was so proud. it was neat. these kids are being given information about their brothers and sisters on the planet without being told what they should be doing. hell, even the hard core atheist parents didn't have anything to complain about.

 

I wouldn't say I was dismissing beliefs as health issues. But I feel one can put a lot of people's 'beliefs' down to conditioning. The point I was making was that if an individual's had ideas thrust down their throats from a young age, an age where they can't think objectively, then effectively they've had the a huge part of the free thought aspect of their childhood denied to them by their parents, even if their parents don't see it that way.

This is the truth about life. This is what you should believe. This is the only way to live. This is the word of the lord. You tell a child these things and they believe all of it. After all, why would their parents lie to them? Yes, many people grow up with no adverse effects and wander off into the atheist realm, some return to religion and some are stuck with a simplistic way of looking at 'faith' because of what was drilled into their heads as children. Many kids have 'faith' in Father Christmas, I wouldn't call that a health issue but it works on similar logic. If you never found out Father Christmas didn't exist and year after year he kept on bringing you presents etc you'd still believe in him wouldn't you

If a child is raised by wolves they're programmed to behave in a feral fashion as has been documented. If they've known nothing else then you can't be angry at people for having a skewed perception of the world. A skewed perception compared to mine I hasten to add, they probably think I'm completely loopy (and they're probably right). We're all looking at the same thing through different glasses, some with funky lenses, some with one, some with none, some with colours etc etc. Reality is relative. THere's no absolute wrong or right, life is a grey area and people who see only in black and white don't quite 'get it' IMO. They haven't all been indoctrinated but forcing religion on your kids encourages them to think only in one way. Which may be right for some people but personally I feel it's wrong.

I feel you can blame indoctrination for a lot people's 'faith' and 'beliefs' with no real spiritual grounding behind them and their inability to think 'outside the box' as they were conditioned as children.

 

everything is indoctrination. it's just a fact of life.

 

'everything is indoctrination'

eh?

 

It is comparable to a health issue. Quite apart from the deleterious psychological effect of being taught that you don't need evidence in order to believe something is true (in fact that belief in the absence of evidence is a virtue), removing religious indoctrination from our public institutions is a matter of public hygiene. A healthy society is one made up of individuals who do not dogmatically adhere to groundless opinions no matter what, a healthy society is one which constantly questions its own outlook and is capable of progressively modifying its moral compass as new things are learnt. (Attitudes towards homosexuality being a case in point.)

 

Word to your mother.



What took me pages of garbling and not really making any point was summed up nicely in a paragraph.

 

You may well declare a similarity but i'll still complain about your argument doing so, again not condusive to healthy discussion is labeling those that disagree to be of unsound mind.

 

"A strange old man who repeatedly claimed nothing was true, though he was later found to be lying."

- Douglas Adams....

 

Being able to modify the moral compass does not deny faith.

You obviously deny any possibility of existence beyond your demise, no spirit no soul, no reason for existence other than your brief inefectual whisper in the solar wind. Fine and sensible I am sure, but sadly lonely, keep peace with yourselves then gentlemen it would be a shame if you disliked yourself ever.

All well and good removing the state from the entanglements with faith I can concur with the idea usualy, but I'm unhappy with philosophical discussion with children removed from their education. That leaves philosophical instruction to Eastenders then. Brilliant damn good idea.

 

Faith is often an impediment to an adaptable moral compass. Religious institutions lag behind progressive attitudes and society's changing ideas of what is acceptable behaviour. Religious morality does, of course, change over time - christianity has largely moved on from the burning of heretics and witches, for instance. The reason religious morality changes is that we tend to use our innate sense of morality to decide what is religious rather than our religious doctrines to decide what is moral. But in general the history of religious institutions is as a reactionary and conservative social force which denies moral progress and promulgates intolerance and prejudice, and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.

 

Obviously deny any possibility?! Well, it's not obvious to me. I don't deny the possibility of existence beyond my demise, far from it, but don't wholeheartedly embrace the idea either. Like I said, righteousness and being fervently sure of oneself is unhealthy so I'm keeping an open mind. Humans will never know, it's too much for our puny little brains to understand, we can have 'faith' but trusting everything into that faith just because of a 'feeling' doesn't compute in my book. Your last line there also sounds a bit 'you wait and see' that was talked about earlier in the thread.

Indoctrination is not having philosophical discussion, it's quite the oppoosite. Teaching them there is only one way is making them closed minded. If they get their philosophical instruction from Eastenders then I'm sure the parents aren't particularly concerned about the attitudes and intellect of their offspring. My (secular) parents didn't let me watch tv every day or have video games as a kid because they thought it'd do my creative development no favours- and I thank them for it.

Surely giving your kids a balanced and inquisitive outlook is better than forcing fairy tales down their throats?

 

I'm sure you'd agree, but it's worth saying, that we can learn a lot from those fairy tales, and that removing religious indoctrination does not entail excising the study of religious myth from the curriculum. The culture and literature of christianity underpins our worldview and it's important that we continue to study it (alongside the other traditions). But that's a qualitatively different thing from bringing children up to be christian, to have faith, and to think that these fairy tales are literally true...

 

Of course! Deep down, religion can be a great thing and religious stories can teach a lot but one needs to draw a distinction between rhetorical parable and 'real' life. Lots of fantasy books or films have nice, intelligent moral messages in them and aren't used as a way to base your entire existence on though.

Knowledge is power, teaching kids more about all cultures is only a positive thing. Teaching them only about one or saying 'really, this is the only one that's right' is negative IMO

 

I've not taken task with your use of the wird indoctrination because technicaly your use of the word is correct, but now that you differentiate it to mean a term negating debate I wish to complain that you use it only as a strong negative image.

Sorry but you agree that its fine to have the nations offspring raised on the morals of a soap show ?

I am providing my offspring a balanced and inquisitive outlook by enabling them the authority of knowledge in any discussions they may encounter regarding christianity. By supporting the continued use of religion in school I am not suggesting we stop teaching the principles of other religions in the slightest.
.

 

Why do you assume that anyone who expresses a desire to see religious education of children to be an evangelising christian, how often do you come across this in reality, never would be my bet.

 

sure, from teaching your children how to eat, teaching them how to dress, teaching them how to speak, teaching them anything that you yourself need them to know, that they need to know to just get by, it's an indoctrination. some people can't handle the concept of eating with their fingers, for pete's sake.

 

I agree, like it or not, religion is not going anywhere soon, so we might as well just learn to put up with it. It does play a very large part in society, so really people should learn about it then make up their own minds as to whether or not they believe any of it is true or not.

 

I agree entirely, but that is not what is currently happening; it's certainly not what happened in my youth (my RE teacher was an evangelising christian) and if you read Iluvmusic's posts you'll see it is not what is currently happening for her, and by extrapolation many other schoolkids today. Those 35% (or whatever the figure was) of schools which year after year unquestioningly and automatically put on a traditional nativity are clearly failing to do this, and this is not to mention the issue of exclusive faith schools (including state funded city academies). This thread is about those aspects of our state institutions which promulgate the faith hegemony without teaching the proper critical perspective which must go along with it if we are to avoid bringing kids up thinking this stuff is automatically and necessarily the right way to think. There is a fairly obvious qualitative difference between an indoctrination into, and a properly contextualised study of, a faith tradition. The belief that the current educational status quo is achieving the latter is quite clearly mistaken.

 

I think you've somewhat missed the nuanced position being espoused here dap, look at posts 92 and 93 again, which are very positive about the inclusion of religious studies in the school curriculum. It'd be absurd to suggest we fail to teach the context which underpins the entirety of western civilisation!

It is equally absurd to think that anyone opposed to religious indoctrination is suggesting that philosophy should be discouraged. Quite, quite the reverse! Our current religious education is to a large degree failing to teach philosophy by focusing on one faith to the exclusion of other ideas. Once you abandon the easy and inchoate probings which passed for philosophy 2000 years ago you really open up the possibilities, it is a lack of imagination (and something of a straw man) to claim that the alternative to religious faith is Eastenders

The concept of faith is antithetical to philosophy because it provides answers without requiring an active engagement with evidence. Religious teachings function superbly as parables and metaphors but they must be approached as such in order for philosophy to take place; if they are taught as doctrine, thought is stifled rather than encouraged.

 

Yes, but if parents have such a problem, then they have the choice as to whether their children participate in most of the Christian activites. I don't remember doing much Christianity in RE, I remember being handed a Bible but to be honest didn't look at it because I wasn't interested. It didn't seem to be a subject that mattered so to speak, even out GCSE was only counted as a half. We did have vicars come in - but again the only thing I remember is something about a spade! And anyone who was of a different religion, or completely against it could leave. I guess it needs to work both ways. Evangelism is at one end of the extreme, but traditional anglicans are different. Not that that makes much difference here. I personally don't think that RE at school, or the one or two nativity plays had any effect on my religion now. Most poeple if born into a faith do question it at some time. Yes primary school may cause more "brainwashing" if thats want you kids are calling it, but teenagers tend to have an opinion already and the teenagers I know will not so easily change their mind because some bible preaching person tells them to read the bible. If parents are against it, what children hear at home will be the opposite from school, who is to say what that means?